Baldur's Gate: Siege of Dragonspear

in library

2.6/5

( 296 Reviews )

2.6

296 Reviews

English & 6 more

Posted on: September 20, 2023

RagingChaos

Verified owner

Games: 965 Reviews: 16

Terrible writing, but bridges BG1 to BG2

Baldur's Gate Siege of Dragonspear (SoD for short), is an expansion for Baldur's Gate(BG1) that takes place not long after the events in BG1 and it's expansion Tales of the SwordCoast(TotSC), like in Baldur's Gate 2(BG2) you can import your character from BG1. From purely a game play perspective SoD mimics BG1 Enhanced Edition with all of it's strengths and weaknesses. SoD follows how even though you were hailed as a hero following the events of BG1, war in the north is beginning to spill further south effecting Baldur's Gate city and you are basically dragged into the war events after a failed assassination attempt on your character in the royal palace. Baldur's Gate aristocrats decides to send an envoy north to join their allies in the war and you are expected to join in because you are "the hero of Baldur's gate". On paper this all sounds good, there are lots of opportunities for great world building, lore, and character development. Unfortunately, the writing is often hamfisted and the lead villain is written like a a Mary Sue. Where in BG1 and TotSC there was intrigue and subtleties that made character motivations and plans a bit of a mystery, SoD throws most of that out the window and plops down most motivations and reasons right out of the gate. A lot of characters introduced feel very 1 dimensional and the writers clearly make the "good" decision in most dialogue trees feel like the only option if you arent trying to be a complete asshole or murder hobo. Many of the classic BG1 characters return at various points but their writing feels like amateur fanfiction writing compared to their original dialog. That about sums up this expansion's writing in a nutshell; it feels like amateur fanfiction and occasionally tries to retcon AD&D lore for the sake of the writer's characters. The only significant redeeming factor of this expansion is that SoD provides a much needed bridge from BG1 +TotSD to BG2 while being mildy entertaining. NOT RECOMMENDED!

Is this helpful to you?

Posted on: December 30, 2024

wayworser

Verified owner

Games: 93 Reviews: 12

Good time if you tolerated the base game

If you liked the original campaign, you would probably appreciate this one too. It’s relatively short, but dense with fights and story. It has a lot of obvious flaws, the new characters could be obnoxious to someone, the main story is the most flawed in terms of writing. Thematically, it’s somewhat interesting, you deal with war and refugees of warzones, something that usually swept under the rug; the conflict itself is Good vs Good, at least on it’s surface. I appreciate the ambition the developers had for this expansion. It’s not the most graceful in execution, sometimes it’s very un-graceful, but I liked it for what it is. More of the same dungeoneering and fighting monsters. One thing I want to warn is that you can’t travel back to the earlier chapter areas. This was a bit frustrating, I had an unfinished business and the quest asked me to wait 1 day to get a quest reward. I moved forward with the story and couldn’t get it. Be warned.

Is this helpful to you?

Posted on: September 28, 2024

mvj143

Verified owner

Games: 356 Reviews: 4

Playable but not very replayable

Positives: quite a few interesting areas and encounters, and also a couple of interesting enough new companions (well, M'Khiin at least). And the writing around some of the lesser-used BG companions like Safana and Khalid seemed quite good to me. Negatives: the chapter by chapter structure with sidequests that you can't go back to is annoying - can't really plot your own path, leading to less replayability. The main plot has way too much foreshadowing. Not to mention the several sidequests that you can do to discover what is actually going on ahead of the big plot reveal... but for some reason everybody gets amnesia about the discoveries. The result of a game scaled back and chopped to fit a release schedule? I'm not that bothered by sidequests and optional parts being weird and/or cringy (for every vampire sidequest in SoD, there's a Drizzt encounter in the originals), but the good parts don't quite transcend the mediocre ones in this one for me. And I don't think it's just nostalgia for my youthful days. I do think the original Bioware team must have been fans of AD&D, and 2nd edition Forgotten Realms in particular. Sometimes it shows in the fairly cringy but apparently mandatory Elminster insertions, but I guess it also created a fairly consistent, shared voice across the group of people designing and implementing the quests, the dialog, and the events - not to mention that some of the odder NPCs, side quests and locations must have been mined from old AD&D campaigns, they had a very "played-in" feel to them. SoD, on the other hand, seems to follow the conventions of computer game logic instead of the archaic AD&D - and even if the team included tabletop RPG fans, in my experience the later editions of D&D have quite a different tone in actual play, even pre-Critical Role. So it's no wonder it doesn't quite feel like a continuation of the same game.

Is this helpful to you?

Posted on: April 8, 2016

thedavidayres

Games: Reviews: 1

Why is everybody freaking out!?

I really don't understand why everyone is freaking out. I first played Baldur's gate in the late 90s, I am an original fan. I was pumped when Beamdog released the EE versions, and I was SUPER pumped I heard they were releasing brand new content to bridge the two games. I have just finished playing thru the entire thing, and would like to share my experience, using everyone’s complaints as an outline for my experience playing thru it. Crashes: never during game play. Only happened when trying to import final save from BG:EE to DoS. If I just played thru the last fight instead it started DoS right away. Problem solved. New graphics: I agree the new sprites look pretty lame, but you can turn them off. One click. Is that really worth complaining about? It certainly only took a second to fix. All the other graphic improvements are AWESOME. Transgender thing: The way people complained, I got the impression he/she was a character you were stuck with in your party and he/she was constantly shoving an agenda down your throat. The he/she priest is in your camp, you don’t have to interact with it if you don’t want to. WHO CARES?! Multiplayer: In fairness, I haven’t tried multiplayer, but I would venture to guess Beamdog is working at making it more stable at the time of this writing Characters and Voicings: Only thing I was disappointed about was the lack of Jaheira voice, definitely missed her with everyone else on board. Otherwise it was fine! Story: Lots of complaints about the writing, other than literally like two odd lines I noticed, I thought it was fine. On par with the rest. Flexibility: Folks complained about the lack of flexibility in the gameplay, forcing you to do things certain ways. I didn’t see it as that much different from Throne of Bhaal. If your expectation was for a standalone game, you have it wrong. Think of it like Throne of Bhaal for BG1. It’s an add on.

Is this helpful to you?

Posted on: August 4, 2017

DkH.ZeRa

Verified owner

Games: 55 Reviews: 3

Yeah just bought it

Game is too linear. Im a powergamer and even played whole BG1EE again from start on to get a cool group of followers. Now with SOD they are all gone. You lose all your party members in chapter 8, even thou I could play chapter 7 in SOD with my main party. I had a very good composition and they just disbanded. You lose the items they have equipped. You lose your money. You have to pick up the 7-8 chars that are available at the start of SOD even if you dont want them. You have no real tank. You cant go back to an old area if you want to switch a follower. Thats so bad! I just decided to get Baeloth but I cant get him anymore. I cant decide where to go on the map (there is no real choice) and I cant decide with which followers I want to play. I hate this scripted shit.

Is this helpful to you?

...

Discover CD PROJEKT RED games

Highlights

Featured

Close, but not an exact hit

Baldur's Gate: Siege of Dragonspear

Other ratings

Add a review

Edit a review

Delete this review?

Report this review

Additional Details (required):

Report this review