Since I bought Baldur's Gate EE last year, I had heard a lot of things about SoD, nearly all of them negative. I got SoD this week (mainly because it's needed for EET) and figured I'd play through it. I expected amateur work with bland writing and out-of-place, cringy dialogue like Neera always provides. SoD far exceeded my expectations. It's a legit Baldur's Gate adventure, albeit quite linear. Pros: * They got back the old voice actors, which is a legendary achievement. Kevin Michael Richardson as the narrator? Jim Cummings as Minsc? David Warner (even if he sounds much older now)? Absolutely amazing, this must have cost Beamdog a fortune and I am so glad to have them in. * Some actually epic battles. There's a segment called Bridgefort that is extremely memorable, though several others (like the Dumathoin decision, the team combat near the end, etc) * Much of the writing captures the old feel of Baldur's Gate. Cons: * Takes awhile to get started. The first dungeon and the departure toward the campaign are definite slow points. * Some of the battles are hard, much harder than anything in the original trilogy. Some bosses feel like they're mid-BG2 level, but your characters are only going to be levels 6 to 10, so you're much weaker than you should be. Some enemies use overpowered abilities to add artificial difficulty; close to the final battle, one enemy kept charming my tank who had -1 Save vs Spell. * Likewise, it doesn't really feel like you gain power as you go due to the experience limitations of being an interquel, but it's pretty frustrating to go through 3-4 chapters and only gain a single level. * The ending is utterly ridiculous. They try to justify it, but it simply does not work. It's forced to try to get you pushed into BG2 and it was not executed properly. * Some parts are unnecessary, like the Hooded Man following you around. Recommendation: Buy it at least on sale, play through it once. It IS good enough to carry the Baldur's Gate name.
I rarely submit reviews, but OSFE deserves all the praise I can give it. 20 hours of gameplay in and I'm just barely scratching the surface. It isn't MMBN, but it's a lot faster, more intense, and challenging. The use of difficulty extenders (hell passes) means the game's skill ceiling is sky-high. I unlocked every character and only have a few victories so far, so I'm looking forward to getting a lot more soon. Very, very fun game with tons of potential.
As of 2020, this game is working absolutely great. I haven't played BG in over 20 years so I don't remember a lot of the minute differences, but I encountered almost no bugs (Dynaheir refused to find me after I recruited Minsc, had to console her in). There are no black borders around characters, no crashes, etc. I don't know of any reason to prefer the Steam version over this. It works fine.
