I cannot decide if BG1 or BG2 is the best roleplaying game of all times! EE is a bit worse than the original, but good enough eh
An absolute classic which was never really matched again.
After reading all the negative reviews I hesitated quite a bit before buying this. However it turns out this is not the pile of garbage some people pretend it to be. I played BG1/2 back in 1998 and over the year went through it maybe three of four times. Dragonspear adds a bunch of refreshing new content between the two games. It is not easy to bridge the story perfectly as BG2 has to start with the good canon party, no matter what happened in BG1, or what you choose in Dragonspear. Overall it did a good enough job. The story is written well and I really don't understand the hate which some of the new characters got. I rarely, if at all encountered them anyways. Played with Dorn and Baeloth and they are both in the style of other classic BG characters. The game is overall a bit more linear than BG1 and smaller than BG2. The maps are smaller and denser which works well. Some of the BG1 maps are a bit too big and empty. Pretty much everything else is like BG1 and BG2, and as I like those games there is not much to complain about. Now I can play from Nashkel all the way to the throne of Ball a continuous giant 200 something hour great fantasy opus!
Initially didn't bought it due to mixed reviews and waited for a sale. Started playing now and boy this game is great. It's realtime with pause (RTWP) which means really crisp fights like back in BG1/2. Have been waiting for a good RTWP game with so many boring turn-based games around where fighting a bunch of rats takes 10 minutes. Story is great so far. Roleplaying system is great. Difficulty is good and invites you to experiment. Only downside for me is the art style. It is a bit too clean and saturated and everything looks a bit like plastic toys and not like a gritty dirty fantasy world.
This game got execellent funding, can focus on a niche game style, and had multiple great examples like Baldur's Gate on how to do it right. Instead: they broke their Kickstarter promises, the story is average to meh, combat is ridiculous and turn based... instead of real-time with pause, the whole RPG system is underdeveloped, the companions are so bland that I am still not sure if those are the actual companions or just some temporary placeholders, the UI is really really *really* bad -- in short sadly the whole thing is nowhere near to a Planescape Torment. Definitely the last inexile game I backed during Kickstarter.
The best 4X game you can play. 25 years old and no one else managed to get even close.
