After being banished to the nine hells of Baator for “enhancing” the BG series, have Beamdog redeemed themselves with PST:EE? Following on from BG:EE, BG2:EE and SoD, PST:EE is the latest attempt from Beamdog to bring a legendary RPG from the 90s to a new audience. Previous EE games were released with a cornucopia of bugs not present in the original games. Furthermore, Beamdog took it upon themselves to introduce many new characters and themes into the BG series that an overwhelming majority of fans did not want. It seems with PST:EE, Beamdog opted to change their modus operandi. Rather than desecrate the original PST with unwanted new material, PST:EE finally follows the adage, “if it ain’t broke, don’t fix it”. Following a speed run through the game, I have not encountered any of the idiocy that undermined the BG:EE series. I suspect this may be due to the deserved backlash to previous Beamdog games and that RPG legend, Chris Avellone, was brought in to supervise proceedings. Just as the original PST, it arguably has the most satisfying and compelling story I have experienced in an RPG, other areas of the game such as the combat mechanics, still leave a lot to be desired. Is PST:EE worth the investment? Yes, particularly if it is on sale and you do not own the original. This is what the BG:EE series should have been. While PST is arguably a 5/5 game, one cannot easily forget the lack of professionalism from several employees at Beamdog over the past few years. No apologies have been given, no attempt to rebuild bridges with those who were disrespected were made and Beamdog have not dissociated themselves from the troublemakers. The (former) community manager and other trolls responsible for this state of affairs, still operate on the Beamdog forum and behind the scenes. Until Beamdog demonstrates genuine contrition, it is difficult to support a company who treats the fans of the original games in such an unprofessional manner.
Not going to repeat what everyone else has said regarding how good this game is, so thought I could write about areas which may have been improved. Removal of re-spawning enemies. In one or two areas where you travel frequently it got rather annoying having to kill the same 3 enemies again and again (particularly under water). Once they are dead, they should be dead. Slightly breaks immersion when dead things keep on coming back to life. Some of the skills were somewhat unnecessary, for instance the crossbow branch. Less is more. There are a lot of potions in the game but I found little use for quite a few of them. Not entirely sure if all the bandit camps were necessary. They are entirely optional, but I wanted to explore everything so towards the end it felt there were too many as it became repetitive. It does give you options to try things like new signs, bombs etc. though. I love Yennefer. I wanted to see more of her. Others wanted to see more of Tris as well. The leveling system was good but also felt odd. In effect you are not rewarded much xp for killing things or exploring, so the main quest never becomes too easy for being too high a level unless you deliberately try and break the system by farming respawning drowners or something similar. It just felt there was nothing particularly special to be found by going out of your way to explore in terms of unique gear, encounters etc. The benefit of this is that the game remains balanced.
Compared to the original games, the writing was not as good. It was nice to see what they did with Viconia, (felt more like her BG2 version) and see additional personality with Dynaheir. However the new NPC additions were really bad and completely unnecessary, other than Corwin (who I would like to see in BG2). As for gameplay, well it was disappointing. The siege is basically several smaller battles, your party plus some allies fighting a small group of enemies and then a somewhat larger scale battle, with so many NPCs on the screen its difficult to keep track of things or issue meaningful commands and it felt like I had no control over proceedings. There were no epic moments. What made BG2 so good was either fighting one incredibly powerful monster e.g. Dragon, Liche, or party vs party combat. There was nothing quite like that in SoD. The plot lacks cohesion, and simply falls apart towards the end, when you begin fighting demons and go after Caelar Argent (again someone I would have liked to see in BG2). I was also beginning to really like Skie as well but well that also did not go to well, as I know there is nothing in BG2 continues that particular plot (Wish she was in BG2 as a recruitable character). The Irenicus cameo was overused at the end, and that scene should have been done completely differently. Given the ending was predetermined by the beginning of BG2, I just did not find SoD to be a satisfactory link between the games. Nor did I feel compelled to continue onto BG2. The story still remains incomplete as it currently stands.
