I really cannoy get behind the majority of critisms here. As someone who has been playing the Baldurs Gate almost ever year since release jave a new entry after so long was a dream come true. The expasion we got was more in line with a full fledged game than an expansion, and threw in enough new quirks and approaches to the Infinity Engine to make it seem more than just a fan project. The large scale battles and tweaked AI make it a .ore challenging game than the series, and it's approaches to some quests work the engine in new ways. The format itself is a shake up, an onward march that doesn't allow for revisitng areas. The new companions are fantastic and I really wish we could have brought them into BG2, along with returning characters and even returning aoice actors which is a testament to the efforts the team obviously looked at to try an recalture the original. The narrative itself is morality tale involving a Crusade and it's motives behind it, both personal and political which I think does a great job of uping the ante, without imposing too much on BG2. It's a tough line to meet when bridging the two games as to how much you can expose the player to and in my personal opinion I think it works best when revisited after the end of Baldurs Gate 2, as a way to be reuninited with the characters before the chaos kicks off in Baldurs Gate 2 in somewhat happier times. The writing itself I think is clear improvement from Beamdogs previous attempts which continually got better and better and as much as there is valid criticism and room for improvement, the sheer majority and scale that people have been outraged by it over the years reminds me very much of The Last of Us 2 reactions where ignorance and bigotry is being masked as legitimate critical analysis and it pains me because SoD, if you look pasts it's faults and see it's strengths and how well it does try to capture the Baldurs Gate spirit is pretty fantastic.
