Baldur’s Gate is a classic. It revived RPGs and started Bioware’s years long career as a leading RPG craftsmen. How does it stand the test of time? It’s… alright. While none of the individual elements stand out, the game is polished and plays well even 20 years after release. The 2nd D&D edition is a bit archaic, with awkward restrictions and really rigid class system and the story is nothing to brag about. Encounters are simplistic often consisting of same types of enemies making any tactics or strategies nonexistent. However, the game has a sense of adventure and warmth, which makes it worth giving a shot, though I would recommend starting with the sequel. It is a much better game in writing, pacing and gameplay. I like the technical side of the EE. Beamdog added a lot of really neat functionality, which make Baldur’s Gate a much more pleasant experience to play. A UI to loot corpses without individually clicking on each one, inventory screen showing changes to stats when equipping items, health bars, zoom, proper though somewhat buggy journal. What I dislike a lot are the creative additions made to the game. For one – “remastered cinematics”. It is shocking to see worse cinematics added to such an old game. Poorly drawn, static images often fail to communicate scenes from the original game and would be better left unchanged. Luckily original cutscenes can be modded back in, which I would strongly recommended doing. Beamdog also added three new companions. While the idea itself isn’t the worst ever, as with enhanced engine there are new classes which aren’t covered by original companions, their design, look and writing simply stick out. It is after all, an old stylized game, and while writing in BG1 isn’t stellar the new additions simply don’t gel with the rest of the experience. EE comes with classic edition, and I would consider giving it a shot first and switching to EE only if experience proves to be too archaic.
I should have liked it. I like westerns, I like fantasy, I like RPGs and I like turn based tactics. Hard West has all of those, but they are poorly done. The game mixes Western tropes with demons and cults but does little with it. Characters and story, while atmospheric at first, are forgettable and lead nowhere. Combat is extremely shallow. Hard West consist of two layers. One is choose your own adventure world map view, where you can travel to various locations like story events, side events, shops etc. This is where most of the story comes from as well as "resource management". However, it is a highly scripted affair, really easy to do well in, and choices you make don't carry much consequence. Even if some characters can get injured and die you care so little about them, due to poor story, than after a while you just tend to click on things, until you get to combat. The game is seperated into multiple chapters, which each chapter resetting your progress. As the result any "strategic" part of the game feels meaningless and I stopped caring about my inventory after 2nd chapter. Sadly, combat isn't much better either. It's an extremely shallow system, with some neat ideas which could be interesting in better hands. You can equip your characters with "ability cards". There are some powerful abilities, but only few of them, and you use the same cards in every scenario, meaning all combat feels the same, no matter where you are in the game, and whom you are fighting. The only consideration is flanking and being flanked but its extremely easy to outplay the AI, which seems to act mindlessly. There is attempt to shake things up, with unique gameplay mechanics in both worldmap and combat, but those are surface additions and don't change the gameplay in meaningful way. After and hour of playtime you will see all the game has to offer, and, after not too long, it become a chore.
ST:BofT is, pretty much, Desperados but inspired by Samurai epics, rather then westerns. You get to control 5 characters, each with their own abilities, and you are tasks with levels to stealth-through. This is not quite a puzzle game – outside tutorials there aren’t set answers – what you get are problems and tools to solve those problems. UI, rules and overall gameplay is really well put together, which is important in Real-Time game. Camera can be a bit of a nuisance, but it’s a minor annoyance, one you will get quickly used to. What I was really impressed by was the character design of ST. In Desperados1 all of the characters had strongly defined roles. In ST there is more overlapm while still keeping them distinct – most of the characters can stab enemies and drag the bodies, and all of them have their own form of distraction. The brilliant part is that all of them work differently, encouraging synergy and creative use of those skills. There is no “best body carrier” for example – they all have their uses in different scenarios. That leads to another clever design – all character are introduced really quickly into the game. But to keep things interesting, the game switches what characters are at your disposal on per-mission basis. That allows for unique scenarios, as well as preventing player from getting stuck, trying to solve every problem with a character they are most familiar with. And when they get to play with a full roster, they know very well what they have on their disposal. I was also impressed by the narrative. It is not an award winning epic, but there was clearly an effort put into creating a coherent story with believable character motivations, with some decent character arcs for our main heroes. I must also commend Mimimi games for the post release support. When I played the game on release, I could barely run it, with all settings on low. Now the game runs smoothly with all settings on high.
