It's hard to write a review about SoDS, because I wanted to like it so badly. The teaser got me super hyped and I just couldn't wait til I've finished BG. -Story This is the part that I've liked the least. I kinda see what the writer(s) had in mind, they wanted to make BG more like D&D, they wanted to open up the lore and the world a little bit. You see a lot of famous monsters from D&D, but the thing is they couldn't really integrate them into the story, they were just there. Hey look, a cool monster we all like, hey look a nice piece from the lore. But they didn't connect... also the maps were really dumb. In BG you had a feeling of a world that was more or less alive. Here you can have the camps of two enemies just a short distance from each other, also look there is this cool crypt and oh wow that sidequest. Just too much on a single map. Altogether the story was more like a usual campaign from D&D, but BG wasn't like that, it was much more and I expected more from SoDS as well. Disappointing. -Sound and visual design This is where I really have to give credit to Beamdog, nothing to complain about. -Characters A lot of people have written about how Beamdog has changed some of the original characters. Altough I can see why people didn't like the way they took them, it didn't really bother me. What did is how agressively the writer(s) tried to force new elements into the characters. But unlike others I liked Glint, he was a charmy fellow. What I didn't like is that the new rogue characters were kinda useless in combat. But I enjoyed that the characters had a lot of dialogues between them. -Mechanics? Dunno So last but not least, the difficulty. I did this on insanse and oh boy... the difficulty curve was just so off sometimes. You'll know when you get there I guess. But really imbalanced, something similar to IWD1. Overall: nice addition to BG2 story, but boring or outright dumb quests and writing choices. Would recommend with a high discount only.
Fallout 1-2 and Tactics are - in my opinion - the very best RPG-s of the post-apocalyptic genre. On the technical side this version runs perfectly fine and without any problems on modern PC-s. On the story side I think Fallout 2 is the perfect version of BI's concept about a p.a. game. The relationship of the two is kinda similar to Diablo 1 and 2, except that on the side of game mechanics F 1-2 are not that different. All in all I highly recommend this, but also you should approach it with an open mind and let the atmosphere suck you in.
For the original content I would give 5/5 stars, for the Beamdog version I'd give 3, so I guess the mean for those would be 4. The reason I'm not satisfied with Beamdog's version is that I found the extra content a bit dull, the extra characters are not that exciting imo. Otherwise I don't have any problem with the game, I highly recommend it if you'd like to play the original title. I think that the policy of Beamdog about this series is not really fair. Most of the writing in the extra content is dull, the game would be much better off with the original content. The only thing I liked was Durlag's Tower, but even that could have been done so much better I think.
Really love this game, the GoG version works fine.
