I can't help the impression that most people who hate SoD this haven't really gone through the whole game. I do admit that the beginning is rather unenlightening and the episode in the city of Baldur's Gate was outright boring to me and felt weird but it was short. From the on, the game picks up and gets better as it goes, and by the time I was near the end I had chills on my back. And to be clear, I'm not someone who's new to BG and doesn't care about respect (or lack thereof) paid to the series. I played BG1, SoA and partially ToB when they came out and have a significant emotional connection to the game; it wasn't easy for me to accept even the standard, non-SoD UI of the EE, let alone the completely revamped SoD UI - precisely because of nostalgia, though one could argue the SoD UI is somewhat ugly. Who knows, if I expected SoD to be anywhere near as great as BG2, maybe I'd hate it as well, I don't know, but having read mostly negative reviews I decided to approach SoD as just some stupid silly thing I might play for curiosity, and I was surprised. In a way, it's a step between BG1 and BG2 in that there are many interactions and relationships between NPCs, something that was largely absent in BG1.
