Wanted this expansion so badly when it first came out that I pre-paid (for the first time in 20 years) when it was still in beta. I really wish I could give it a clear and unbiased report, but this expansion is just plain awful. please, do yourself a favor, save your money and keep the fond memories of this game alive. Its just sad and pathetic what Beamdog did to this franchise. Would give a 1/4 star if I could.
The DLC is a good continuation of the first game. It basically gives more of the same. The quests are good, it also adds some larger battles, and interesting new companions. Also you can transfer some of the new loot to the 2nd game when you import your character.
No real complaints here. Everything from writing to dungeon design is done in the old BG1+2 style. The area art and vistas are especially impressive with a few welcome upgrades to background animations/effects, which I don't remember seeing in the original games. The bestiary is lengthy, you'll be battling everything from dragons and snakes to liches. It's what an expansion to one of the best games ever should be like.
It's limited in scope adventure which can be pretty enjoyable depending on your expectations.
1. Visuals: Surprisingly fantastic D:
Fidelity: It's not at the level of Pillars of Eternity, but this game still performs infinitely better on older systems.
Art Design: Some maps look honestly more impressive than what Black Isle produced long ago in Baldur's Gate 2 and that's a high bar. Probably the best looking set of maps in the entire Infinity Engine history. It really helped overall atmosphere and exploration.
Character Design: Nothing changed from BG1EE so...
2. Sound: Great, but limited:
Music: All tracks are of high quality, imaginative yet still stylishly fateful to original Baldur's Gate. It's quite a feat. Crucial moments are properly underlined, and there is enough room to breathe. The only issue is very limited total amount of tracks which go on repeat too fast.
Voice-acting: It's ok, sometimes excellent and fittingly limited.
Effects: Same as in the original.
Environment: Not much to point out.
3. Gameplay: More of the same with extra challenge
A thing worth pointing out is increased amount of enemies in almost every encounter. Entire flow of combat shifts closer to what we saw in Icewind Dale as a result. So more emphasis on AoE spells and less useful single target abilities.
Difficulty tuning is also a bit more demanding (especially in first section) which I welcome with open arms.
4. Story: the ugly part 😬
Main Plot: The entire motivation of the whole debacle is questionable. Antagonists goal is forced and the means to achieve it are nonsensical. What's worse certain cartoonishly evil character makes direction of the plot pretty obvious from the start.
Side Quest: Few in number, but given how pressing the main plot is supposed to be it's quite fitting. The quality varies between fun and forgettable. Some of those come with dedicated locations and much better stories than the main plot.
Writing: It's most often modern, surface level writing popularized by marvel. It lacks understanding of nuance while constantly pretending to be more clever than it actually is.
Companions: Safana, Edwin and Viconia act completely out of character. In general evil companions aren't really evil, interesting, fun or faithful to original. Other party members fair slightly better, but they are often written around some quirk rather than personal story.
5. Other:
Performance: Still top notch. It runs better than file explorer xD
Replayability: There is none. Dialogues often reference what you just said to sell you an illusion of choice. On second playthrough you will sadly see through it. I bet the entire dialogue tree is just a straight line with couple squares on the way.
SUMMARY:
Despite poor writing I wouldn't call it a waste of time.
There is a lot of fun to be had, art and atmosphere to appreciate, monsters to kill, challenges to overcome.
If you approach it like an elaborate dungeon run you will have yourself a jolly good time.
Frankly if devs involved ever wanted to refresh visuals, sound and gameplay of old-school Baldur's Gate 1&2 I would gladly throw couple bucks their way.
But I would never trust writers responsible :x
I am great fan of original games and avoided SoD because of bad reviews, but finally I decided to try it, mostly for extra bard artifacts to us them in BG2. Game surprised me, both in good and bad ways.
Good sides: game is not boring. Really, I spent this 20 hours totally engaged in story and gameplay. NPCs - both new and old are great, Beamdog managed to get same voice actors, and good old NPCs match what you'll expect from them - this alone makes SoD worth playing for a fan. Also I didn't encountered any bugs (in 2020 though)
Contradictory side: story. Story is pretty good throughout the game and I enjoyed it.. but in the end Beamdog was itchy for a story twist and that twist breaks that seamless connection of BG1-SoD-BG2.
Bad side: combat. Combat is weakest part of the game. It is simply not AD&D2, it is combat of consumables. Amount of consumables used by enemies, and amount of enemies simply makes it very tedious to fight in styles similar to BG1/BG2. In the same time combat is not hard (on core difficulty), just use your wands and acid arrows and summons... so in attempt to make game more difficult, Beamdog make it too tedious for "non-consumable" walkthrough (you'll be forced to rest too often), but didn't fixed overpowered wands/potions from BG1. At some point I simply stopped using class spells at all and was just bombarding everything with fire wands while spawning monsters to avoid being hit at all. Corwin in the same time has 100 damage per round output with acid arrows and any "boss" without invisibility just dies immediately. Game is stupidly easy if you play with consumables and barely playable without them.