Baldur's Gate II

Although it's early days and I haven't had much time to explore the depths of the game, it's pretty obvious even now that they are going to have another bestseller on their hands.

If you're a fan of the first Baldur's Gate game, or of Planescape: Torment or Icewind Dale which followed it and used the same game engine, you should love this. The graphics have been tweaked a little bit, but fundamentally use the same engine as before.

Having not played "paper" AD&D for the best part of 16 years, I can't really comment on how closely the game adheres to the rules, although it appears from the attention to detail in the manual that it is pretty accurate. The game still uses the 2nd Edition AD&D rules, although there are a few nods to the new 3rd Edition rules - new player kits and the ability to create a half-orc player character are among them. Lots of new spells too.

From what I've seen of it so far, the storyline is every bit as impressive as the original BG was - perhaps even more so. Lots of quests for you to pursue if you choose, but always against the backdrop of the main storyline: your attempt to find out why you were taken prisoner and subjected to gruesome experiments by a mage named Irenicus, and just what he means by "unlocking your potential"......

One other advantage that it has over BG1 is that you start BG2 as a fairly powerful character - no fears about having to avoid combat even with kobolds for fear of getting your fledgling adventurer killed. You start at at least level 7 if you choose to create a new character (which a lot of people will probably want to do, especially if you want to take advantage of the new character classes and kits), although you do have the ability to import a character from BG1 and to use that.

The range of monsters has also been expanded - from 60 in BG1 to about 130 in BG2. Some of them give the impression of being very tough to deal with too. Rumour has it that a dragon has been included in BG2, although I've have not far enough into the game to have found it yet.

Would I recommend the game? Unreservedly. If you have taken the trouble to read the text about the game and to read this review, you're probably already an RPG fan. In which case, this is a MUST BUY game for you. Even if you're not a hardcore AD&D fan (which I'm not), it will still entertain you if you have any interest at all in the computer RPG genre. CPRGs don't get any better than this for the moment.

All I can say about it is that I see it having the potential to swallow up as much time as I can make available to play it. A good test of how engrossing a game turns out to be is when you're still desperate to find out what is round the next corner, despite the fact that it's 3am, you're propping your eyelids open with matchsticks to stop them closing, and you know you have to go to work the next morning.

Being serious Black Isle have really outdone themselves this time. If you have been living in isolation, Baldurs Gate I was a massive, immersive roleplaying game, which broke the genre wide open, mainly by letting you play it's hundreds of quests in pretty much any order. BG2 takes this concept and raises it to new heights, going straight in to at least fifteen separate, memorable quests from the word go.

The quests are amazingly drawn and plotted as well, and two days into play I have found underground temples, travelled to other dimensions, fought gangs of evil wizards, infiltrated thieves' guilds, and saved a castle - each one thoughtfully written and characterised.

On a graphics front, it holds with the 2d isometric art based form of BG1, but this is no bad thing, as every screen is perfectly pre-created and glorious to look at. The new 3d spell effects are beautiful, and greatly add to the excitement of the game.

In conclusion: if you liked BG1 buy it. If you liked Icewind Dale buy it. If you liked the Ultima games buy it. If you don't like rpgs - give it a go, it may change your mind. A truly first-class game. Just don't plan on getting much sleep.

There is a noticable lack of FedEx quests, thank god, and all of the optional ones are well integrated into the storyline.

Perhaps the added bonus is the NPC interactions, if you ever played Baldurs Gate and wondered just what those five people were talking about while you were slogging through that jungle now you know. Oh, and they don't hesitate to tell you what they think of your decisions, alignment or sense of humour.

The character kits and new classes are also great, you can even give them to your BG1 characters, and they make the game more diverse, as to the class specific quests. Alowing it to be played over and over again, with different quests occuring each time.

So, quit reading this and buy it.