Baldur's Gate II Guide

This combat-oriented fantasy game features realistically complex characters who can be good or evil; the latter can steal, lie, cheat, and kill for selfish reasons. Characters can be killed by sword, arrow, spear, magic, or other means, and death can be bloody, although the small characters and visual art style prevent this from becoming too graphic. Characters often rest in taverns and drink alcohol, and on occasion players will encounter drunk characters. Multiplayer matches can expose players to inappropriate content by text chat, although these can be locked to approved players by password. Players also should be aware that this game is challenging and requires a solid understanding of Dungeons & Dragons rules, along with a lot of trial and error, to succeed.In this chapter, the heroes have beaten the evil Bhaalspawn Sarevok that threatened the land. But having accomplished this monumental task, they're imprisoned by a powerful wizard named Irenicus who has been collecting human specimens and performing torturous experiments on them. The goal of the heroes, shortly after escaping from Irenicus' stronghold, is to prevent him from perfecting a dangerous soul-stealing spell, which will grant him immortality.The Baldur's Gate series is strong on story, and here players experience the ongoing developments of the demigod offspring of the violent deity known as the Lord of Murder. The narrative is even stronger here than in the previous game, since players are now acquainted with their own power and can readily assemble their numerous companions into any grouping they want. Even more interesting, new side stories have been created for the four newest characters: Neera, the wild mage; Rasaad, the monk; Dorn Il-Khan, the blackguard; and Hexxat, the vampire thief. This edition also includes the Black Pits II, an expansion on the arena battle mode in the first Enhanced Edition.

Kidnapped. Imprisoned. Tortured. The wizard Irenicus holds you captive in his stronghold, attempting to strip you of the powers that are your birthright. Can you resist the evil within you, forge a legend of heroic proportions, and ultimately destroy the dark essence that haunts your dreams? Or will you embrace your monstrous nature, carve a swath of destruction across the realms, and ascend to godhood as the new Lord of Murder? Numerous other tweaks abound. No longer do you need to hit Escape every time you wish to save; a new quicksave option allows you to prepare for foul ups without interrupting the pace of the action. Elsewhere, a new help menu provides a smidge of guidance for players who don't have the convenience of the aforementioned instructional tome, and a quick-loot option avoids the old hassle of endlessly clicking the screen to collect the spoils of battle. Beamdog also updated the Black Pits addition they designed for the first enhanced edition, which allows new players a way to just kill bad guys without worrying about the story. It still amounts to little more than a straightforward arena mode, but the enemies seem more challenging now and I once again found it useful as a makeshift tutorial for controlling the six members of my party in the main game. Convenient additions all, but on its own it’s not enough for veterans to justify spending around double the cost of the original version (as found on vendors such as GOG.com), where a decade plus of mods and patches have already corrected many of its shortcomings. Instead, the real appeal of Beamdog's version for newcomers lies in the several hours' worth of story delivered through four new characters.  Three of them the annoying wild mage Neera, the monk Rasaad yn Bashir, and the brooding half-orc Dorn Il Khan reprise their roles from Beamdog's enhanced edition for the first Baldur's Gate, and the sequel's expanded abilities make them more immediately enjoyable than before. In the first outing, many of their adventures seemed brief, uninspired and even forced, but here each of their storylines span multiple zones and offer a handful of different resolutions.The content's stronger, too. Battles in the new characters' questlines seemed uninspired when they appeared last year, but here they deliver some of Baldur's Gate II's most consistently challenging content.

Enhanced Edition also throws a new evil-aligned female thief named Hexxat into the mix. She's one of the best reasons to experience BGII:EE, particularly since her well-written story arc and its twist provide a compelling reason to walk on the dark side. Hexxat also brings with her the possibility of a same-sex romance, and indeed, Beamdog took a bold step here in restricting the relationship to female characters. Already modders are clamoring for a way to make her questline available to males, but it's nice for female characters to have a same-sex option aside from Anomen after all these years. This wealth of new story content is where Baldur's Gate II lives up to its "enhanced" moniker the most, and it's all handled so well that players approaching it for the first time likely won't be able to tell where the old game ends and the new content begins. Script and story are much more mature than what was presented in the first Baldur's Gate. Even the main villain, a dead-faced sadistic monster named Jon Irenicus, whom you are first introduced to during torture sessions in his dungeon, is more memorably evil than the previous game's more prototypical baddie, Sarevok. Because of the above, plus a more careful design, all of your actions are more directed and more purposeful.

Where the first game saw you crawling through every square inch of what seemed to be endless wilderness maps, looking for battles to earn you enough experience points to level up and take on gangs of murderous kobolds and the like, here you accept a quest, go more or less straight to its location, and get right to slaying powerhouse mages, parlaying with demons, challenging vampire clans, and so forth. The ante has been upped across the board, starting with an introductory-level adventure for first-level characters, and moving to a much more challenging foray with experienced heroes who start at level seven and above. You feel this with every monster you kill and every magical item you loot from a corpse. Battles are intricate, tactical affairs where you have to blend careful use of melee fighters with the smart use of mages, clerics, and the like. Battle preparation is vital. You should memorize the spellbooks of your characters to see what works best for each possible situation. If you don't maximize your chances of survival with smart spellcasting, which includes prep work like throwing out some haste and bless spells before even going into fights, you will not survive for long. Some battles are excruciatingly tough without the use of certain spells. I ran into trouble at various points in the game, and it's impressive just how many encounters require you to exercise some gray matter instead of whipping out a sword and some magic missiles. I kept beating my head against one early battle with a group of Hulk-like golems who activated as soon as I swiped the magic items that they were protecting. After 30 minutes or so of getting beaten into a fine red goo, I realized that I could use something as basic as a cleric's sanctuary spell to put up a cloaking field, then wander in, steal everything, and slink on out without being spotted by these murderous guardians.

Dungeon levels consist of far too many tiny corridors that present daunting challenges to your party of six adventurers. Pathfinding remains abysmal, so characters frequently perform Keystone Kops routines where they walk into one another and turn around. These guys take the long way around far too often.Baldur's Gate 2 was always a challenging game and revisiting it in its Enhanced Edition is both a curious and an exciting experience. Not only is it a game that offers players many dozens of ways to die, it still proudly wears a ruleset based on the eccentric, occasionally infuriating Second Edition of Dungeons & Dragons. Don't forget: your saving throws and armour class should be low, while your stats and to-hit rolls should be high. Save, that is, for the bugs that pop up during these new missions. Hexxat and Dorn's quests seemed particularly glitchy, to the point that I took to making special saves before following their questlines in case I encountered missed triggers or noninteractive quest objects that a reload usually fixed. Actual progression roadblocks aside, the rough quality of some of the new content even shows up in low-resolution textures in a few new zones and occasional typos in the quest dialogue.Hexxat, the lone all-new character, has an intriguing backstory and can be of use in battles, but she's inaccessible to good parties due to her evil alignment. Her romance option is same-sex-only, which makes her off-limits for any male protagonist who wants to knock some boots before venturing forth; if you're porting over a dude from the first Baldur's Gate, you're out of luck when it comes to the new romantic content. The combat-heavy new mode of play, The Black Pits II: Gladiators of Thay, is a worthy sequel to its predecessor, but it doesn't offer much more than a succession of the same sorts of tactical battles you get in the main games, only there you also get the benefit of great storytelling and more involving quests.