I played Obsidian’s crowd-funded love letter to Black Isle’s classic isometric fantasy games Baldur’s Gate I and II between stress-filled session of final exam prep. This game is a faithful modernization of the original formula. There is an absolute ton of literary content here, so if you’re gearing up to play it you should expect to spend much of your playtime reading. And the writing is solid. I didn’t find it as impactful as the story of Baldur’s Gate I, but I doubt any video game narrative will ever beat that one. If you’re not familiar with that story, it can only be fully appreciated by playing through the entirety of that game.
There are some horrific issues with this console port, though. In addition to random crashes and text-related bugs (overlapping paragraphs making it impossible to read, tiny text popups unsuitable for television play) it is impossible for the player to export their character to sequel, Deadfire. I only discovered this after my thirty-hour playthrough. My disappointment was immeasurable. While I don’t feel like my time was completely wasted, the only way I’d ever play the sequel would be to replay the first game on PC. And that won’t happen for many, many years—if ever.
Also, a quick tip to anyone interested in maximizing spellcasting: as soon as you loot an enemy grimoire, examine it and select the grimoire option. I didn’t learn this until a couple of hours before the final boss. Oh, and the NPC conversation interactions that have gold speech bubbles (on console only, for some reason) have zero impact on gameplay. You don’t have to spend any of your precious time reading those. That was something that prevented me from playing through this game when I first got it years ago.
2024.12.06 – 2024.12.11
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