Baldur’s Gate II: Shadows of Amn

BioWare

PC

$39.99

Two years after the success of their much-loved AD&D-modeled, role-playing game Baldur’s Gate, BioWare returns with Baldur’s Gate II: Shadows of Amn. Essentially a top-down view adventure game in the spirit of the Ultima series, Baldur’s Gate II lives up to the hype. You begin the game by creating a character, choosing from the standard AD&D races and professions and then electronically rolling out your vitals. Once you’re fully fledged, there’s a nice tutorial that introduces and familiarizes the gameplay interface. One of my biggest complaints with plot-driven games is the degree to which a player is bound to one action or another to make the game exciting. Fortunately, BGII has a captivating plot. The basic gist is that the character is one of the sons or daughters of Bhaal, the Lord of Murder. The game centers on the quest to learn more about John Irenicus, a wizard with Nietzschean philosophies, as well as his intentions toward you and how these relate to your destiny as a child of Bhaal.

Crucial for a role-playing game, the art and graphics rendering are superb. The game is itself dedicated to one of BioWare’s artists, who recently passed away (which tells you something about how seriously they take their art). Better still, form and function balance each other in BGII — fire smolders and trails into smoke as it burns from a torch, characters speak randomly and sometimes initiate dialogues with one another for no apparent reason, and when your party rests, a dream relating to the plot occasionally appears — all without crippling your processor or disturbing the gameplay. Though, if you were to find the NPC’s chatter annoying, you can turn the sound off. Like so many things in the game, even the degree of interactivity is customizable.

The designers claim the game can be finished in 60 hours, but could be played for more than 300. Either way, you won’t be counting the hours. As one of BGII‘s area-loading waiting screens point out, “Remember, while your characters in Baldur’s Gate II may not have to eat, you do. We don’t want to lose any dedicated players.”

This article appears in June 8 • 2001.

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