Baldur's gate is an exceptionally high-quality RPG. Gameplay is based on the classic AD&D rules, so fans of D&D will find the handling of character statistics, combat, and character progression very familiar.
But, there's enough plot and non-linear storyline to keep you interested, whether you enjoy D&D play or not. As with most fantasy adventure RPGs, you are a young and inexperienced hero-to-be, setting off on an epic journey to save the whole of existence...more or less. You can customize your character from a number of classes, and sub-classes. You may also multi-class, though as with most games, this makes your progression significantly harder.
Though the major events in the plot are linear, and you cannot ultimately complete the game without doing most tasks in their proper sequence, there are a great deal of small side-quests and sub-plots to hold interest. The unique areas are extensive and plentiful, though the monsters are really not that diverse. The same kobolds and skeletal knights and packs of hungry wolves appear in nearly every wildland.
The quests are not terribly puzzling or mentally challenging, most are easy to solve, though the actual execution of the solutions may be made quite difficult by the game (e.g., you can figure out well enough that you have to give x item to y character, but there's a plethora of z monsters waiting at every turn to keep you on your toes).
To anyone new to RPGs or especially people unfamiliar with AD&D rules, Baldur's Gate will be nearly impossible to play. Everything in combat and statistics--armour classes, weapon classes, etc--will seem totally backwards and incredibly confusing. So be warned that it's worth brushing up on AD&D rules of play before buying Baldur's Gate...it will help you enjoy the game far more.
Character interaction is rich, with usually up to five different choices for how your character will react to the people he/she meets along the way, allowing you to actually *roleplay*. Many RPGs are just called "RPGs," without really allowing you any way to take on your hero and give him/her his/her very own unique personality. But in Baldur's Gate this is quite possible, not only through the interaction with other characters in the game, but through customization of your character's appearance, and his/her script (the way he/she will automatically behave in situations such as combat).
All these tools offer great freedom to really engage the player in his/her hero. I found it quite refreshing! I do have a complaint or two about Baldur's Gate, mind you, and they are as follows:
The game can be incredibly--and I mean *incredibly*--slow to play. Both in game speed and in plot speed; both lag so much that it's turned several people I know off playing the game entirely. First of all, the scenes take a tremendous about of time to load unless, I imagine, you have a massively fast CPU and CDROM drive. I, unfortunately, do not! So just when I would get into the mood I'd be interrupted by several minutes worth of loading for the next scene to occur, and it really prevented me from totally losing myself in the Baldur's Gate experience. I have heard from a friend who has a very fast CPU that it also took ages to load on his PC, so it could just be that the scenes are so complex and so big they'll take forever to load regardless.
The plot, no matter how non-linear you play the sub-plots, can get a bit boring at times. I suppose this could be largely my own prejudices; I have played so many fantasy RPGs in my time that "deliver this to that person" and "cast this spell here to do that" and "fight that bad guy to win this" kind of plots can bore me simply because they are so commonplace. Don't get me wrong, Baldur's Gate is full of plot and story, it's just not plot and story that held my interest 100% of the time. It's still far superior to a lot of what is on the market today.
My other complaint with the game is that it is divided up into 6 CDROM disks. With a typical installation, you have to continually switch between the 6 disks as new areas are encountered. This can be unbelievably annoying and intensely distracting.
Those few issues aside, Baldur's Gate is a very good game, and it definitely held my interest for a long while. In the end, however, I found it more interesting to run about breaking into people's houses with my thief, beating guards senseless with my paladin, and bringing everybody back to life with my cleric. Just doing my own thing and developing my character was more important to me than the packaged plot. Maybe that makes me just plain Chaotic.
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