Where did the time go? (Baldur's Gate (PC))

Member Name: CloudRuler

Product:	Baldur's Gate (PC)
Date:	28/08/09 (9 review reads)
Rating:

Advantages: Decent gameplay, lots of quests

Disadvantages: Graphics but that can't be helped considering how long ago it was released

Although I used to game a fair bit on my desktop it no longer works and I bought a laptop for uni. Having been confined to my laptop for so long I decided it was about time I see if there was anything I could actually play on it to while away my time this summer.

You start off in Candlekeep where you were raised by Gorion, a mage. You were an orphan along with Imoen whom you grew up with in Candlekeep. It turns out someone wants you dead. Gorion being away of this leads you out of Candlekeep with the intention of taking you to those who will protect you. Unfortunately bandits kill Gorion leaving you on your own. Imoen however has followed you and travels with you for the rest of the journey.

The story takes quite a while to play through and I've noticed complaints centering around the lack of character build up. I played the game with almost all of the latest mods on, one of which is a romance between your character and a selection of others as well as friendships and romances between the other characters. This made it quite interesting, I'm not sure how much of the conversation was modded and how much was the original game.

The player creates their character i.e. select sex, race, skills etc. Unfortunately certain skills depend upon rolling a dice, which if you read anything online about these skills, is supposedly quite important. Important to the point where some spend hours rolling or download some kind of cheat enabling them to manually select the skills. I spent about 5 minutes or less rolling and ended up with a pretty decent skill set. The build of your character is somewhat important though for the most part if you have enough money you'll be able to buy items which enable you to overcome an average skill set.

Your character travels in a party. As the game continues you will meet more companions although there is a maximum number of companions you can have in your party. Some will wait around if you wish to change your party, others will leave if you refuse to let them join. The characters are good, evil or neutral. Chaos may ensue after some time if you mix good and evil.

There's a multitude of quests. It takes a hell of a long time to complete and it is addicting. Despite my love of graphics, I can get over the old graphics on this as the gameplay is thoroughly enjoyable. Although there are areas you must go to in order to carry on with the main story, you can go to the other areas first and leave the main story for quite a while or you can simply do those areas at the same time as you reach each main story point.

Overall it's a decent game that will keep you playing. However I've not moved on to BG2 yet as considering the amount of time it took to complete BG1 + expansions I think it'd feel quite monotonous without a lengthy break in-between.

Summary: Worth a try, especially if all you have is a laptop and the graphics card isn't that good