All right, so I said I wasn't going to buy it and just watch Let's Plays of the game, but after going through most of an online playthrough I figured I was interested enough to play it. So I bought it and have just finished a first runthrough.
Knowing the controversy of Mizhena, her actual presence in the game is hilariously minor compared to the vitriol people have spewed in reaction. Yes, I think she could have been better represented and it's artificial to just have her go into detail on her background after one conversation. But really, that's how most of the NPCs in these games react. It's only the in depth romances which take some time to get to know the person on a more intimate level, and those weren't even introduced in BG1. Granted, we can't ignore game development that has taken place after BG1, and that is one of the challenges of making an interquel of a 15 year old game.
I think the issue for me is more than the tone of the game was sometimes jarring when compared to BG1 and BG2. While I enjoyed the game a lot and it was fun to have another adventure in the Sword Coast, the overly cheeky tone which pervaded a lot of the expansion came across as over the top and intrusive. Many of the PC's dialogue options were much more sarcastic and witty than anything available in the base games, to the point where it seemed overkill and no longer funny. The rare sarcastic dialogue in the original games was more notable because it wasn't constant, and poking fun at the D&D system or the setting was fun because we usually took it at face value. When every option we have includes poking fun, it loses its potency and shine.
It reminds me of my issue with Rasaad. I played through both BG1 and BG2 with him before (I didn't play with him in my party in SoD yet) and it seemed like most of the "correct" dialogue lines for him were snarky and trying to get him to be less serious all the time. That's well and good, but why is he the only person in the base games I can say this to? Most of the dialogue is black and white good and evil (not the most sophisticated, granted) and then with this one NPC I can be snarky in every dialogue. Why wouldn't we also have the option to treat him as seriously as he treats his own beliefs? It's railroading the PC into not believing Rasaad's beliefs and trying to force a change in him rather than leaving him as is.
I do think that SoD improved on a lot of the aspects of the vanilla games, including multiple paths (the Bridgefort siege, dealing with Caelar, the ending judgment). There was enough good side content that I didn't mind that we didn't have many options other than to stick to the linear main plot. I do think there should have been more obvious warnings when we were ending a chapter and could not return to previous maps. It's obvious in the first chapter, as we're not coming back to Baldur's Gate, but it wasn't so clear in the next chapter when there's no actual reason why we couldn't return to previous maps, since our small party wouldn't move as slowly as a large army. And the dwarven mines was such a large area that it was actually half of the entire time I spent in that chapter. It could have been helpful to come back to that later.
I only just recently purchased the game, so I didn't experience any of the launch bugs and didn't encounter too many bugs as I went. I luckily did keep multiple saves just in case, since I came back to camp in Chapter 9 and M'Khiin was nowhere to be found, so I had to reload to the previous chapter, put her in my party, then continue to Chapter 9. Small things like this which aren't game breaking but significant in missing out on content.
And I'm a little frustrated that some of the achievements still happen to be bugged. There are three which seem to be confirmed not to work at all, one which takes multiple reloads to achieve, and one which I didn't get but I haven't heard anyone else hasn't missed. Some of the achievements seem very random and impossible to obtain without metagaming. There are two about finding all allies for the siege and fighting all optional enemies, but neither of these groups are intuitive or make much sense as to why it would matter. The achievement about winning three riddle games is similarly strange, since the first riddle requires a low charisma to even obtain, the second requires using a limited charge item after we have already encountered enough instances to deplete the charges, and the final riddle is surprisingly easy to miss due to dialogue options often leading to a fight rather than the riddle.
So ultimately, I enjoyed the game and am glad I purchased it. It had some bugs and flaws, most of which I mentioned, but overall I thought it captured a lot of the spirit of the original games, if not always the tone. And it was a lot of fun adventuring in the setting again at a good level. Not too underpowered like the start of BG1 and not boringly overpowered like the second half of BG2 and all of ToB. I would definitely be interested if there is another expansion for BG2, as there are some remaining plot threads from SoD which could be tied up. I would hope that Beamdog takes feedback from what worked and what didn't in SoD (and not trolling about transgender characters) if they continue working in BG.
I don't want a BG3 from them, though. Unless that's a placeholder name for a completely new PC, new story, just using Infinity Engine and set in the FR. But I don't see how there could be an entire game's worth of story for the Bhaalspawn after ToB. That was all wrapped up and any further stories veer into personal headcanon.
I would much rather they work on a completely new story than keep relying on existing games for their work. Let's see what Gaider is involved in and hopefully his world building skills will help them in a new franchise.
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