Never played before, but know a bit about Second Edition D&D. Friend insisted I experience it, so I played.

Made a character. Fighter/Mage Male Half-Elf Multiclass. 3d6 in order, no "adjusting" stats because that isn't how rolling works. 78 total stat points, 09 strength, 14 intellect. Core Rules difficulty. No reloading after failing to scribe a spell.

The plot can be summed up as Everybody Wants You Dead: The Game. You live in a monastery and your wizard foster-father just starts freaking out one day and telling you to pack some stuff because we're GTFO-ing. Somehow a couple of extremely incompetent goons made it into the monastery despite the entrance fee being "you must donate a book worth A @#%&load of money," in order to kill you, for... a 200 gold bounty? Maybe lower? Whatever the case, they aren't getting a good return on their investment, mostly because their nonmagical daggers are flimsy.

So you leave, then Big Armored Guy shows up and kills Wizard Dad. Your little sister shows up to help you because it's boring in the monastery, but apparently Wizard Dad just doesn't care about her because he fully intended to leave her behind. Then you meet your replacement parents and learn that all the iron in the region is messed up somehow and it's probably your fault, because of... reasons? Oh, and more "assassins" try to kill you while the bounty notices they carry show a steady increase in price. None of these fights can be avoided by not telling the people trying to hunt you down what your name is. The option to wear a cowl and avoid people should exist, but whatever. The game must be close to twenty years old at this point, yeah? I'll cut 'em a little slack for that. Game / programming limitations and all that.

Throughout my journey in "The Sword Coast," I've encountered a female chicken that gets turned back into a male human, an old male hermit extolling "the joys of being a woman that one summer" when a wild surge hit him, a group of "amazons" who are really just female adventurers trying to murder you for the reward money, more chances to belittle female adventurers for looking so gosh-darned cute in their chainmail bikinis, a bard who tells women they belong in the kitchen making cupcakes, and a radfem who treats men as unnecessarily horribly as the men in the setting treat women. You also have the opportunity to tell one of the new characters "lololol make me a sandwich" in response to her saying she's having the time of her life adventuring.

The writing and setting are completely sexist, and the cast of companions is BORING. Except Minsc. Minsc is kind of hilarious, but once you get tired of the same few lines he gives out, he goes from "entertaining" to "we get it, you have a pet space hamster and that's half of the entire basis of your personality."

The only time most of the main cast ever speaks up is to react to reputation changes or comment on your surroundings. There's generally a line for certain characters referencing the fact that you're in a city, or you're in the woods, or you're in a dungeon. And sometimes two companions will interrupt a traveling session to fight to the death. Seriously. The only party members that even bother speaking about something else are the ones that were added in the Enhanced Edition, and the sexism from the old game is still visible in dialogues with Neera. And normally I'd probably say something about Neera being completely self-centered, manipulative and unlikeable, but 1) that also applies to a lot of other characters, and 2) she's a wild-mage. Wild mages are supposed to be chaotic, catty, and fun, and Neera is all of these things.

Dorn is single-minded in his obsession with vengeance against those who betrayed him, and if you take him on as a party member you don't really get the option not to ask about his powers and not get an answer when he forces dialogue, but... the writing is lazy elsewhere too. Also, what would you expect from a Blackguard? They're "evil but not chaotic paladins," so Dorn makes a lot of sense as a character.

The game just oozes magical items though. You get a magic belt almost as soon as you leave the monastery, the new characters come with their own magic weapons (with Neera's staff being a bit hazardous for her to wield in combat because it might be her that gets burned), some encounters just drop amazing weapons for such a low level party, but it looks like longswords and zweihanders are the favored weapon in this game, just like so many other RPGs. You can even grab a set of elven chainmail (read: armor that wizards can cast spells in without penalty) and magic rings that increase the amount of spells you can cast/prepare per day by a large amount. And if you've got a wild mage in the party, casting through Nahal's Reckless Dweomer with such a ring turns that character into a completely overpowered powerhouse.

Baldur's Gate is such an easy game once you know how the game interprets the 2nd Edition (Best Edition) ruleset that I wonder why there are easier difficulty settings than the one I chose. "Normal," which is apparently the default setting at character creation, penalizes the damage enemies do. It should be called "Easy," but there is also an "Easy" mode where enemies are penalized even further and player characters get a +6 bonus to all their rolls. And *then* there's "Story Mode," where the player's party literally cannot die. Ever. It reminds me of the DOOM difficulty setting known as "I Am A Wimp."

And yet, with all this rampant sexism and magical weirdness, so many reviews on here are complaining about the game being full of Social Justice because the expansion has a minor non-evil transgender cleric that can be encountered. Or there are complaints concerning "They Changed It, Now It Suck." Or that multiplayer doesn't work. But who plays a computer RPG for the multiplayer? Why is that even an option in the game? I thought multiplayer was what tabletop D&D and MMOs and Shooters were for. But whatever, obviously multiplayer Baldurs Gate appeals to somebody, or it wouldn't be in the game.

But, the interface is easy to make sense of. Not giving commands to the party when enemies appear isn't a suicidal tactical option because the AI generally knows how to handle itself. People with bows engage enemy units without input from the player long before said enemies can close in for melee. Melee characters move to engage nearby foes, and move on to the next foe when the one they're attacking gets hacked into chunks. Sometimes they get hung up on pathfinding, but telling them to attack the next target generally fixes that issue. And, for all my issues with the writing and the boring plot that was probably a lot more interesting in the late nineties (when RPGs weren't flooded with the "special snowflake protagonist who's descended from a god or a dragon or is Destined For Greatness that the player must customize from the ground up" archetype yet), it's a pretty solid game.

It's certainly a lot more entertaining than Neverwinter Nights, even if you do run into Mary Sues like Elminster, The Doctor, and Drizz't Dro'Urden. At least here you get the option to murder such characters in cold blood! And for what it's worth, the game also serves as sort of a history lesson in gaming culture.

This is the sort of video game that led to the birth of the kinds of people who threaten female video game developers in today's age, but it's also a sign of evolution in the industry regarding the treatment of female characters in RPGs. But, it's also evidence of stagnation in video game storytelling, because in all the time that's passed since the release of Baldur's Gate, the majority of RPG protagonists are so, so very bland because they follow the same cookie-cutter design process.

Baldur's Gate isn't really my kind of girl, but I've taken worse ones to bed.

Never played before, but know a bit about Second Edition D&D. Friend insisted I experience it, so I played. Made a character. Fighter/Mage Male Half-Elf Multiclass. 3d6 in order, no "adjusting" stats because that isn't how rolling works. 78 total stat points, 09 strength, 14 intellect. Core Rules difficulty. No reloading after failing to scribe a spell. The plot can be summed up as Everybody Wants You Dead: The Game. You live in a monastery and your wizard foster-father just starts freaking out one day and telling you to pack some stuff because we're GTFO-ing. Somehow a couple of extremely incompetent goons made it into the monastery despite the entrance fee being "you must donate a book worth A @#%&load of money," in order to kill you, for... a 200 gold bounty? Maybe lower? Whatever the case, they aren't getting a good return on their investment, mostly because their nonmagical daggers are flimsy. So you leave, then Big Armored Guy shows up and kills Wizard Dad. Your little sister shows up to help you because it's boring in the monastery, but apparently Wizard Dad just doesn't care about her because he fully intended to leave her behind. Then you meet your replacement parents and learn that all the iron in the region is messed up somehow and it's probably your fault, because of... reasons? Oh, and more "assassins" try to kill you while the bounty notices they carry show a steady increase in price. None of these fights can be avoided by not telling the people trying to hunt you down what your name is. The option to wear a cowl and avoid people should exist, but whatever. The game must be close to twenty years old at this point, yeah? I'll cut 'em a little slack for that. Game / programming limitations and all that. Throughout my journey in "The Sword Coast," I've encountered a female chicken that gets turned back into a male human, an old male hermit extolling "the joys of being a woman that one summer" when a wild surge hit him, a group of "amazons" who are really just female adventurers trying to murder you for the reward money, more chances to belittle female adventurers for looking so gosh-darned cute in their chainmail bikinis, a bard who tells women they belong in the kitchen making cupcakes, and a radfem who treats men as unnecessarily horribly as the men in the setting treat women. You also have the opportunity to tell one of the new characters "lololol make me a sandwich" in response to her saying she's having the time of her life adventuring. The writing and setting are completely sexist, and the cast of companions is BORING. Except Minsc. Minsc is kind of hilarious, but once you get tired of the same few lines he gives out, he goes from "entertaining" to "we get it, you have a pet space hamster and that's half of the entire basis of your personality." The only time most of the main cast ever speaks up is to react to reputation changes or comment on your surroundings. There's generally a line for certain characters referencing the fact that you're in a city, or you're in the woods, or you're in a dungeon. And sometimes two companions will interrupt a traveling session to fight to the death. Seriously. The only party members that even bother speaking about something else are the ones that were added in the Enhanced Edition, and the sexism from the old game is still visible in dialogues with Neera. And normally I'd probably say something about Neera being completely self-centered, manipulative and unlikeable, but 1) that also applies to a lot of other characters, and 2) she's a wild-mage. Wild mages are supposed to be chaotic, catty, and fun, and Neera is all of these things. Dorn is single-minded in his obsession with vengeance against those who betrayed him, and if you take him on as a party member you don't really get the option not to ask about his powers and not get an answer when he forces dialogue, but... the writing is lazy elsewhere too. Also, what would you expect from a Blackguard? They're "evil but not chaotic paladins," so Dorn makes a lot of sense as a character. The game just oozes magical items though. You get a magic belt almost as soon as you leave the monastery, the new characters come with their own magic weapons (with Neera's staff being a bit hazardous for her to wield in combat because it might be her that gets burned), some encounters just drop amazing weapons for such a low level party, but it looks like longswords and zweihanders are the favored weapon in this game, just like so many other RPGs. You can even grab a set of elven chainmail (read: armor that wizards can cast spells in without penalty) and magic rings that increase the amount of spells you can cast/prepare per day by a large amount. And if you've got a wild mage in the party, casting through Nahal's Reckless Dweomer with such a ring turns that character into a completely overpowered powerhouse. Baldur's Gate is such an easy game once you know how the game interprets the 2nd Edition (Best Edition) ruleset that I wonder why there are easier difficulty settings than the one I chose. "Normal," which is apparently the default setting at character creation, penalizes the damage enemies do. It should be called "Easy," but there is also an "Easy" mode where enemies are penalized even further and player characters get a +6 bonus to all their rolls. And *then* there's "Story Mode," where the player's party literally cannot die. Ever. It reminds me of the DOOM difficulty setting known as "I Am A Wimp." And yet, with all this rampant sexism and magical weirdness, so many reviews on here are complaining about the game being full of Social Justice because the expansion has a minor non-evil transgender cleric that can be encountered. Or there are complaints concerning "They Changed It, Now It Suck." Or that multiplayer doesn't work. But who plays a computer RPG for the multiplayer? Why is that even an option in the game? I thought multiplayer was what tabletop D&D and MMOs and Shooters were for. But whatever, obviously multiplayer Baldurs Gate appeals to somebody, or it wouldn't be in the game. But, the interface is easy to make sense of. Not giving commands to the party when enemies appear isn't a suicidal tactical option because the AI generally knows how to handle itself. People with bows engage enemy units without input from the player long before said enemies can close in for melee. Melee characters move to engage nearby foes, and move on to the next foe when the one they're attacking gets hacked into chunks. Sometimes they get hung up on pathfinding, but telling them to attack the next target generally fixes that issue. And, for all my issues with the writing and the boring plot that was probably a lot more interesting in the late nineties (when RPGs weren't flooded with the "special snowflake protagonist who's descended from a god or a dragon or is Destined For Greatness that the player must customize from the ground up" archetype yet), it's a pretty solid game. It's certainly a lot more entertaining than Neverwinter Nights, even if you do run into Mary Sues like Elminster, The Doctor, and Drizz't Dro'Urden. At least here you get the option to murder such characters in cold blood! And for what it's worth, the game also serves as sort of a history lesson in gaming culture. This is the sort of video game that led to the birth of the kinds of people who threaten female video game developers in today's age, but it's also a sign of evolution in the industry regarding the treatment of female characters in RPGs. But, it's also evidence of stagnation in video game storytelling, because in all the time that's passed since the release of Baldur's Gate, the majority of RPG protagonists are so, so very bland because they follow the same cookie-cutter design process. Baldur's Gate isn't really my kind of girl, but I've taken worse ones to bed.