Contents
Quests and dialogues
With all the expansions and also main story quests, the game offers about one hundred different quests (rough estimate). For new player with average RPG skill this means at least 200 hours of gameplay, if you are not familiar with the D&D settings, read all the books and other things you find or loot everyting you can, it may go as high as 300 hours. While the subquests are pretty much the ordinary – kill something, bring something, save somebody – what else can you come up with – nothing is really repeating and making the game boring. This is something you won’t get from most of the current games where the average playtime ranges between 50 and 100 hours.
Also the possibility to play with different characters each time gives you the opportunity to repeat the game from time to time and it will always be exciting. Yes, this is one of the games you will be coming back to. Once it gets you, you hardly ever let go! One of the interesting things is that the developers planned sequels from the beggining and the game contains hidden, chain easter-egg quest to gain unique game item. If you manage to drag multiple items through-out all of the three games (or two+expansion) though. There are also some characters, both playable and non-playable, which you can meet in both games. Enhanced Edition continues in this manner and brings some quests series which basically continue further into the Baldur’s Gate II Enhanced Edition.
Very important part of the game are dialogues. You can basically talk to anybody though average people won’t tell you much. But this is the most important way of getting information, subqeusts, fun and to shop. Basically everything always starts with dialogue (well, besides anonymous beast or bandits attacking you in the wild). As I have already mentioned in the introduction, new features now available are romances with the new characters. Obviously this completely depends on dialogues. Certain NPC reactions or, more important, dialogue possibilites depend on your charisma and reputation. Also store prices are affected by this. But that depends on the highest charisma of any member of your party, not jsut your main character so basically you do not have to worry too much as you will always have some member with pretty high charisma.
Most of the quests are meant for neutral to good characters, but the Enhanced Edition brought couple more quests for evil characters too. Couple characters will only talk to you or trade with you if you have the right reputation (good or evil), though there are not really too many of them (especially the evil ones).
Expansions
The original expansion, the Tales of the Sword Coast, is included in the game. Those are basically couple locations on the world map (Ulgoth’s Beard, Durlag’s Tower), and couple external locations. Ulgoth’s Beard is a small harbor village from which you can be teleported to Ice Island (by Shandalar wizard whose illegal business you previously destroyed). The second location is also connected with this place, the Werewols Islands; you sail from the Ulgoth’s Beard trying to find the ship of Balduran only to learn that his crew was infected by both werewolves and wolfweres and you have to destroy both as they are trying to infect the Sword Coast.
Durlag’s Tower is a great dungeon, a place built by the dwarf Durlag for his people. His story is similar tragedy to the Balduran: Durlag created a great dungeon to protect his new family (he did not want to die alone as his father, Bolhur the Clanless) and his treasure of course. But illithids sent doppelgängers to slowly replace his clan and rob Durlag of his wealth. Durlag was than forced to kill them all, from which he got crazy, filled the place with traps and puzzles in an attempt to close them and the demon of the Soultaker dagger inside. So you must go through all of that, kill the Demonknight so Durlag and his wife can finally rest and get the dagger. Only to be ambushed in the Ulgoth’s beard by some crazy cult which frees the demon from within the dagger. So you have to slaughter them all and by that finish the Tales of the Sword Coast.
The newest addition is the Black Pits, which is independent expansion. There you are ambushed by some crazy drow (Baeloth the Entertainer) who takes you hostage to fight in his arena. The story is pretty straightforward – you fight, advance quickly and finally kill your slaver master. If you want your advance to be less difficult, you can repeat some fights, get more experience and gold and buy better stuff. There are other slaves who run shops with different equippement and weapons. You can somewhat interact with them and get more informations about themselves and your slaver master. The Black Pits should bring another 2-8 hours, depending whether you import strong character, or start fresh. In my opinion, second choice is better as you can then export your character to the main game, I just suggest removing XP and level cap.
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