Chronicles of Baldur’s Gate

Well, this took a while. Just have to decide on what to do next. So what I have done in the last two months (Two months? Man, time flies by -_-):

• Chronicle of Innsmouth
  

  5 hours playtime

  42 of 42 achievements

• Baldur's Gate: Enhanced Edition
  

  129 hours playtime

  129 of 129 achievements

Chronicle of Innsmouth: I have completed this already far earlier than this post but was to lazy to write about it alone. It is a nice little adventure game with mostly logical and simple puzzles. There have been two instances where I had to look for help. Looking at the name, most people familiar with the mythos will recognize that this is about the Cthulhu mythos. I’m not sure if the protagonist has a name, if so I forgot it. Basically you are making a trip to Arkham and upon hearing the name of Innsmouth you decide to give the city a visit which is …. probably not the brightest idea (but there is some reason for it).
In its core the game is a retelling of the story by H.P.Lovecraft and if I would actually have read that story (standing over there in my shelf) I could do a better comparison. It covers the gaining of information about Innsmouth and how to get there as well as the events in the city themselves. All of this is combined with some light humour which fits the game overall and takes away from the normal insanity accompanied by Cthulhu games. There is also voice acting which is quite good for the most part. Like said most puzzles are rather fair. Although there are a few action sequences which might be something to suffer through including one infamous scene also known from Call of Cthulhu :P
If you like adventure games I think you can’t do wrong with this one.

Baldur’s Gate: Enhanced Edition: It has been …. I’m not sure …. 15-20 years? since I last played Baldur’s Gate. So I thought it would be a good time to replay it with achievements and the Dragonspear expansion. Initial plan was to play this together with a friend but after 14 hours in-game it didnt get further. So the game rested again for some months until I made a new character and started again. It is impressive how I remembered certain parts of the story but completely forgot others. Well, I won’t spoil the story or go into details about the gameplay because both should be very well known at this point.
I will go a bit more into detail for the Dragonspear expansion. I’ve read some forum comments and reviews and I don’t understand some of the criticism. Linear gameplay? Yea, that one is justified. Incomprehensable change in attitude of Baldur’s Gate citizen? Nah, I think it was well portrayed what caused this change. Bad portraying of the main antagonist? She was a bit bland at some points and her conviction felt somehow off, so that seems to be fair. Forced gender issues to the player? Um, no? I mean okay, you can have one companion who is apparently gay and another one who is bi. So by pure statistics maybe a bit much. And then you have one vendor who is transsexual. Point is that you don’t even know this until you complete an optional sidequest (although I think this has been changed with one of the more recent patches). So people are overreacting for nothing.
Overall I liked the Dragonspear expansion. It showed Baldur’s Gate in uproar about an immigrantion stream (a rather relevant theme) and a crusade, introduces new gameplay elements like the actual attack on castle Dragonspear and has a lot more dynamic of your group members than the original Baldur’s Gate. It also covers the story between BG1 and BG2 well for most part
So what remains to discuss? Achievements I guess. A lot are sidequest relevant and dependent on which course you chose (Side with party A or B, etc…) so you either play two times or reload often to do both in one game. This is all okay, although it takes it a bit away from the game since you may be tempted to look stuff up before it happens. Then you have the annoying character achievements like getting 100 Lore knowledge, being a grand master in something or reaching 25 in a stat. Why are they annoying? Because you have to do them with your main character. So I had at the end of the game make a completely new character for one of the achievements. Those achievements will be easier for Baldurs Gate 2. Yet, here they are unncessary. And then we have Legacy of Bhaal difficulty. If you are cheesing the game like a power games than it is probably still to easy. If you are somewhere between playing for fun and trying to be efficient then it is okay for the most part with some exceptions. Shortly before the ending I fought two warrior skeletons which were immune to magic and hitted like crazy. So yea …. there are balance issues.

Achievements (and the time investment) are also the problem for my next decision. Should I first play some shorter game again? Or should I play another one of the Black Isle games. I think I have a key for

• Icewind Dale: EE (same annoying difficulty achievement and one super grind with a 3*30 level character)
• Baldur’s Gate 2: EE (character achievements will be easier since the same as for BG1 but possibility to start in ToB so instant getting them, but one achievement for every keep which you can only get ONE per playthrough, so there has to be some kind of farming to be done)
• Planescape Torment (has apparently a really good story but has annoying achievements for being bad and neutral over whole game making three playthrough necessary and against the way i normally play)

So, yea. Not sure if I should do some other stuff before.