Baldur's Gate II: Throne of Bhaal

2023-07-23
It's more BG2 and the finale to the story. I enjoyed that it ups the ante to be grander in scope. This is your tale of apotheosis, fulfilling your destiny as the spawn of Bhaal. But fundamentally it's mostly a bunch of combat encounters against your fellow demonspawn siblings. There's not much of interest to the story or interesting characters. You find out your mom was a priestess of Bhaal and was killed by dear old Gorion because mom was gonna sacrifice you. And guess what another preistess of Bhaal pretends to help you only to try to God-herself instead of reviving Bhaal. But of course you can't let that happen and end up fighting her semi-God-ass in space to potentially become a god yourself.

I say there's no interesting characters but actually one of my favorite scenes was when you confront the final Bhaalspawn--aside: it's hilarious hearing "Ball-spawn" said over and over in the game--and he tells you the whole reason he's doing this is to wipe out the chance for Bhaal ever being resurrected again. He will kill you and then kill himself, thus snuffing any chance of Bhaal coming back. You can try to tell him "Why don't we work together" and he's like "Nah man you're an animal. I will cure you". It's insanely self righteous and very cool. There's also a Beholder who cracks jokes in the Underdark who I enjoyed.

You've also got Watcher's Keep which is...more combat. But this time with tedious puzzles. Yayyyyy. You get to fight a prince of hell at the end but even that is kind of lame. I would have wanted some more cool dialogue but it's all "A malevolent force touches your mind" and then you basically fight him. Lame.

What you end up with is a fine end to the story but nothing spectacular.