The Long And Winding Road Finally Leads To The Throne of Bhaal

Baldur's Gate must go down as the game which inspired one of the most disappointing expansion packs of all time. Tales of the Sword Coast as it was called, felt more like a "director's cut" of the original game, with additional bits squished into the story, the players time warped back to an earlier stage of their adventure and the only real bonus being an increase in the experience points cap for multi-player purposes.

Happily, Bioware seemed to have learned from their mistakes and Throne of Bhaal, the new expansion pack for Baldur's Gate 2 - Shadows of Amn is a slick and polished product, almost worthy of release in it's own right.

Throne of Bhaal works in a much more sensible manner than Tales of the Sword Coast, by taking a leaf out of the Icewind Dale expansion pack Heart of Winter and concentrating on extending the adventure instead of stuffing new bits into the old one. Additionally, a host of new class-specific abilities have been added and even a nifty new class of mage - the Wild Mage, who specializes in the art of unpredictable and unstable magic.

The new skills are a lot of fun and really reward the player for their perseverance in getting this far into the series and attaining such high levels. Never before in a computer game have we seen the potential for such high level AD&D based characters, with the experience cap raised sharply to 8 million points, allowing for characters up to the 40th level of experience for some classes. Some of the new skills that become available include Deathblow and Greater Deathblow, which when attained by the fighting classes "Paladin, Ranger, Fighter, Barbarian and Monk", gives the warrior the ability to deliver a single fatal blow to creatures up to a certain level. Fighters are not the only ones to benefit however, with advanced assassin skills available to thieves and even the Alchemy skill for spell-casters (no, they can't turn lead into gold), which allows for the brewing of special potions! This is just a small example of what you can expect.

Three new Chapters have been added to the game with Throne of Bhaal and these form the climax and finale of the entire series, with your party setting off in search of your main character's kin, the Bhaalspawn. In addition to the high level abilities, the player's get to visit some areas which exist only in the dreams of low level characters, including the fabled Drow homeland, The Underdark and even the Demon plagued layers of The Abyss. Battles are frequent and often very difficult, especially with some of the high level beings involved, so regular saving is highly advisable!

As an added sweetener, we do have an extra area slotted in to the original areas of the game, an enormous dungeon crawl in The Watcher's Keep which will have those of us who enjoyed these delvings in Icewind Dale salivating. (Remember the Eye of the Dragon? Think Much, much bigger!).

Of course, no review of any Baldur's Gate product would be complete without a bit of complaining from me about the characters in the game. I still hate them and feel the creators went for geek-amusement value rather than hard-core roleplay value, but the game is so damn fun I can't even whinge about that too much this time.

So, it is time to bid a fond adieu to Baldur's Gate with this final installment of the series. From here on, we can only expect more epic D&D experiences to issue forth from Bioware. If you enjoyed Baldur's Gate the expansion pack, Throne of Bhaal is surely worth your time. Go on. Spoil yourself with the last Hurrah from the world of Baldur's Gate.