This is not a pretender to the Throne!

After beating Jonaleth Irenicus till he was good and hurtin dead, I patiently awaited the arrival of Throne Of Bhaal (TOB). When I was finally able to get my hands on it, I was simply amazed at how the good folks at Bioware and Interplay had managed to create a marvelous conclusion to my favorite CRPG. Right from the get go, you are plagued with the fact that you are a Bhaalspawn, (the child of a dead God), and you must always be on guard, because mercenaries, local authorities, and even other Bhaalspawn are all out to get your head on a silver platter. The game has a few side quests, but not a whole lot, and this both pleased and troubled me a little bit. On one hand, I loved the fact that you were so engrossed in taking out the other Bhaalspawn and fending off puny mortal authorities, that you didn't need to worry about finding a poor mage's stolen spellbook if you didn't want to. But, I also liked the few diversions from your final quest to realize your part in the prophecies of Alaundo.

One of the greatest additions in the game is your "Pocket Plane". It's a little world in a corner of the Abyss that was shaped by your unconscious mind, and you can go there at any time you wish. You can sleep and heal yourself, memorize spells, and you can also use the Fates to bring all the NPC's that could join your party to your Pocket Plane, so you can have them join your party if you wish. Also, there's a little Imp named Cespenar, who can forge mighty weapons and armour for you, provided you have the necessary "ingredients" as he calls them. The voice acting is simply astounding, and I love the continuation of little squabbles and conversations between characters in your party (Minsc telling people "Don't teach my Hamster to suck eggs!" is by far one of my favorite).

Each battle is like a huge war that is fought on my little 17" monitor. Enemies are numerous and deadly, but not so many in numbers as to annoy me everytime I have to fight someone. The AI is beefed up so that Enemies are a little smarter than they used to be (stupid mages... using Time Stop and summoning Monsters all the time!), so I had to be a lot craftier when battling my foes. I faced a horde of Tethyrian Guards who had accused me of destroying the City of Saradush, so I had one of my characters cast Time Stop, then Improved Alacrity (which removes casting times to make each spell cast almost instantaneously), and decided it would be fun to cast almost all of my spells. This wasn't smart, as it took a good several minutes for the chunktacular soup I had created to finish brewing. I've never seen a game go so slow, but it might have had something to do with the fact that I had at least 9 enemies on screen, and I had cast about 20 spells almost all at once. I learned to use spells in moderation after that little affair.

Throne Of Bhaal is the best way that Bioware and Interplay could have planned to end the Baldur's Gate series, and the ending was simply phenomenal (I won't give it away, but honestly... you ARE the child of a dead God). I heartily recommend this game to anyone and everyone who wants to have the greatest CRPG experience in their life. I sincerely hope that Bioware and Interplay keep releasing such high quality CRPG's such as this one, and after checking out lots of information on the upcoming game Neverwinter Nights, I believe they will far exceed the Baldur's Gate standards with it.