- Huge game world - multi-CD set filled with nearly 10,000 scrolling game screens, all fully rendered in lush 16-bit SVGA graphics..
- Gripping non-linear adventure that spans seven chapters, with dozens of subplots that branch in and out of the main scenario. Your decisions affect subsequent chapters and the entire game world as a whole..
- Join up with old friends or meet old enemies - actions in the original game will impact events in this game..
- More powerful spells, talkative NPC's, and additional enchanted items to be found..
.com
----
A new chapter in the popular adventure game, based on the
Forgotten Realms campaign setting, which, in turn, is based on
the Advanced Dungeons and Dragons game system. Essentially an
add-on to the original version of the game, this chapter asks you
to continue with the character you created in the original.
From the Manufacturer
---------------------
The story takes place in TSR's bestselling Forgotten Realms. The
western shore along the Sea of s contains a multitude of
ecologies and terrains including ains, forests, swamps,
marshes, plains, cities, and ruins collectively called the
Coast. It attracts adventurers and evil characters alike. It is
the backdrop for this epic adventure. The player starts the game
with one character. Create your character from any combination of
the six races: human, elf, half elf, dwarf, gnome, or halfling.
Also choose from 26 classes including fighter, cleric, and mage
and subclasses such as druid and spet mage. Guide a party
of up to five other characters, each with distinctive
personalities and dispositions. Control party characters one at a
time or as a group.
P.when('A').execute(function(A) {
A.on('a:expander:toggle_description:toggle:collapse',
function(data) {
window.scroll(0, data.expander.$expander[0].offsetTop-100);
});
});
Review
------
Expansion packs naturally appeal only to a subset of the
original game's purchasers. In order to entice gamers to purchase
an add-on pack, developers often promise to deliver more items,
more enemies, and more areas to explore. But in practice "more,
more, more" often only as to more of the same. Moreover, the
gameplay balance of the original title is frequently offset in an
expansion pack with the addition of too-powerful weapons or
abilities. Baldur's Gate: Tales of the Coast suffers
somewhat from these problems, which seem to be endemic in
expansion packs, but still manages to deliver a gameplay
experience that improves upon the original offering in several
notable ways.
It's rare for a role-playing game to spawn an expansion pack. In
fact, the only RPG add-ons to ever grace retail shelves are a
pair of Ultima VII expansion packs and Hellfire for the
action/RPG hybrid Diablo. Although few recent RPGs have been
commercially successful enough to warrant expansion packs, the
epic confrontation at the end of most RPGs poses another obstacle
to would-be developers of RPG add-ons. Expansion packs for other
genres tend to just extrapolate events after the completion of
the original product, extending the storyline. But RPG
expansions, including Tales of the Coast, opt to
incorporate the new adventures directly within the chronology of
the original game. Since RPGs typically end with your
protagonists triumphing over some form of ultimate enemy,
adding-in, as sed to adding-on, new areas and quests has been
rationalized on the grounds that it would be anticlimactic to
extend the story. But this design constraint seems artificial,
especially when add-ons for games in other genres, such as
Starcraft: Brood War, are story-driven and yet manage to capably
continue their original plots.
Even though Tales of the Coast doesn't extend the
storyline of the original game, the new areas added by the
expansion pack are varied and well designed. There are four
discrete new areas of significantly varying sizes, and they can
be explored in any order. The action centers around Ulgoth's
Beard, a new suburb of the medieval metropolis of Baldur's Gate.
While the original game notably lacked a really substantial
dungeon crawl, Tales of the Coast provides a real doozy,
complete with dozens of devious traps and deadly denizens. There
are also a couple new islands to explore and one brief quest that
will take you back into the city of Baldur's Gate.
If you've already completed the main game, you're given the
convenient option to start the expansion on the outskirts of
Ulgoth's Beard with your party in exactly the condition it was in
prior to the game's conclusion. Your party can freely transverse
between the main game and the expansion pack territories, but
realistically you'll need an experienced party, or one that is
extremely well equipped, in order to hazard most of the new
areas. While Baldur's Gate featured a few difficult battles
sprinkled throughout the game, Tales of the Coast is almost
universally challenging. If your party is lacking a master thief,
its progress will slow to a crawl in Durlag's Tower, where it
will be constantly assailed by lethal traps. Several of the new
enemies are formidable spell-casters, and enemies combine their
attacks even more effectively than in the original game. Even
well-prepared parties are likely to be stripped of at least a few
members the first time they encounter any of the key scripted
confrontations in the game. Some gamers will welcome the greater
challenge of the battles in Tales of the Coast, but the
less stalwart may find them to be frustratingly difficult.
Baldur's Gate's real-time adaptation of AD&D's turn-based combat
system worked well, as it let you pause the battle at any time to
issue new orders to your characters, maintaining the excitement
of real-time and the strategy of turn-based gameplay. In Tales of
the Coast, however, the difficulty of some of the battles
unfortunately highlights one of the weaknesses of the combat
system. Because you can't afford to let the more difficult
battles play out in real-time for more than a second or two
without pausing to amend your characters' orders, the combats
frequently don't flow well and devolve into jerky gameplay.
Tales of the Coast does provide good value for an
expansion pack, as in addition to 20-30 hours of gameplay there
are more than a dozen interesting new magical items and a handful
of new monsters and spells. Also, Roger Wilco, a software utility
that lets you speak online to other players using microphones
during a multiplayer session, has been conveniently included.
While most of the new monsters reuse graphics from similar beasts
in the original game, there are three entirely new types of
creatures, and they are each dramatically incorporated. Some of
the new items and weapons are extremely powerful and tend to
unbalance the original game's finale, even though it has been
slightly revamped for the expansion pack.
Most of the gameplay tweaks are welcome additions, though
gameplay is still substantially similar to the original game.
Inventory management remains a bit cumbersome, although similar
items now automatically stack together, and unidentified magic
items are color coded to indicate their status. The
experience-point cap has been raised to allow characters to gain
at least one new level and to grant spell casters access to
more-powerful spells. You can now set the game to automatically
pause when hostile creatures are initially ed. Thieves'
abilities have been toned down so that they can no longer vanish
from unless there are appropriate shadows nearby, and they
now have to sneak behind nents in order to attempt a
backstabbing attack.
The original game adapted the AD&D rules quite faithfully but
took a few game-balancing liberties and made allowances for the
understandable limitations of the game's engine. Tales of the
Coast is a bit less faithful to the core AD&D rules, as
most of the new items, creatures, and spells have abilities and
attributes that have been modified from their pen and paper
equivalents or are entirely original creations of the developers.
Some of the diversions from the AD&D rules arguably enhance
gameplay and overcome limitations necessary only in a pen and
paper session. For example, while pen and paper AD&D relies upon
the abstract concept of saving throws to simulate a character's
ability to dodge spell effects, Tales of the Coast permits
characters to dodge spells by demonstrably moving out of the
targeted area of effect. Veteran AD&D players, however, will
likely be disappointed that the expansion pack doesn't attempt to
correct any of the main game's breaches of the AD&D rules and
creates original spells, monsters, and items instead of
incorporating more core AD&D material.
Yet even though Tales of the Coast features some
occasionally frustrating battles, adds only minor gameplay
enhancements, and takes a few additional liberties with AD&D
rules, it provides several well-designed new areas and a number
of interesting new spells, items, and enemies. While it suffers
from the same flaws that afflict most expansion packs, Tales of
the Coast is still a worthwhile addition to GameSpot's 1998
RPG of the Year. --Desslock
--Copyright ©1998 GameSpot Inc. All rights reserved. Reproduction
in whole or in part in any form or medium without express written
permission of GameSpot is prohibited. -- GameSpot Review
See more ( javascript:void(0) )