What’s striking about Baldur’s Gate 2 is just how modern of an RPG it feels like, even when it’s over twenty years old. The narrative focus isn’t on the main plot, but in the ways the diverse cast of characters grow over the course of their adventure. Doing side quests is encouraged with all the contextual dialog from your companions, so players explore the world and build relationships with the party naturally. Then, when you start focusing on the main storyline, their reactions to events are contextualized with the details they've confided in you over time. However, there’s a pretty big catch to all this, in that the game’s appeal relies on this cast of characters you may not actually like. This is where the veneer of objectivity in this review breaks down entirely, because I found all the companions' personalities to be way too outlandish. There's no way I could advocate for a blander, more homogenous set of characters, but stating that the characters got on my nerves is true to my experience. This particularly hurts the enjoyment of a CRPG, where the combat serves mostly as an expression of the team's growth, rather than a mechanical challenge in itself. So, if you’re the type of RPG player who loves chatting up and customizing companions in New Vegas or Mass Effect, you’ll be able to see why this game inspired two decades of RPG’s, but if you expect satisfying gameplay or a compelling central plot, it won't live up to the decades of hype.

Fallout came out over a year earlier and does almost everything better, the main exception being how companions are handled. While I do find this game's combat more fluid than Fallout's, the encounter design is, more often than not, fucking abominable and ends up making the combat as a whole feel worse as a result. This would be a friendship ruiner if it were an actual D&D campaign, maybe even a cause for justifiable homicide. I'll give it props for its cultural impact and for cementing BioWare's place in video games, but that's about it.