Baldur's Gate II: Shadows of Amn Review

Shadows of Amn arrived a year after the first Baldur's Gate and made it look like a rehearsal. The scope is what reviewers led with: a single city district carrying more writing than most games manage in total, a stronghold for every class, and a second chapter you can spend forty hours inside without advancing the plot. What has held up is the party. Minsc, Jaheira, Viconia and Edwin hold opinions about your choices, argue with each other over them, and walk out when you push too far, which was rare in 2000 and is rarer now than it should be.

Irenicus is the villain the genre still copies, because his cruelty is personal and his logic is legible. The friction is the ruleset, with spell schools, THAC0 and a pause key you will wear through, and the fixed isometric resolution dates the art in a way the writing never dates. It swept the role-playing awards of its year, and the arguments about it now are arguments about which companion is best.