Baldur’s Gate 1 is one of my RPGs. Player freedom, challenging combat, and hundreds of hours worth of replayability, it’s got it all! And with the ‘Adventures of the Sword Coast’ expansion, as well as some of the additions in the Enhanced Edition, you’ll never be short for things to do! If you enjoyed the third game and haven’t played the originals, I’d highly encourage you to do so!
Even still, someone clearly thought that wasn’t enough. Somebody wanted more. Thus, when the Enhanced Edition came out, we were graced with yet another expansion. One that set out to bridge the gap between the first and second games. The Siege of Dragonspear.
And I’m not gonna lie: I kinda hated it.
Our story picks up some time after the end of the main game. Our hero, Jernabus the Necromancer (who made it back safe and sound after defeating Diablo), has slain Sarevok, the son of Bhaal that nearly brought the Sword Coast to its knees. Now, he and his companions must dive beneath the city to deal with the dead demigod’s remaining followers.
So you do. It’s basically a little tutorial level to get you back into the swing of playing Baldur’s Gate. Which is kind of unnecessary, since I leapt into this expansion straight after finishing the base game. I didn’t even have a choice, I killed Sarevok then Dragonspear just started!
With the cleanup job completed, our quest is officially over and our party members go their separate ways. Jernabus is renowned the Hero of Baldur’s Gate, so he just… hangs out with the city’s nobility, I guess. But not all of his friends have bid their farewells. Imoen, his trusty childhood friend from Candlekeep, remains at his side as she studies magic.
Alas, this is not to be their happily ever after. To the north, an aasimar named Caelar Argent leads a crusade across the land, conquering and destroying everything in its wake. Assassins bearing her orders appear to eliminate Jernabus, launching an attack on the keep he resides in. Imoen takes a poisoned dagger meant for him, accidentally making a strange discover: it was a paralysis poison, not a deadly one.
When the dust settles, it is decided that Caelar and her crusade must be stopped. Naturally, Jernabus is the first to be drafted. Enraged at Caelar’s attempt at his life and Imoen’s injury, he eagerly agrees, ignoring his friend’s plea to stay away and leave it be.
Thus the stage is set. The Hero of Baldur’s Gate must march out to defeat Caelar and her crusade. But the people’s trust in their hero is waning, as a troubling rumor spreads across the land: the supposed hero is a Bhallspawn, Sarevok’s half-brother. On top of that, a strange hooded man haunts our hero’s steps and dreams, pushing him to ’embrace his potential.’
While playing Baldur’s Gate, I decided that Jernabus would be a sassy but heroic character. He would occassionally do bad things, if I deemed those choices funny enough to work with, but ultimately, he would resist the urgings of Bhall. I’m a simple guy that liked to do good things.
In Siege of Dragonspear, morality isn’t quite so simple. Some people respect my character as a hero, others believe the rumors and fear him as a Bhaalspawn. So I decided to play him more as an anti-hero this time. With his best friend removed from his side and the world he saved out to get him, I figured it would be an interesting direction to take Jernabus for this leg of his adventure.
Unfortunately, your decisions in this expansion don’t really matter. In the base game, it really felt like this was your adventure which you could play your way. You could go where you wanted when you wanted to do what you want. For a game from 1998, it offered a shocking amount of freedom to the player!
Here? It doesn’t matter. Good? Evil? The plot will play out just the same. You go where the game wants when it wants you to. The consequences of your choices are so small and insignificant that any replay value this expansion had feels very limited.
For example: early into the journey to Dragonspear, Jernabus came across a halfling who had just lost his inn. Three precious family heirlooms had been stolen, so he went out to find them. On another screen, I found one in possession of a vampire hunter. To get it back, I agree to help them slay the undead. When said vampire appears, it pleads for mercy, but I decided to keep it simple and kill him. I got the shield back, then moved on.
Out of curiosity, I reloaded my last save and ran it back. This time, I sided with the vampire. Naturally, the monster slayers got upset and I had to kill them. Then… the vampire just goes away and never comes back. I still got the heirloom for the quest. The only thing my choice affected was who walked away at the end.
Now, I normally wouldn’t mind this so much. This expansion was marketed to me as a bridge between the first and second game. If it at least set the stage for that sequel, then I wouldn’t mind if my choices were mostly inconsequential. If anything, the lack of control over events could help create tension and set the stakes!
Unfortunately, the whole expansion’s plot felt kind of meaningless. It’s basically thirty hours of filler, followed by one hour of rushed, poorly thought out setup to connect this game to the beginning of BG2. I thought that was the whole point of Dragonspear, yet it feels like an afterthought!
Which is a shame, because I actually really like Caelar as an antagonist. A misguided hero out to perform the impossible, blindly convincing herself that her horrific acts are for the greater good. Plus, her design is badass! But you never even get to fight her! You can only choose to fight beside her against the final boss or not. Either way, you’re fighting the same devil, not the antagonist that had been built up the entire expansion.
Imagine if at the end of Baldur’s Gate you don’t fight Sarevok. The entire game builds that bad guy up, right from the opening cutscene. How much would it have sucked if you never got to kill him?
And to be fair, this expansion does add in some extra features found in Baldur’s Gate 2. Party members, for example, will talk to each other and you the player much more often than before. They even integrated romance into it, so you can flirt to your hearts content. It doesn’t save the lackluster plot, but it does help spice things up.
But again: I could forgive that if the narrative was actually enjoyable. Baldur’s Gate as a series always has so much personality that even the most inconsequential side quest was enjoyable and compelling! Soul and passion oozed out of every corner! All three games are just plain fun to play!
Not here. There are a few moments of depth and humor, but those are so small, brief, and inconsequential that you can’t really appreciate them. A few funny choices and gags a compelling adventure does not make.
For example: the journal. In Baldur’s Gate, your adventure log was written by your character themselves. They were detailed and full of personality. If you were given a quest to go retrieve a lost book, your character would describe who gave you the quest, what you need to do, where it could be, and add a little complaint about the tedium of the task. It made the whole journey feel so much more real and fun, like your character was an actual person that reacted to the world and the tasks presented.
Now? The journal is completely worthless! All you get is a single sentence detailing your objective. Very poorly, I might add. It doesn’t give you nearly enough information to actually keep track of what you’ve done and what you need to do next. Half the time, it doesn’t even update properly! It’s seriously one of the worst quest trackers I’ve ever seen in an RPG! How did they screw this up so badly?!
“But what about the game?” I hear you asking. “Is it actually fun?” Well, yes. Because it’s just more Baldur’s Gate. It adds a few new items and spells, but that’s it. This expansion is just more of a good thing.
Yet they somehow managed to screw even that up!
Baldur’s Gate is a game all about planning and preparation. If you go in guns blazing, you’re gonna die. Combat was basically a puzzle; how you solved it was entirely up to you. It was all about managing your limited abilities, items, and spells as best as possible.
Yet Dragonspear keeps throwing gauntlets of enemies at you like you’re playing Doom! Sometimes it’s done well, like when the Crusade attacks your camp; you’re given adequate time to prepare between each wave, and you have NPC allies to expand your strategies. Encounters like that are very Baldur’s Gate, and they’re pretty fun.
Others? Not so much. The grand finale is where I reached the end of my rope. After an elevator gauntlet that exhausted all of my spells and abilities, I was thrown into an awful final boss without even a second to catch my breath and recover. It became a numbers game, where all I could do was hope that my numbers were bigger than the game’s. If I were any lower level or had even one less healing item, I would not have been able to win. By the time the devil died, I was begging for the game to end!
Unfortunately for me, I still had an hour of rushed, half-baked story to get through.
Siege of Dragonspear lacks all the charm and depth that I love in Baldur’s Gate games. They traded a sandbox for a railroad. Depth, personality, and fun, it’s all just so lackluster! It had occasional enjoyable moments to keep me going, but they were few and far between. It was just so dull!
Honestly, I can’t recommend playing this expansion. Not even you just want more Baldur’s Gate to play. If so, you’d be better off going straight into Baldur’s Gate 2. That will reach the same itch without sacrificing any of the player freedom or personality that was lost here.
I seriously can’t even comprehend why they even made this. Who decided to retroactively add an expansion to this game nearly twenty years after its release if this was all they were gonna do with it? Did they seriously think this was a worthy addition to the game, or were they just trying to make an extra buck?
It’s probably the last one.
Thankfully, this expansion was no more than a mild stumble on the road. A single misstep that you can easily avoid. Disappointing as it is, it isn’t so offensively awful that it ruins Baldur’s Gate.
And now, we get back to the amazing stuff.
See y’all in, like, a year for Baldur’s Gate 2!
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