Baldur's Gate Expansion: Tales of the Sword Coast Reviews

• Good could of been Better

  
  By AE12HBX93F24J on 2000-08-28
  In this expansion pack you basically get three main subquests, two of which are long and difficult. You get to raise your characters to level 9, and 10 for your thief(You will need a thief to disarm traps and pick locks so make sure you keep a thief for this expansion set). My main dislike of this game is how poorly it ties in with the orginal Balder's gate. The story lines do not connect at all. If you imported your character from the main balder's gate the expansion pack drops you off in a new town just before the epic battle with Saverok. But in the subquests you do come across many different villains, puzzles, and creatures to kill. Plus you will be able to equip your party members with fancy armor and powerful weapons. If your number one reason in liking the orginal Balder's gate was to follow the storyline than I do not recommend Tales of the Sword Coast. However, if you loved killing exotic monsters and boosting the strength of your character's than this is the perfect set for you. Your characters will become much stronger and gain more spells, and weapons. Interplay did a great job in creating a chance for players to boost up their characters, however the storyline is weak and doesn't connect too well (or not at all) with the orginal Game.
  
  

• Tales of the Sword Coast is fun, but lacks depth.

  
  By A27TFPC8DZS2UA on 2000-07-15
  In Tales of the Sword Coast, you are taken back to the land of Baldur's gate prior to the end of the game. You are placed in the city called Ulgoth's Beard.

  Once in this city, you are immediately sent on a quest to an ice island. This scenario is realitively easy to complete. Following this completion, you can be sent on two more major missions. The first one sends you in search of Balduran's ship and a forgotten island. This scenario is intriguing due to the new enemies that are werewolves. The climax of this part of the game can be difficult, but has some nice game play.

  After completing this scenario, you go for the last scenario that sends you down to Durlag's tower. There are numerous levels found in the tower, in which a few levels can be quite confusing. There is excellent images on the one level in which a skeleton of a greater wyvern surrounds the floor. In order to complete the tower, the party must defeat a demonknight, which is not too simple.

  Following the completion of the tower, the party must complete one or two minor scenarios before the final task of facing Sarovek.

  Overall, this game is just a mere minor extension of Baldur's Gate. Yes the play can be fulfilling, but there is not enough depth the game in order to justify the price. In my opinion even though it is adequate, there is no real need or desire to play this game.
  
  

• Decent Gameplay

  
  By A26IQ71XV0AZ1D on 2001-08-01
  I'm surprised at the number of reviewers who found this game disappointing. I found it to be a challenging expansion pack that significantly raises the difficulty level over that of the original. No, Tales of the Sword Coast doesn't extend the story line of BG, and, no, the story line doesn't even FIT comfortably within the original BG plot. And yes, Tales IS basically an add-on that simply allows your characters to increase their experience points and find new items in the process.

  Still, I think it is a fault to criticize the game too much (as many customer reviewers have) on issues of story line. If you want a great, involved story, well, buy Planescape: Torment (my vote for greatest RPG title ever). Even though Tales of the Sword Coast's game objectives may seem completely out of whack with the BG main plot, think back to BG and I think you'll recall LOTS of areas that didn't have anything to do with the iron shortage or Saverok For instance, did the Firewine Dungeon "really" play a crucial role in terms of story line? Did helping Drizzt fight off those hordes of baddies really advance the plot? How about all the random quests?

  In other words, I think one should evaluate TOSC using one simple maxim as a guide: namely, are the new areas fun to play? In my opinion, the new areas in TOSC are both challenging and enjoyable. One of the levels (***BEWARE, SPOILERS HERE***), the ice island is a throwaway, but the other two, Werewolf Island and Durlag's Tower, are impressive. Werewolf Island does have a captivating plot, and although it's size in terms of area isn't large, the battles are numerous and semi-difficult. Durlag's Tower provides players with something that BG kind of lacked: a decent dungeon crawl. I found Durlag's Tower very involving and moderately difficult. Unlike the ridiculous monster count and borderline unplayability (in terms of difficulty) of Icewind Dale's dungeons, Durlag's Tower strikes a nice balance between being difficult but not too difficult; it knows how to challenge players without forcing them to die, reload, die, reolad, die reload, ad infinitum.

  Lastly, I found this game a decent value in terms of length. TOSC is now a bargain bin purchase, and although some customers here like to brag (lie???) about how the game only took them 10 hours to complete, Tales took me betwen 1 and 2 weeks to finish. I admit that I may not be a master AD&D player, yet I did successfully complete BG and felt that my party was very much up to the challenge of the expansion pack.

  This game does get docked a notch, however, for some small problems: 1) Pathfinding is still troublesome. 2) Inventory juggling is still a nightmare. I truly believe that about 50% of Baldur's Gate (and this expansion) is spent juggling inventory items. 3) The puzzle element introduced in Durlag's Tower is more annoying than fun. 4) The next-to-final battle against a monster summoned with Durlag's Blade is insanely difficult and convoluted. But basically, if you enjoyed the original you should probably enjoy this expansion.
  
  

• I can't believe I wasted my money

  
  By A2A0EWUSAX0XNU on 2000-01-08
  This expansion pack (EP) was a complete wast of my time, and money. It adds a couple new magical weapons and armor, some new spells and a couple new areas to explore. There is no plot to the the EP, just some NPC saying "Oh I lost my son in Durlags Tower. . . ." and stuff like that. The only thing that made this EP worth two stars is that they cleaned up a lot of the rough edges from Baldurs Gate, and increased Experience points to a point where your fighter and like one other class can go up a level. By the way, it is just one more disk that you have to flip through if you decide to replay Baldurs Gate. In conclusion don't buy this EP, it isn't worth it, unless any new EP's come out that require it.
  
  

• It blew my mind

  
  By on 2000-01-25
  A great expansion to BG, I enjoy playing against and with my friends now on LAN.
  
  
• Great game - adds a good bit to the original.
  By A23PCEL26412R1 on 2001-11-30
  If you liked Baldur's Gate you will love the expansion pack. Don't be fooled by some of the other reviews, some people find fault with the Mona Lisa too. The additions in terms of abilities, areas, and other features are worth the price and add hours of enjoyment to playing the original game.
  
  
• Low Quality Expansion
  By on 2001-07-13
  There are three kinds of expansion packs. Some, like Starcraft: Brood War and the Wing Commander 1 Secret Missions, are like mini-sequels and can actually be better than the original. They contain all the good ideas from the original that didn't make the initial release. The typical expansion pack increases functionality of the product a little bit with a few new features and adds on a decent amount of new content. The last type of expansion pack is where a lower design team comes on to take stuff in the original, change it around a little bit, add a few new levels, and call it an expansion pack. TOTSC is squarely in the third category. It's only reason for existing is for people who like to get more stuff and get more experience. If that's exciting to you then the game will be perfect but personally I found that the most tedious part of the game. I also like stuff making logical sense. In this game I recall a +3 Plate Mail just basically sitting around! Why would anyone leave that behind, seriously?

  It's not just that the quests don't tie into the plot, but that they don't fit ANYWHERE. Unless your party is a bunch of treasure hunters it doesn't really make sense that your character would put the iron crisis on the backburner and go off on a boat ride that might take months.

  Finally, it's meant to be played out of order. If you try to play it in order as I did, you will find the expansion quests too difficult at first and then the end of the game too easy.

  So basically, I cannot recommend this. Don't get it!
  
  

• Tales of the Sword Coast
  By A37SLSG12LVACE on 2002-06-16
  This is an expansion pack to Baldur's Gate, it is an add-in, and it does not expand the original plot. There are three new areas that your party can explore. The experience point cap is also up to 161.000 in this game, making it possible to gain 1 or 2 more levels, depending on your class.
  The three add-in areas are: Ulgoth's Beard, a small town north of Baldur's Gate where more or less all the expansion adventures take their start from, an...island(trying not to reveal too much), and Durlag's Tower. Of these Durlag's Tower is the most challenging and interesting. Durlag's tower is the biggest dungeon in the entire game, and can be a challenge for even experienced parties. The other areas, offer some interesting information, but are less exiting to play through. All in all it is an interesting expansion, although not an expansion in the true sense of the word. But since you can sometimes find both Baldur's Gate and Tales of the Sword Coast in one package at a good price there is no excuse not to get it.
  
  
• Brutally Hard
  By A2O8NWM7V0B6BQ on 2003-12-07
  When I played Baldur's Gate, it was a wonderfully long experience of exploration and balanced encounters. If you ran into an over-powering encounter, you knew your party had ventured into the wrong place at the wrong time. This expansion is a bucket of cold water in the face. It's short, just four areas with a dozen or so levels, and brutally hard. Maybe I didn't level-up correctly in Baldur's Gate, but I found every step a struggle of high-level encounters, traps my their couldn't disarm and, worst of all, key puzzles. Additionally the expansion didn't have of the story elements of the original game. The game itself had almost no changes although there was a new auto-pause feature that was very helpful. Hard-core Baldur's Gate fan with a high-level party (10+) will love Sword Coast but other should probably skip it.
  
  
• Nice thought-but a little watered down.
  By A2I3WQU675FF2R on 2000-08-14
  I'm sure that this add-on was pressured by the public to be released quickly due to the great succsess of Baldur's Gate, but at the time of release the price tag seemed a bit high for so little substance. Other than some new areas and quests to complete, the only redeeming quality of this package was the experience cap being rasied a tad giving all those dual-class humans a chance to shine. As a nice bonus, there are some REALLY cool new magical items that could ease the time an Import character will have in the next installment.
  
  
• Details, Details
  By on 2000-09-10
  The 3d animation and video clips were all fine and good, but the storyline could be quite annoying at times, sometimes it's really hard to do things that don't have much consequence in the plot...poor programming really....let's hope that Baldor's Gate 2 is'nt like this, as far as I'm concerned it had better be a vast improvment.
  
  
• Expansion pack is a must!
  By on 2001-11-13
  You get a lot of interface improvements with expansion pack. Ctrl-Tab is the best one. So get both before you play Shadows of Amn.
  
  
• good, but not necessary
  By A2PBDWVKLHV9ZO on 2004-07-31
  It added a little to the main game, but nothing earth shattering and the quests don't have much to do with the main plot. The quests are VERY difficult to get through and take more than a little patience and perserverence to succeed. My advice? Seek out and downloadthe unofficial add on "Dark Side of the Sword Coast" to suplement Baldur's Gate and this Expansion Pack instead.
  
  
• Oh my!
  By AX138S3JU6TWC on 2007-06-08
  More baldurs gate? This expansion adds a higher xp cap, more areas, more weapons, and more baddies. If you were a fan of the original, then you will definitely find more gaming goodness here. This adds around 20 hours of gameplay, as well as making the original game more of a challenge, which is always a plus. If you liked the original, get this now!
  
  
• BG Expansion pack is fun & playable
  By A3D0KO1LI6PCRT on 1999-12-16
  This expansion pack to Baldur's Gate adds a few areas and moves the EXP cap from 89000 to 161000. It also adds a LOT of new magical EQ into the game. So your characters can get a lot more powerful. I found it fun, and fairly challenging. The new areas are fairly quest and puzzle oriented, a bit more than the core of Baldur's Gate. But don't try to take durlag's tower without a high level thief.
  
  

• PC Gamer (1-year)
• Baldur's Gate : Tales of the Sword Coast Official Strategies & Secrets (Strategies and Secrets)

• Baldur's Gate
• Baldur's Gate 2: Ultimate Collection (Shadows of Amn and Throne of Bhaal)
• Icewind Dale: The Ultimate Collection
• Baldur's Gate 2 Expansion: Throne of Bhaal
• Neverwinter Nights Diamond