What the hell? Baldur's Gate: DA2 is pretty fun.

[jiji]

So I played through the first BGDA in co-op twice or so with the girlfriend, and by the end of things I was really starting to nod off.  There wasn't much challenge aside from bosses that required constant reloads, level design was dull, character customization was lolz, loot was lame, etc. Plus, it was a source of nasty tension since we'd always end up competing for loot/gold.  So I didn't expect much from the direct sequel, especially not after seeing how bad the textures looked in the new areas.

Last week I picked it up used for cheap about hearing how gold is pooled in co-op. And lo and behold, it's fun this time around! There are more optional quests and areas, and there are Diablo-style optional minibosses in some areas.  The five new characters are way more interesting than the original three. I'm playing a monk and she's playing a necro. As a monk, your gloves function as a weapon, so whatever bonuses they have function in that way. The monk's got a simple combo, and you can chain that into her feats, which include stuff like a piercing attack (reduces enemy AC) and a sweep attack (hits several enemies at once and has knockback!). Plus, critters can be dizzied this time around, which is pretty cool.

But the biggest surprise is ...item crafting!!!! Take any weapon of a grade of "fine" or higher, add one or more rune stones for your base enchantment bonus (+1, +2, etc.) and then add jewels for effects.  The crafting charge can get pretty high, in order to keep things sorta balanced, though there's still plenty of gold floating around. Plus, you can break down existing enchanted items for their jewels and shuffle things around. 

So what it feels like to me is that BIS added just enough inspiration from D2 to make things really interesting in comparison to Snowblind's relatively flat and static first effort. And I'm not positive, but I believe enemies might respawn in certain areas, so it might be possible to grind this time around.  I think we've outpaced the difficulty curve so far, so next time I want to take a couple of stock characters into Hard and see how things go.

This makes me curious about Champions, Untold Legends, etc. - did Snowblind/SOE ever do anything remotely adventurous with their reuse of the engine?

[MrAngryFace]

Also a hard to find title these days. I managed to find both with some digging.

[bork]

I liked the Champions games more than BGDA2.  Something just felt off about it.  The Champions games are pretty much more of the same, BUT there's more character types to pick from, plus you can up to four players co-op.  The quests are long and the replay value is there (each higher difficulty level brings new armor/weapon types).  Really the only disappointment is that the second Champions game feels like more of the same.  Still, you can import your character from the first game, so if you combine the two, you've got one huge GauntletBGDA clone.  If you were feeling bored with BGDA by the end, Champions isn't going to be any different though.

Untold Legends 2 on PSP isn't too bad, IMO.  I think it's more interesting than Dark Legends on the PS3.  Snowblind also did Justice League Heroes, which is more of a straight-forward brawler.  I thought it was kinda fun and wouldn't mind picking it up cheap (on PSP) one day, but I heard it had some balance issues.

[MrAngryFace]

Champions games had the most boring loot tho.