Greetting, I have began to noticed some odd things about BG2, things that don't make much sense and things that hammper the game.
1) no matter what race your charater is, he/she is aged about 20. you grew up with Imoen.
2) there is very few NPC who join you, alot less then BG1 in any case.
3) traveling from one side of Amm to another only takes 1 day.
4) Why if you become the figure head of Nalia's land is their no romance script.
5) The only people you fall in love with as a male charater are Elves.
6) There are less areas to go and they apear in a almost linear style.
7) You can do no wrong, if you kill everyone in Trademeet, you could just go to the captial and give the priests some gold and its all better.
If you do every side quest in chapter 2 the game's easy.
9) monsters are weak, (this might be because they developers just stole most of them from Icewind Dales)

Oh and why do i get faces by typing 8 then a )

I completely disagree!!!

Unless your cheating, the game takes a lot more strategy to defeat monsters like dragons, liches and wizards throughout the game. The NPC's in the game finally have character rather than just joining your party for some hack and slash. They come with side quests that make them valuable to the game. Granted your romances are with elves, but you rather have a relationship with a half-orc? The reputation thing was the same in BG1 and anyway if you wanted to kill everything in sight isn't that what games like DOOM and Duke Nukem were for? The game play for this game is much more complicated and took longer to complete than BG1 and TOTSC. If they added more areas the game would be longer and take more hard drive space. Remember marketing to an average consumer right? A Nalia romance might be a victim of this factor. I agree with the ladies that they should have made more than just one option for a female romance, but again marketing had a big role in that decision. AD&D is full of exotic magical items and if this is what you are referring to as being the easy factor in the side quests thats part of the AD&D game. Get your character experienced and get good items so that you can get to the meat of the game and kick butt. The only thing I don't understand completely is the dude blowing himself to bits in the Trademeet Inn.

That dude blowing himself to bits is allegedly the PC of someone who won some comp to have his PC in the game with an 'odd' situation.

O.k. i agree the game's great but these are some of the odd things i found in the game. and by easy i mean i was a mage and could blast away at any thing i came across until it died, which was pretty quick normaly, and fankly i think the character shouldn't be able to restore his rep by giving money to a church, if you do bad suffer the conqunces. By weak monsters i mean your charater is level 7 at the start, why have orcs if mage can kill one with his hands at this level, and as others have said the dragons are weaker then they should be. Plus i'm not saying their should be more areas it just the areas only apear if your told about them, in BG1 you could go nearly anywhere with being told it exists.

In BG1 you live in the place.
BG2 you have appeared in a realm to the south that you've never been to...

I think one problem with BG 2 is they wasted a lot of space on character voices, like for the romance scripts and the Jaheria quest speeches (Jaheria probably takes up half a CD alone). If they had cut down a lot of these voices, then they probably would've had:
1) More interaction between characters, especially quiet ones like Valygar, Keldorn.
2) More characters. Clearly they couldn't go and have an assassin character, a monk, or several specialist mages if each one was going to have to have its own voice and voice for a quest, and so on.
3) More PC character voices.
4) More romance possibilities. Why not have a romance script for half the characters. Talk about improved replayability. If you were a shortie female you get to choose between Korgan and Jan Jansen, if you're a shortie male, there'd be a Mazzy script, etc... You'd play the game 15 times over to get every possibility! This could've been done, but for the fact that all the other romances have spoken lines.

Does anyone know if the developers of BG2 actually read this board? There have been so many great ideas! Perhaps the BG2 expansion pack could include more romance scripts... that alone could make the game more replayable. Tho it's always fun to have more places to explore.

I hope they are reading these suggestions!!

I personally preffer the game to have less NPCs than BG1, because in said game, there were A LOT of crappy NPCs that you wouldn't ever want them to join you. Now there are less NPCs, and everyone is good for something.

Sure, in BG1 you could go everywhere and there were TONS of maps. But, can you tell me how much of this maps actually had something interesting? There were A LOT of maps in BG1 that were totally waste of space. I personally believe that half the Cloakwoods was a waste, with only a few things to do. And the map were you find Viconia, Peldvalle, was another waste of space.

As for doing every single quest in chapter 2, that depends on your playing style and your experience playing the game. Some people just do some quests and then head for Brymlaw, while others just stop to do ALL the quests they can do to get more powerful. And there are others that just use a FAQ to make their way through the game a cake-walk.

I personally don't feel the game to be very lineal. The fisrt time I went through the game, it was in multiplayer with a friend and we were amazed at HOW much quests we had to do that we weren't sure about how or when to start! There's the Main Quest, with revolves around rescuing Imoen and finding Irenicus, and there are tons of Major Quests such as the Unseeing Eye and the Windspear Hills dungeon, and tons of mini-quests to do. You want a lineal game? Play any of the Final Fantasy Games, they were ALL VERY LINEAL games with the exception of, perhaps FF6, wich was an open quest when you reached 60% of the game in the world of ruin, and they were all great games, despite the fact that they were all lineal.

As for weak monsters, I AGREE with you on that one, I remember saying to myself "why the hell are there a lot of hobgoblines and gibberlings at this point of the game? they are crappy and give no exp" when playing BG1. It is just irritating when you are at a high level later in the game and you are forced to fight with some easy monsters.

As for romances, I guess they weren't many options for romances with female chars, because Jan is a crazy gnome, Yoshimo...well, we know what happens to him, Korgan is an evil dwarf that only cares about himself, Edwin is really arrogant to even show an interest in someone, and Keldorn HAS wife and child. But what about Haer'Dalis and Cernd? they could have been good romances.

And lastly, let's suposse you are in a tight-fight in Athkala with some goons that are tracking down Jaheira, and you are about to lose, and your only salvation is to release lighting bolt that will surely kill two or three peasants, but will win you the battle. In a situation like that, I would be glad that there are temples to restore my reputation at the expense of my hard earned money.

The other thing about using money to restore your reputation:
Fair or unfair, it's pretty darn representative of reality!

Another strange thing .. Viconia. Her house name is DeVir. But on the RA Salvator's novels, The House Devir was eliminated exept for Alton Devir by the Do Urden house. And in the same times, Drizzt was on the surface. So it is impossible by the story that another DeVir is still alive. And if she was on the surface before Drizzt, He will know about her by reputation of Another Drow is on the surface. it's not like there is a lot of Drows that is living on surface.

Viconia says her house was fallen and destroyed, if I recall...

I think it's odd that all the females in the game are significantly weaker than the males. The strongest females are Mazzy and Jaheria. They have strengths of 15--not enough to get any damage bonus. Pretty strange, don't you think? Are they trying to say females are weaker?

Actually Entreri, there are a lot of drow on the surface, they are still hated, but there are entire settlements of drow in Neverwinter. There are also a significant number around Skullport aka Underdark beneath Waterdeep.

Has anyone played neverwinter yet???I hear it should be good......as for these bg2 addons and scripts......wouldn't it be fun if the guys at bg2 factory actually did read these boards and figured out that the best way to make alot of money and keep generating interest in the game is to have these quests individually as modules(like in the good old days!) This would make you want to go out and buy the latest cdmodule addon(like tales of..)and keep using your chrs to further their exp.!This would also allow lots more interaction and online fun as there would be so many different games of different storylines going on at once!!!.........but that would be sort of like neverwinter........except that you would not be stuck always creating your worlds as this would be boring for singleplayers(try to fool yourself not to check for traps when you remember exacly where you put it on the dungeon map!)

A couple of things I'd like to see are transportation and supplies. In AD&D you didn't just walk every where. One you got enough money you bought a donkey, mule, horse, or charger. Wouldn't it be cool to be Paladin on a charger! Plus you could carry a lot more stuff that way. And what about rations. In ADD&D you had to buy rations and other supplies, like rope, latterns...etc. Seems to me that the game would be a whole lot more realistic that way. You would have to think through what you were doing a lot more. I use to play a game called "Betrayal in Antara", before I bought BG1 and you had to buy supplies and if you ran out of food you paid the price. While the game itself wasn't up to BG1 standards it had a few things going for it. Anyway that's just my opinion, for what it's worth.

Khellendros is right, there is a drow country south of Amm called Riven(?) or somthing, its in the books you find in BG1, as for the houses, there not city based, house Devir also existed in Rilauven,(also called NeverWinter) but was destoryed their as well, she might of been an out cast for turning to Shar, Loth doesn't like that kind of thing.

One thing I found odd was Adamantite Golems shouldn't they be piles of dust in sunlight?

One odd thing is that you can steal how much money you want from a merchant in the slum. All you gotta do is sell some really good equipment and then steal it back, sell and steal again. How on earth could a little merchant living in the slum get the 150.000 I stole.

Another odd thing is that you don't fight worse when you are half dead or very tired. You can play with fatique how long you want to, but it is just a little annoying (but good) hearing the characters complaining, which makes me give in and give them some rest.

Another odd thing is that ONE battle song is so incredibly bad. The other music is very good though.

Sell and steal and sell again?? Where do you do that? All I had for answer is I don't buy Fanced goods if is was stealed from a merchant.

A very strange thing, if you have 16-18:00 in strenght, that means you can have more stuff in inventeory .. But try to transport 2-3 full plate mail in a big bag or in your arms, for a human I mean, A giant have bigger hands and arms and bags. I will find that very difficult to carry that only on yourself or on a bag.. a REAL big bag, common now, a full plate is as large as a human body !! My fighter had 3 in the same times in his inventory. WOW! You need a chariot to transport that ...

For Viconia Devir, In the manual they Do say she is from Menzoberranzan so ... And for a house to be eliminated, you have to kill all nobles, she was because she has the house name in her name, and it was not say at all in the story that a Devir was still alive on the surface or in underdark. The Matron should wanted to kill anyone that flee away from her house.

Yes, but she turned from Loth and is not considered one of the family any more, she is an outcast like Drizzt and Liriel, and would be attacked on sight by another drow.

The whole romance with Jaheria is a bit weird. Jaheria looks weird--nothing at all like the sexy brunette of BG I. Then there's the weirdness factor. Jaheria was like an aunt to you. She is definitely older than you. Why did they pick her anyway?

As for selling stolen goods, go to the shadow thieves guild or guild hall, or sell to the merchant in the sewers. Pretty smart, whoever thought of that first.

G.W. - They started a romance with Jaheira because guys like you were all hot for her from BG1