[Whailor]

Prologue:
I personally don't care that much about Khalid. He wasn't any such a big addition to the party anyway, Jaheira was more useful. But since they were "linked", I had to keep one to keep another. Yeah, I could of course get him killed and never ress, but I don't like to waste the "tools" like that either. So when I saw him dead, it was more like saying "Oopsie, there he went. Let's move on."

Good:
- Quests of all kind, with different NPC's, in different locations
- Char interactions, which are often pretty funny to watch
- Plethora of items, spells
- Pretty good story, liked it

Comments:
I personally don't care about Anomen's talks. I have dealt in real life with people who talk even more and have less uses then Anomen, so I simply ignored him. Being a male in RL I don't play female chars either in games, too weird for me to do so, and so I couldn't care less about the romance option with him either. I used him as long as was needed, then told him "bye-bye" and booted him. Voices weren't bad at all for any chars, I was OK with those.

Bad:
- Stupid stats rolls at the beginnig, when you don't import the char
- Many spells were really pretty useless
- Too small or few areas (most of things happen in the city)!
- Mind Flayer INT drain
- Vampire level drain
- Main char Imprisoned/Killed etc

Comments:
Aerie is a whiny one, high maintenance element. Should have left her probably in the circus, but I needed a char like she at that moment. Also with one of my chars I had a romance with her too, for the kicks. Jaheira is cool and her attitude is not bad either, better then Aerie's anyway. Vicky, well, she's just a person with different manners, takes time to "re-educate" her but she's in any way better then Aerie. Minsc was always in my party, he's just so good a friend and loyal to the end. Regarding the "areas" issue - in BG1 there were many areas, maybe too many areas without much of the meaning - no quest in them, and gibberlings/xvarts/kobolds get old pretty fast. So seems that Bioware wanted to fix this, but they overdid it and the result were the little amount of areas in BG2, from which most of the game time you can spend in the big city itself. Bad solution as such, I did like the travelling in BG1 and finding out new places. As for INT and LVL drain, then that's just stupid - fine, let it occur but heck, not like this! It can occur, but not that often and without any save rolls. Regarding the main char point above - the game "boasts" how the party members have a "mind of their own" and will act accordingly. Well, why then the game is OVER when the main char is, say, Imprisoned/killed, and the rest of the party is still ALIVE!? I don't care about the weird excuses, the fact is that as long as I have even ONE party member alive, the game should not be over. That one char could res all (with the spell or wand), free them with the spell or hire some NPC mage to do so and so on.

The stats rolling - dang, how much more.. I have played practically every class, every type and have made some nice rolls. And yet I have to do it again. So right now, when I am not importing the char, I simply max the stats and then reduce them to the level I have rolled up at some time in the past. I am NOT going to sit there again for 3+ hours and keep rollin'.

OK, enough for now. To me it's still just a game, entertainment thingie. I don't "live" with that world and my thoughts are on it only when I am playing it, at other times I simply don't care. It's a good game, but it's a game, not to mention I play many other games as such, and mainly the online games (like DAoC, EQ etc), which I take more seriously as they are more serious. Interaction with real people in real-time and all that.