{"id":86485,"date":"2026-09-20T18:07:01","date_gmt":"2026-09-20T10:07:01","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/sgbuzz.com\/?p=86485"},"modified":"2026-09-20T18:07:01","modified_gmt":"2026-09-20T10:07:01","slug":"bg3-is-great-but-still-not-the-best-baldurs-gate-game-ever-made","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/sgbuzz.com\/?p=86485","title":{"rendered":"BG3 Is Great But Still Not the Best Baldur’s Gate Game Ever Made"},"content":{"rendered":"


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Baldur\u2019s Gate 3<\/em> is an incredible game, one of my personal favorites, one tens of thousands of people are still playing constantly three years after its release \u2014 but it\u2019s not automatically the best<\/em> Baldur\u2019s Gate game. There\u2019s another game set in the same world, one in which an unrelenting series of wild things happen \u2014 a wizard tortures your soul while you\u2019re trapped in a locked cage, your best friend may or may not turn on you at the worst possible<\/em> moment, a berserker screams prophecy at a hamster named Boo completely straight-faced \u2014 and it came out over twenty years ago. Yes, I\u2019m talking about Baldur\u2019s Gate 2<\/em>.<\/p>\n

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In Baldur\u2019s Gate 2<\/em>, you spend one hundred hours deciding whether you have what it takes to become a god. And in many people\u2019s opinions, this, not Baldur\u2019s Gate 3<\/em>, is by far the best Baldur\u2019s Gate game \u2014 or even the greatest game of all time.<\/p>\n

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\n BG2 is the best Baldur’s Gate game
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Baldur\u2019s Gate 2: Shadows of Amn<\/em>, fully playable on Windows PC, picks up directly from Baldur\u2019s Gate 1<\/em> (although it absolutely works as a standalone). Your character is a Bhaalspawn, one of many mortal children fathered by Bhaal, the dead god of murder. You and your kind are being hunted across the Sword Coast for the divine spark running through your blood. By the time Baldur\u2019s Gate 2<\/em> opens, that hunt has caught up to you. You wake up chained in a locked cell beneath the city of Athkatla, your own party members held in nearby cages while a wizard runs experiments on them one at a time\u2026with no idea yet what he actually wants from you.<\/p>\n

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\"baldurs-gate-2-gameplay\"\n <\/picture>Image: BioWare<\/small><\/figure>\n<\/p><\/div>\n<\/p><\/div>\n

Jon Irenicus, your captor, is a skin-crawling, heinous, thoroughly messed-up villain. He was once a respected elven mage, exiled from his own people for running forbidden experiments on people (a hobby he\u2019s clearly not gotten over). Early in the game, you find a grove of dryads he\u2019s drained dry just to test his methods: tree spirits reduced to withered, silent things for no good reason. Fortunately, you\u2019re not facing Irenicus alone. You\u2019ll get through this \u2014 probably \u2014 with the help of a handful of friends, but each is dealing with their own nightmares and will need your help, too.<\/p>\n

Baldur\u2019s Gate series regular Jaheira loses her husband before the game\u2019s even properly begun, and spends the rest of the campaign fighting through grief, in addition to everything else. Aerie has spent her life as a caged circus performer with her wings clipped; learning to fly again is the least of the issues she\u2019ll be facing. Anomen is a knight-in-training so hungry to prove himself that his own bad judgment gets people killed \u2014 including, possibly, his own sister. Viconia DeVir is a dark elf priestess exiled from the Underdark for the disastrous crime of showing mercy\u2026 according to the goddess she can\u2019t stop serving.<\/p>\n

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As you progress through the game, the story you\u2019re living through changes in response to your choices. You control how your characters grow, whether NPCs are happy or dead, and the fate of the entire world around you. Long before \u201copen world\u201d became a common gaming marketing line, Athkatla\u2019s docks, slums, and government district were fully explorable from the moment you arrived in them, stacked with side content you could tackle in any order you desired. Each class, too, gets its own distinct questline: a fighter leads a keep, a thief seizes a guild, a cleric is tasked with restoring a temple \u2014 each one a wholly separate slice of narrative gated behind who you actually built your character to be, not a side quest bolted onto a shared story everyone sees the same way. This lends Baldur\u2019s Gate 2<\/em> incredible replayability: One longtime player didn\u2019t finish his first full campaign until 12 years after purchase, because he kept restarting as another class to see the world from as many angles as possible.<\/p>\n

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\"Baldur's\n <\/picture>Image: Beamdog\/BioWare via Polygon<\/small><\/figure>\n<\/p><\/div>\n<\/p><\/div>\n

12 years is a long time to spend not finishing one game, but, to be fair, there\u2019s a lot going on in Baldur\u2019s Gate 2<\/em>. Over the roughly 70 hours most players spend finishing the main campaign, you\u2019ll get tortured for information, have no choice but to trust a fellow prisoner who definitely seems as dangerous as your captor, discover with horror what Irenicus is up to, and then decide if you, as a Bhaalspawn, have what it takes to face your murderous siblings. As you grapple with your own identity \u2014 and your monstrous Slayer form, crawling its way out of your skin \u2014 and what that means for you and your friends, it\u2019s time to ask yourself. Will you be strong enough to ascend to Bhaal\u2019s own throne when godhood is on the table? Or will you end up as crow meat, nothing more than another failed vessel added to a dead god\u2019s list of dead children?<\/p>\n

Baldur\u2019s Gate 2<\/em> \u2014 out in 2000 \u2014 became BioWare\u2019s blueprint for several of the company\u2019s subsequent (and legendary<\/em>) games. Knights of the Old Republic<\/em> (2003) had an alignment system and late-game-companion twist much like Baldur\u2019s Gate 2<\/em>\u2019s; Mass Effect<\/em> (2007) and its loyalty missions feel like Stronghold missions set in space; and Dragon Age<\/em> (2009) handled origin characters and their unique stories and missions in an eerily reminiscent way. Seeds planted in Baldur\u2019s Gate 2<\/em> found their way to Baldur\u2019s Gate 3<\/em> \u2014 think: companions who react to and judge nearly every choice you make, and an endgame decision about whether to embrace or resist a monstrous transformation in exchange for power \u2014 and that\u2019s a game still enjoying near-universal praise and constant, never-ending replays.<\/p>\n

Which is fabulous for Baldur\u2019s Gate 3<\/em>, a game I\u2019m actively replaying more often than not \u2014 but why am I constantly seeking new ways to play that game when Baldur\u2019s Gate 2<\/em> is right there? Here\u2019s a challenge: When you next feel the urge, Dark or otherwise, to replay Baldur\u2019s Gate 3<\/em>, pick up the second game, instead. It\u2019s time to understand why players still flinch at Irenicus\u2019s name decades later. (And Baldur\u2019s Gate 2<\/em> is old enough that you can usually find it on sale for pennies.) There\u2019s nothing to lose \u2014 except your soul, maybe.<\/p>\n