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Oh my!

5 Rating: 5, Useful: 1 / 1
Date: June 08, 2007
Author: Amazon User

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!

Got it.

4 Rating: 4, Useful: 0 / 5
Date: June 22, 2005
Author: Amazon User

Got the colection, when I ordered the expantion, but it installed still, and plays great.

good, but not necessary

3 Rating: 3, Useful: 2 / 6
Date: July 31, 2004
Author: Amazon User

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.

Brutally Hard

3 Rating: 3, Useful: 3 / 4
Date: December 07, 2003
Author: Amazon User

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.

Tales of the Sword Coast

4 Rating: 4, Useful: 4 / 4
Date: June 16, 2002
Author: Amazon User

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.

Great game - adds a good bit to the original.

5 Rating: 5, Useful: 5 / 5
Date: November 30, 2001
Author: Amazon User

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.

Expansion pack is a must!

4 Rating: 4, Useful: 2 / 4
Date: November 13, 2001
Author: Amazon User

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.

Same old...

2 Rating: 2, Useful: 0 / 2
Date: October 18, 2001
Author: Amazon User

This game provided little improvement to Baldur's Gate, chiefly by not advancing the plot at all. Hard-core gamers will buy it, but I advise the casual gamer to stay away.

Decent Gameplay

4 Rating: 4, Useful: 10 / 11
Date: August 01, 2001
Author: Amazon User

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.

Low Quality Expansion

1 Rating: 1, Useful: 4 / 6
Date: July 13, 2001
Author: Amazon User

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!

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