Why Baldur’s Gate is a great game & a terrible book.

The reason I wanted to give a review of the Baldur’s Gate was because I naively was hoping since the game series was so fun the book would be too. Instead, I am writing a blog post: Why Baldur’s Gate is a great game & a terrible book.

I love Dungeon-Crall stories.

I Love Dungeon-Crall stories, so naturally I thought the book Baldur’s Gate would have to be good. Wrong! I will go into why Baldur’s Gate was a terrible book, but first let’s talk about why it is a great game series.

Real-Time versus Turn-Based RPG.

Real-Time is what it sounds like a game that is played in Real-Time where traditional table games like Dungeons and Dragons are turn-based giving the nerds with slow hand to eye coordination something they can do while slowly deciding their actions versus mashing buttons fast. I like both types of games but this game was the best of the Real-Time style hack and slash. Similarly to how Dragon Age would later but with less strategy and RPB fact finding, this was a true hack and slash. This is a considered a Diablo style game.

True to Roll Playing Games.

In Baldur’s Gate: Dark Alliance and in Dark Alliance II, you had to level up and by defeating enemies and you could unlock new fighting skills and magic and find more powerful weapons and armor and items. The game play on this game is intense, fast-paced and challenging. Replaying level again and again trying to beat “The Boss” battle had never been more fun.

Likeable Characters and a classic RPG Storylines.

The game was fun and there are many Baldur’s Gate consoles and PC games, but I am focusing on where I started with the franchise, Dark alliance. The game takes place in the Sword Coast and the Western Heartlands, areas in the Faerun continent of the Forgotten Realms.

Choose your character.

You get to choose a character; a human archer or an elven mage or a dwarf fighter. The story starts where you enter the city at night and get mugged by thieves taking all your gold. The audio and animation for the time were great. This is a solid game. I highly recommend it. Makes me want to play the new remastered versions.

The Origins of Baldur’s Gate.

One thing actually good about the book is they really fleshed the history of the world out. But this is because of the Forgotten Realms World. They had already well documented The Forgotten Realms History and geography before Philip Athans wrote the fantasy book “Baldur’s Gate”.

Life gives you clues.

This book has a very popular video game series with the same name, yet this book is not available as an eBook. It is available on Audible or you can order a print version. But I so loved the video game series of my childhood that I had to read the book.

A world of poorly written characters and plot holes.

We start with a character named Abdul. Our hero, sort of, he’s almost seven feet tall, and he’s a sell-sword fighter. Spoiler, he’s the son of the god of murder, Bhaal. He was raised by a great guy, scribe/priest, Gorion. There are no likeable characters in the book. Abdul is a psychopath with moments of moral conscious but he’s not exactly intelligent or clever either.

The Book Starts well enough with Gorion’s death.

Gorion and Abdul are attacked by sell-swords, paid killers sent to kill them. And the killers succeed in killing Gorion, who summons his last bit of magical power to heal Abdul, who was wounded in the fight, as he is dying. Gorion tells him to go to Baldur’s Gate and meet some people to stop the war between Baldur’s Gate and Amn and meet with his friends Khalid and Jaheira.

Unlikable characters.

What is redeemable about Abdul Adriane, our protagonists? Well, not much. He’s petty. He starts fights with weaker people and kills them without remorse. We learn that Khalid and Jaheira are both half-elf and husband and wife. Abdul notices how hot Jaheira is right away and they have some connection. Why do they have a connection? I have no clue. Khalid is a jerk apparently who cheats on her, so everything is okay.

Later Khalid is killed, and Jaheira is sad for one chapter, then falls for Abdul. Before that we meet an interesting crazy wizard and a halfling thief, but they are killed off as we are getting used to them. All throughout the story, the dialog is terrible and difficult to read.

A Boring and Confusing Plot.

The plot is confusing and boring. The sons of Bhaal are back; one evil and one less evil. The other half son of Bhaal Sarevok and his gang, the Iron Throne, are trying to start a war. And they have doppelgangers that can look like anyone and start a lot of trouble and we have Zombies’s and Ghouls and Giant Spiders.

The characters are all in the dark till the last minute when Abdul goes to kill Sarevok for the death of Jaheira, who gets resurrected, anyway. They threw away all the other characters and our two, one-dimensional characters live defeating the bad guy.

Cheap Plot devices.

Deus ex machina saves our “heroes” at every step; when they are stupid, not strong enough to win a fight or captured and surrounded by enemies. While the writer killed everyone else randomly. It would make more sense if Abdul was the son of the goddess of luck, Tymora, rather than the god of murder.

But because I did not care if Abdul or Jaheira lived or died, there were no stakes in the story. Abdul also is like an undefeatable beast of a fighter unless the scene in the story requires him not to be.

Philip Athans surprisingly teaches writing!

I am giving this guy some room for doubt that this is his worst book. But none the less he has a book published on June 18 2010, roughly 10 years after he wrote this gem, entitled: “The Guide to Writing Fantasy and Science Fiction: 6 Steps to Writing and Publishing Your Bestseller!”. R.A. Salvatore is listed as a co-writer of the book.

The plot and characters in no way follow any of the video games plots or backgrounds.

What Readers are saying.

Readers said: “This one is so bad, that at some moments it actually gets funny.” -Efka (Goodreads).

“This is quite possibly, the worst book I’ve ever read.” -Emily (Goodreads)

“This book is complete shit. I love it. It’s so bad it’s brilliant, so unintentionally hilarious that it makes you cry tears of laughter at the authors’s attempts at plot, characterization or sentence structure. Read while drunk/high, I guarantee you will lose it.” -Queen of France (Goodreads).

“One star isn’t low enough for this piece of garbage…” Dave Matney (Goodreads).

People who live in glass houses should not throw stones.

I certainly have improved a lot and my first editions of my fantasy series had a lot of mistakes, but thankfully the reviews have been mostly good. To people who read what they consider an awful book, let me just ask: How many books have you written?

Well, that’s that the games rock but the books, not so much. Hope you have enjoyed this rant. I’m sure someone will buy the book “Baldur’s Gate” just to see if it is as bad as I say it is. As PT Barnum said, All Press is good Press!

If you like train wrecks, check out my review of The Matrix Resurrections.