Shadows of Amn did not offer much resolution for the overarching storyline of Alaundo's Prophecy, but its story was a very well-written and -presented side-tracking with many detours back into said saga whenever relevant (often in an eyebrow-raising manner).
The Throne of Bhaal is an expansion that intends to conclude the aforementioned saga in a most epic and terrifically explosive way.
As to be expected of an expansion, the gameplay of Throne of Bhaal is not much different from that of Shadows of Amn. The player still has to guide around a party of up to six members, manage their inventory, spells and powers, control them in battles, and configure their statistics when they gain enough experience to level up. If a player has played previous BioWare games before, he/she would be familiar with the core game mechanics of this game.
However, a BioWare game of this time would not be one without gameplay mechanics that are unique to its premise and brought about by convenient elements in its plot progression. Some of these can be quite entertaining, and the merits of which will be described where relevant.
The setting of Dungeons and Dragons, specifically the world of Toril, is a rich one, and this is intended to be so in order to give campaign managers (also known as Dungeon Masters) to craft elaborate stories using locales as a plot element. BioWare, being inadvertently a Dungeon Master, has used a new locale for this expansion, much like it did for Shadows of Amn. As for the new locale, it is the desert region of Tethyr, conveniently giving BioWare a reason to create artwork that has yet to be seen in previous Baldur's Gate titles.
Although it may appear that BioWare had chosen a new setting just to allay criticisms of re-using already-featured locales, BioWare also has some very, very convenient reasons/excuses to tie the plot of this expansion to the region of Tethyr – not unlike those that it had for using the locales featured in Shadows of Amn, coincidentally enough.
A late retroactive continuity alteration of Alaundo's Prophecy and the Times of Trouble vis-a-vis the travails of Bhaal had the Patron God of Murder producing most of his half-divine progeny in the region of Tethyr, apparently citing culture-related difficulties in doing so elsewhere.
Thus, with Alaundo's Prophecy having foretold of a final war among Bhaalspawn to determine which of them will inherit the throne of Murder, it is predictable that Tethyr will become the battlegrounds of this war. The main player character, who is the Bhaalspawn at the center of the stories in the first and second Baldur's Gate games, has heeded the call of the Prophecy, travelling to Tethyr to seek a resolution to his/her destiny.
The events in Shadows of Amn have been considered resolved. Thus, certain (custom-scripted) gameplay elements in that variant of Baldur's Gate II have been removed, such as the player's ability to turn into a Slayer. However, some elements which were well-praised in Shadows of Amn had been retained, such as the ability of the player character to send the entire party into a pocket dimension to recuperate.
However, this pocket dimension has evolved to match the narrative complications that the player character is now facing. Certain characters of divine origin that have a stake in the saga – or has been assigned to bring a resolution to the saga by groups of interest in Mount Celestia (the official home of the gods) – will appear in this pocket dimension, guiding the player character towards the end and summoning critical or side characters to divulge revelations on the truths surrounding Alaundo's Prophecy and the roles of the Bhaalspawn.
(The pocket dimension is also the home of an artificer Imp with an inane personality. He happens to be able to convert certain items that the player's party has and turn them into something that is usually more powerful, which is always an entertaining side activity.)
This review would not go too deeply into the story, and would instead mention circumferential details of the plot to briefly describe the key experiences of playing this game.
While Bhaal has spawned many, many offsprings, there would only be a few who would be worthy enough to succeed him as the God of Murder. This plot element makes for a convenient reason to simplify the quest to resolve the Prophecy to dealing with just these few. Incidentally, all of them are intractably hostile to the player character, and this in turn gives an excuse for BioWare to set up epic battles that appear greater in scale, difficulty and length compared to those in Shadows of Amn. For these battles, the player's party is often tremendously outnumbered, or face an onslaught of enemy waves, each enemy having almost the same capability as the player's own characters.
There are also other battles to fight, mainly those that conclude some side quests or battles that lead up to the really big ones.
On one hand, the level of challenge in Throne of Bhaal can be satisfactorily greater than that in Shadows of Amn. On the other hand, it detracts from one of the promises of the game.
This promise is the raising of the level cap of player characters to 40 and the introduction of so-called "Epic" abilities, like Deathblow (a killing blow that is likely to murder a target outright), Whirlwind (which apparently imposes a tornado sprite onto the player character and cause him/her to deal weapon-based damage to anyone close-by) and Summons for very powerful entities, such as high-ranking denizens of the Lower and Upper Planes. In fact, BioWare had suggested that these very high-level powers would render the player characters quite "god-like".
Unfortunately, everyone else in the game, enemies included, is also "god-like". Enemy groups have roughly the same prowess as the player's own party, with their handicap only being that they lack the coordination that the player can impart on his/her own party. The need to counter their moves, as well as having the player's own countered by them, detracts from the experience of having very powerful characters that are supposed to be more than a match for anything that comes their way.
However, not all of the changes in Throne of Bhaal over Shadows of Amn have their benefits diminished by BioWare's need to balance the gameplay.
One of these improvements over Shadows of Amn includes the option to highlight interactive items on-screen with the Tab key, which is a very, very handy option that would be seen in later games that use the Infinity Engine.
Another is the option to remove spells from spellbooks to make space for other spells. This option would appear to allow players to exploit the game design that allow characters to gain experience from scribing spells into a spellbook, but the game designers have opted to remove opportunities for the player to obtain lots of spare spell scrolls to prevent abuse of this exploit. To compensate for this loss in the player's capability to cast spells off items, the game designers have introduced items with "bound" spells, such as staves imbued with the power to cast a limited number of spells before the player has to rest the party to regenerate its "charges".
A very entertaining 'improvement' is the replacement of the Limited Wish Easter egg spell with the "regular" Wish one, which offer much more potent effects from the very fickle (and very annoyed) Djinn that gets summoned.
Familiars, which were once a liability of sorts to their mage masters due to their links to the well-being of the latter, have now been improved to make them less of a weak point in the player's party composition. One improvement is a dialogue option to "feed" them with something, which appears to completely heal them regardless of the nutritional value of what they had been fed with.
Interaction between party members has always been (and still is) a hallmark of BioWare games. If Throne of Bhaal is played by importing a party from Shadows of Amn, the player can continue any romances between characters and take them further to a resolution.
The player can also summon all characters from Shadows of Amn, except one, to aid the main player character with his/her quest. They have entertaining things to say when the player summons them, though most of them will know what is at stake and will willingly follow the player.
However, whatever grievances that they had with the main player character or other characters have been conveniently forgotten for the sake of the player's very important quest, removing any possibility of internal strife that had made previous Baldur's Gate games quite intriguing (if a bit frustrating when they occur at terrible moments). This is especially the case with a returning character that was once very important in the first game, and who appears to have set aside his very severe issues with the main player character.
On the other hand, the player's party members are now more reliable than ever, and will not ditch the player over some sticky personal problems.
The expansion also has some of the more dubious traditions of BioWare. One of these is the reuse of old models. An example would be the re-use of the (demonic-looking) Slayer model to conveniently portray certain demonic creatures. The model has only been given a palette change to make it look "different". The game also uses mundane models for important characters in the game, resorting to palette swaps again to make them look different. Furthermore, BioWare reuses a lot of animations, giving an impression of them being quite canned.
Only very, very pivotal characters have models and animations that are unique to themselves.
If a player had been hoping that BioWare had eschewed its habit of re-using game material in such lackadaisical manners, then he/she would be disappointed.
Yet, BioWare had also used its quirk to present some amusing side entertainment. For example, there is an Easter egg that suggests dubious experiments on the part of Bhaal in creating all kinds of Bhaalspawn, and this occasion uses very, very mundane models for the odder Bhaalspawns. There is also another that pokes irony at its habit of re-using models (but while this one is entertaining, any disappointment at this habit would not likely be lessened).
As to be expected from BioWare and its tendency to create games with vast amounts of scripts that can never be fully quality-tested, there are some overlooked flaws that can be exploited for gains that the player should not have, such as bugs in the process of recruiting and dismissing party members that place duplicates of items in the characters' inventories, and issues with spells that create or affect magical items.
Fortunately, from the perspective of spell effects and artwork, BioWare has improved somewhat. The effects of many spells have been reworked with new decals, sprites and localized lighting of the environment; these can be seen during every battle in this expansion, which is guaranteed to have at least one spell-caster involved. BioWare offers yet more excellent artwork, making use of the desert-oriented themes of the Tethyr to draw maps that are detailed and portray desert-based civilizations well. BioWare also makes use of the element of plane-jumping to have the player visiting locales that are not of the mortal realm yet are exquisitely done.
Much of the sound designs in Shadows of Amn had been ported over to Throne of Bhaal, but BioWare has appropriately included new voice-acting for the events in the expansion. The voice-acting is still as good as it was in Shadows of Amn, though it is more apparent than ever in Throne of Bhaal that some voice actors and actresses are handling multiple characters and are resorting to inflections to differentiate their voice-casting.
If there is an element of the sound designs in Throne of Bhaal that is a certain improvement over Shadows of Amn, it is the musical soundtracks. As befitting the crescendo that leads to the resolution of the Bhaalspawn saga, many soundtracks are of the heart-pounding orchestral sort, with some soundtracks being of a lighter note for the tender moments involving the final resolution of the relationships among the protagonists.
In conclusion, although some promises that Throne of Bhaal had offered are not fulfilled well, especially the ones involving the ascension of the player's party to near-unstoppable greatness, the others are. One particularly well-satisfied promise is a conclusion to the saga that started in the first Baldur's Gate game, and this is what Throne of Bhaal will be favourably remembered for.