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Worth your money a couple of times over, and at least as many playthroughs, TWM2 is a vast improvement in quality to the base game, in every aspect. I even enjoyed it more than TWM which was already very, very good. One way you can tell you are playing a quality game is when you see the developers being "generous" with content - giving you custom-made mechanics and content to play around with, which can't be easily reused somewhere else. In my book, this is always a good sign for the attention to detail and the resources a development team was able to spare. The most prominent example of this is how, early in TWM2, depending on the way you handle a certain quest, you may get the ability to call long-range artillery on targets, and potentially make your life easier later on. I think it was great how this was woven into the main quest and the ability was not simply thrown at the player with some "magic" explanation, but also the fact that it was optional. Another improvement in TWM2 is the increased amount of meaningful reactivity, which provides a lot of opportunities for role-playing, for playing out both minor and major quests differently, and adds replay value. Even quests that are part of the main TWM2 story can be solved in radically different ways, depending on player choice. This is a huge thing for me, as influencing the main plot is something rarely seen in RPGs in general, so I really appreciated being given multiple approaches to solving problems which affected the story, even if just on the TWM2 level. And it's not just the main quest either - the player can influence the outcome and resolution of smaller quests - what's the future of Stalwart's economy going to be, it's trade relationship with Defiance Bay, the fate of a miner accused of murder, there are too many such things to list everything. If reactivity is one thing that stands out when describing TWM2, I think "variance" and "hand-crafted" are the other major descriptors. On every level, the game left me with the feeling I'm playing the kind of hand-crafted adventure, which I hoped PoE would have been at release. Nothing feels arbitrary, nothing feels like "filler". There is meaning to pretty much every combat encounter, and you can see someone made a deliberate decision how many enemies to put there, what type, what class, etc. Talking about "hand-crafted", the number of scripted interactions, and their complexity have both been increased, and they feel better than ever. The designers seem to have sensed one of the complaints I personally had regarding scripted encounters, and the text now gives the player hints of what skill/attribute will be tested before he or she has to choose a character to preform an action. The same feeling of increased developer attention to detail that is evident in the quest and encounter design, is prevalent in the area design as well. I found it a nice change that, in contrast to the base game, it was fairly difficult to predict the layout of any area without actually exploring it - designing more unpredictable areas is a lesson that the PoE team has apparently mastered by now, and to see what I mean it's enough to compare any of the new dungeons to something seen in the base game, like the temple of Eothas or the Sanitarium for example. And once again - area design keeps offering the player multiple approaches towards the quest objective, and this principle meshes perfectly with the overall increase in interactivity to quests and main plot. The final thing that left me positively impressed, and which totally won me over, was the plot and story, which makes sense because you can't experience them fully before you complete the expansion. Even early in TWM2 I spotted what I thought were improvements to the quality of writing, small things like for example a letter the player could find amid an enemy camp, which gives details on the everyday life and concerns of characters and provokes the player to see the other side as more than just "enemies". TWM2's plot presents a healthy chunk of lore to the player, but in total contrast to the loredumps of the base game, this time new information is presented much more subtly, much more painless and through varied ("variance" again) channels - dialogue, reading of journals/notes, overheard dialogues between other characters, and even some riddle solving. The plot managed to surprise me, which felt great, and for a player invested in the setting of PoE and the history of its world, touched on questions which will feel larger than the plot and the game itself. And again, it offered interactivity and consequences up to the very end. I guess that if you've gone far enough in PoE and TWM to consider buying TWM2, you are already at least ok with PoE's gameplay, and want to know if TWM2 is worth it. My conclusion is that TWM2 offers the best parts of PoE content and will easily exceed your expectations P.S. I invite you to also check out my TWM and PoE reviews :)

Summary: The White March is worth buying. Expect tougher, more varied encounters with better enemy positioning and AI that makes use of its abilities and switches targets in during battle, more imaginative and intricate dungeon areas, a more lively and convincing base settlement (the village of Stalwart), and two new companions, which I utterly disliked, but that's just me. Both the new areas and new enemies clearly benefit from the experience the PoE team at Obsidian has amassed while working on the base game. First off, I should say that I was on the whole disappointed by Pillars of Eternity, whenever I've considered its 26 March 2015 release build as the complete game, which I am now convinced it was not meant to be. Patch 2.0 which comes at the same date as The White March, but for free of course, makes some much-needed improvements to enemy and party AI, the user interface, and Class and Base Attributes balance. The "2.0" version of PoE contains one major change to base attributes and that is the changing of the Perception bonus from boosting Deflection to boosting Accuracy. While I believe this to be a needed step in the right direction, I think it's too little to make a difference for me. The addition of enemies with immunities to certain damage types and afflictions will force the player to adapt weapons and tactics to the particular encounter, something which was rarely needed in the base Pillars of Eternity. I started the expansion on Hard difficulty and Expert mode, with a level 9 party. I found it a nice surprise that Eder no longer felt invincible during combat, and that enemies would go for my weaker characters. Although I haven't felt a need to change the party's equipped items, or respec my character to reflect changes to the attribute system or AI, my impression is that combat difficulty has received a much needed boost. I think the encounter design and difficulty deserve a few words of commendation. I've had my party wiped out multiple times by the same encounter, which hasn't happened to me in the base game, save for just a few fights, and I consider this to be good progress in the right direction. In the base game it felt as if the designers were too shy to make encounters hard. I was practically glad when my party got wiped out in the last battle in Stalwart Village - I had made it a house rule that I won't rest spam through the saving of the village. It's no longer the same boring battle over and over, so there is improvement, thanks to the upgraded enemy AI and the addition of programmable behavior for party NPCs. As a side effect of the change to the Perception bonus, your party's tanks are now more vulnerable. What this translates to, especially in combination with an updated AI which tends to disengage and pursue targets in your back lines, is that you actually need to manage your party's movement... somewhat. The amount of party micro needed is still far from the BG/IWD levels, but I'm happy with what little has been achieved. This comes in addition to the nerfing of the fighter "Wary Defender" talent. Encounters seem more "hand-made" and less often look copy-pasted compared to those in the base game. I've been tracking this carefully as I played, and I can say there were enough (although not each and all) combat encounters where the following factors were present, which gave them character: 1. There was context to the creatures' group as it was composed - for example, a group of ogres gathered around the dead bodies of Lagufaeth. 2. There was conversation, either between the enemies, or between my party and the enemies. 3. The encounter was placed on terrain which offered some kind of tactical opportunities for both sides - a narrow pass, obstacles on the terrain which provided choke points or kept a character's back safe, a staircase with multiple turns which disallowed the party from deploying in an optimal combat order, etc. In general, I could tell these were things that had been tested in advance, and encounters weren't just arbitrarily placed on flat ground. I welcome this effort on the developers' part. As for the areas - the developers have kicked into full gear, and the areas are both bigger - on par with the IE games, and just as beautiful, or more so than, in the base game, with multiple entry points and hence multiple paths through dungeons, and varied combat environments which in the odd lucky case necessitate some tactical thought on the player's part. I'd even go far enough to claim that in most TWM dungeons the dungeon design is superior to what's usually seen throughout the IE games. Unfortunately, the old tactic of blocking doorways with your tank is still easy to pull of in some areas, especially in Durgan's Battery. Overall, I'd say the expansion is worth it, both in terms of size and in terms of improvements to gameplay.

Summary: The only valid reason to spend money on Siege of Dragonspear is if you are looking for an Infinity Engine dungeon crawl, and are completely immune to irritation on account of its linearity, limited freedom of travel between areas which runs counter to the Baldur's Gate tradition, embarrassingly bad writing, and to top it off - an uglified 'enhanced' user interface. I spent some time wondering if this game was even worth writing about at all. In the end I thought people should at least be forewarned of what expects them in this paid mod/DLC. Siege of Dragonspear's only redeeming value is the Infinity Engine and its combat. That's about the only thing that has not been tainted by Beamdog's incompetence in every aspect, and has even been somewhat improved by tailoring combat encounters, and AI scripting. That's about the only good news though. The Baldur's Gate games have always been the most open-ended of the Infinity Engine games, up until the rushed Throne of Bhaal, allowing you a lot of freedom in which area you'd visit and which quest you'd approach next. The designers at Beamdog however decided to make their own lives easier at the expense of gameplay, and have made Siege of Dragonspear a railroaded, linear slog through each large area and multiple smaller areas connected to it. This reminded me **** that I and a team of students I had never met in person had to put together in a week's time for a software academy course - sure, our game had to run from the windows command prompt, but the gameplay was pretty much the same - you move from room to room, kill the enemies and can't go back. I didn't expect to get the same kind of gameplay from a purported "Baldur's Gate expansion". Regarding writing - my opinion is if you're looking for good writing in computer games, you're better off reading a book, or playing one of select few adventure games (Grim Fandango and The Longest Journey are the first that come to mind). Sometimes however there are writers so ignorant of their own lack of talent and so full of themselves that the results of their labor deserve a mention in a review. Most people talking about the writing of SoD concentrate on specific instances which caused outrage for various reasons. However I do not think he problem with the game's writing is the themes, sadly it's far more basic - it's the inability of the writer to create distinctive characters, even after such characters have been served to her on a silver platter with the BG license. Playing the game just a couple of hours beyond the starter dungeon nets tens of examples of: - Every last female character of any importance speaks with the same vocabulary, uses the same sort of "witty responses" and sarcasm, and its language is stylistically indistinguishable from the next. - Every female character is obligated to express her superiority to men at every opportunity, in general or in particular - whether that be her father, her boyfriend, her traveling companion (Dynaheir/Minsc), or a male PC. Examples range from Corwyn's daughter, to Skie and her father, to Viconia and some generic duergar friend of hers who serves no other purpose except for her to spite him, to the Safana and Coran exchange. You don't even have to look closely for those examples. - Minsc has to act as if he's signed a contract with a hamster pets shop chain, by which he is bound to mention Boo in literally, and I mean literally, every other sentence that comes out of his mouth. The Boo jokes are so overdone, that as much of a fan as you could be, you could seriously grow to hate Minsc by the end. This inability to draw distinctive characters generally speaks of lack of good literary examples and culture around which a distinctive writer's style could develop, and lack of personal experience with and understanding of real-life people. I'm sorry, but the writing team in this game is worthless as a writer and should never have been let near SoD's script. So, what exactly is left of a Baldur's Gate game when you remove the cheerful high fantasy atmosphere and characters, and the open world? Character progression and combat, supposedly. As for character advancement - if you start at the XP cap for BGI (160,000) you may only advance by two levels in SoD (up to 500,000 XP). Most of character customization comes from items you find in shops and in dungeons. Unfortunately combat in itself isn't enough motivation for me to play through this game, especially since this is not all that a Baldur's Gate game is supposed to be. As a D&D and Infinity Engine games longtime fan, SoD was a huge disappointment for me. The more you care about the series, the less I could advise you to buy this so-called expansion. Really a paid mod with a fanfic-level of writing, and some above average dungeon crawling, lasting between 15-20 hours on Core Rules/Normal difficulty.

Age of Decadence, by Iron Tower Studios is an RPG which sets the standard against which RPG connoisseurs will measure future role-playing games for years to come. The game has a number of features which set it apart from most RPG releases in recent years. To name a few such traits, I must refer to the realistic attitudes, motivations and interactions shown by its character cast and in its worldbuilding, the turn-based combat system with a heavy emphasis on tactics, which yet remains surprisingly intuitive, or to the mind-boggling variety of outcomes of its main story and secondary quests. AoD is truly an exceptional occurrence in the recent history of role-playing games. The game takes place in a post-apocalyptic antiquity, depicting a world not all that different from how people of the Roman Empire probably used to perceive it in the days of the great Barbarian Invasions of IV-VI centuries. The setting is not strictly historical though, so expect partial "contaminations" and amalgamations of Roman era with Ancient Middle East and fantasy themes adapted to those two ingredients of the setting. Whereas other games ask for fast reflexes or perseverance in mouse button clicking, good old-fashioned common sense will be the main requirement that AoD poses of you as a player. This may seem like it goes without mention, but really, in this game "think before you act" is your guiding principle, along with "save your game often". Whether it's about an ingame decision - like fighting a group of six armed-to-the-teeth thugs - or about your long term strategy in character-building - like spreading his character's skillpoints too thin over too many unrelated skills, being realistic about your character's capabilities is what will keep you alive. Putting yourself in your character's shoes, circumventing his limitations instead of playing superman - isn't this what role-playing is fundamentally about? With realism being a chief design principle, building your character should be done with thought as to which skills will complement each other best. The two ends of the continuum are a pure fighter or a pure diplomat, but a player would rarely settle with a character concentrated solely on combat or on talking. In the majority of cases, your character will end up somewhere in between. There is a lot of depth to AoD's combat, with weapons split into groups where increasing your skill with one weapon in a group provides synergic effect to your skill with other weapons of the same group. To add to that, the same weapons can execute different types of strikes, or be used to strike at different body parts, with varying action point cost and to-hit chance. The end result is that switching from one weapon to another, or from a single weapon to weapon and shield, coupled with changes to the types of strikes you will preform with that weapon, can dramatically alter the course of combat, without any changes to your skill levels with the given weapon. Age of Decadence is unlike any other RPG you've played in that it will play out differently every time you replay it, depending on your character's background and skills distribution. The developers at Iron Tower Studios have spent a stupefying 10 years in mostly filling up the game with branches of the main and secondary quests, and with branches of the branches. Reactivity in an RPG can never be too much, and in AoD it reaches a point where the world begins to feel more real and alive than you are used to, especially if you have an affinity for its down-to-earth hardboiled novel-like writing style. Age of Decadence is an RPG done right. The game combines great writing and storytelling with branching storylines more complex than anything you've seen in a computer game. It boasts a perfectly balanced turn-based combat system and deep classless skills-based character creation and development system. What makes the game stand out among the titles of recent years (and decades) is how the quality exectuion of its systems results in you playing an RPG in the way it's meant to be played - looking at the world through the eyes of your character, walking the dusty streets in your character's own sandals. I can say without a doubt - AoD is a classic that just got released. I urge you to buy it and play it now, so that by the time the mainstream becomes alert and also proclaims it a classic, you will be ready to boast about how many times you finished it "before it was cool". And since the game is indie,it has the added benefit of being relatively cheap, so for the price of a triple-A game, you can buy two copies of AoD and gift one to a friend, who would later thank you for showing him the game. With all this said, really, what could be better...? I'd say Age of Decadence II, hopefully.