Baldur's Gate Tales of the Sword Coast Review

I played on: Mac, Ipad, Steam Deck
I payed: £16.75 on Steam, £9.99 on App Store
Available on: Windows, Mac, Linux, Ios, Android, PS4, Xbox One, Switch
Notes: This is an expansion to the original Baldur’s Gate. 
You can read my review for the base here.
I played the Enhanced Edition which plays almost the same as the original but with modern resolution sizes, and a few quality-of-life improvements.

Baldur’s Gate released in 1998 in the US and in 1999 across the UK and Europe. It was an instant success. Both gamers and critics loved it. An expansion and sequel were greenlit right away. This first expansion, Tales of the Sword Coast, would release a year after the base game in 1999. Europe and the UK only had a 4 month wait between the release of the base game and the expansion. Baldur’s Gate 1 would eventually get a 2nd expansion but that wouldn’t be until 2016. Still, that’s a story for another day. Seeing as this is an expansion and not a stand-alone entry, I will avoid repeating what I mentioned in my review for the base game. If you’re interested in the base game review, then it will be linked above. Let’s dive into this rather interesting piece of extra content!

Tales of the Sword Coast doesn’t extend the story past the final credits of the base game. Instead, it introduces a new town for the player to explore. Ulgoth's Beard is a small town located just east of Baldur’s Gate along the banks of the Chiontar River. Exploring this little town and talking to its inhabitants will see you being sent to three separate locations, each with its own story and lore connected to it. These range in quality wildly. One sees you teleported to a remote island, trapped alongside many other unfortunate souls. Another has you exploring the tower of a hero from times past that was driven mad. The last adventure has you setting out on a seafaring voyage to discover the fate of Baldurain’s ship, the Wandering Eye.

As you enter town your party will be flagged over by a strange wizard. After introducing himself as Shandalar, he explains that he needs your help to recover his lost cloak. If you agree to help him then he will teleport your party to an isolated island of ice. This island is somewhere to the far north according to your journal. I suspect that it’s an island somewhere within the Sea of Moving Ice, or the Endless Ice Sea within the Icewind Dales. This isn’t a long quest at all. You explore a strange underground maze, finding various other adventurers all stranded on the island. Eventually you will find the cloak, at which point you’re teleported back to Ulgoth’s Beard. While it doesn’t do that much to stand out this adventure is a nice little distraction. I did enjoy seeing the northern region of Faerûn. It made me excited to play Icewind Dale. All-in-all this adventure is pretty mid. It’s fun but doesn’t do enough to stand out.

When you return to town you will find a few townsfolk that all point you towards Durlag’s tower. A tour guide is promoting his tour of the mysterious tower outside the local inn. Meanwhile inside the inn you will find a friendly dwarf trying to recruit adventurers to recover his family dagger from the tower. Lastly in one of the local houses you will find Therella, a mother worried sick for her son, who has gone to loot the tower himself. Once you arrive at the tower you will begin to uncover the history and fate of Durlag, and his family. 

Durlag Trollkiller was one of the most renowned adventurers of his time. The game never makes it clear when this time was, but his tower has sat abandoned for a while by the time you find it. After a successful life as an adventurer, that left him very wealthy, Durlag constructed his tower and settled down with his family. The vast riches and powerful artifacts stored inside the tower made it a target, however. One by one Durlag’s family were killed and replaced by doppelgangers. Eventually he discovered this and slaughtered the invaders while they wore the faces of his wife and two sons. This drove Durlag insane with paranoia. He built 4 levels of a twisting labyrinth beneath his home filled with traps, puzzles, and dangerous enchantments. This was to protect his home, and the resting place of his family. It’s a very interesting story. One that’s soaked in tragedy. Seeing the echoes of these events play out as you delve deeper and deeper into the subterranean tomb is a remarkable experience. 

The gameplay is where this part of the expansion comes up short. The puzzles here are more annoying than enjoyable. There’s lots of moments where you must move your mouse over every part of the environment to see what you can interact with. It’s a real pixel hunt. Normally if you hold TAB then anything you can interact with is highlighted. Not here though. I’m not ashamed to admit that after the first level of the underground labyrinth I ended up resorting to a guide.

The worst of the worst was the chess puzzle that you find yourself trapped within on the 3rd level. Each of your party members find themselves teleported to a square on a chess board. Each of your party members represents a chess piece. You can only move in the way that the piece you represent would move in chess. For example, your bishop party member can only move diagonally across the board. If you break these rules, then you’re attacked with an endless lightening spell that will eventually kill everyone in your party. Enemies lay in wait on the other side of the board. You need to kill all of these to be able to progress. The problem is that they can move freely, and worst of all, can cast fear on your party members. This causes your party to wander off in any which direction completely out of your control. Of course, this triggers the trap and kills everyone. The only way I found to overcome this awful puzzle was to load an older save from hours back. I then returned to town, brought a wand of fireballs, and fired it at the floor on the other side of the board. This caught the enemies in the splash damage, allowing me to kill them, without even seeing them. I hate this puzzle. It caused me to rage quit the entire game. I’m glad I returned to it as the story around Durlag is amazing. It’s just a shame it’s tied to such an annoying dungeon.

Lastly, we have the best quest within this expansion. The search for Balduran’s missing ship. If you talk to a scholar that lives by the docks of Ulgoth’s Beard, he will introduce himself as Mendas of Waterdeep. He explains that after founding the great city of Baldur’s Gate, Balduran longed for more adventure. He set out, once again, on his ship, the Wandering Eye. He was never seen from again. Recently though the remains of the Wandering Eye have been spotted on an island within the Trackless Sea. Mendas wants you and your party to set sail for this island and recover Balduran’s lost logbook. This will shed some light on the fate of the legendary explorer. Once you’ve agreed to help, you’re quickly shown to your own ship and then you set sail. Unfortunately, you encounter a storm and end up shipwrecked on the shores of the very island that Balduran once did. You find a village consisting of the descendants of Balduran’s crew. These people are being hounded by a pack of werewolves that have taken up home within the remains of the Wandering Eye. This is a fantastic setting with an incredible story that has some very noteworthy twists to it. Learning more about Balduran’s past was a real treat. It feels even more intriguing when it’s put next to what you can learn of his fate in Baldur’s Gate 3. Without a doubt this was my favourite part of this expansion. While you don’t spend all that long on the island, around 3 hours in total, it’s maybe the best part of both the expansion and the base game.

Tales of the Sword Coast is what it says on the tin. It’s 3 stories all set within the Sword Coast that help to add history to this already storied land. They are all connected by a delightful little town that has so much going on in it. This expansion doesn’t do anything the base game didn’t already do. It’s more of the same, but when it’s more of Baldur’s Gate, that’s hardly a bad thing at all.

Recommendation Rating: 7 out of 10.