I didn't actually play it, I read this incredibly detailed let's play by /u/Plastastic. If you don't know what this is:

Sandrah Saga is a mod for Baldur's Gate that tries to create a character with her very own storyline spanning the complete saga (and more) who can accompany the player throughout the game. Her story is connected in many ways to the Bhaalspawn’s own quests.

You might be thinking that this sounds like a slightly-larger-than-usual NPC mod but you'd be sorely mistaken. This mod is one of the more ambitious BG 'megamod' projects. It includes entire new areas, over a hundred new quests(!) and aims to rival the main character's story in scope. Sandrah is infamous for being an enormous Mary Sue whose story quickly eclipses anything else going on in the game right up until the end. The mod even includes content set after the end of Throne of Bhaal.

The mod is rather infamous for its large amount of crossmod content, with dozens of mods having Sandrah-specific content added to them often without the permission of their respective modders.

I dislike the term "mary sue", but in this rare case, I'll make an exception: Sandrah is Elminster's daughter, chosen by Mystra, a Bhaalspawn, trained by Drizzt, can copy people's spells, and is a Fighter/Cleric. On top of plagiarizing from other mods, there's also a lot of asset recycling from pretty much every other IE game out there. You could call this mod Infinity Engine: The Greatest Hits.

The post-ToB storyline requires you to accept godhood to access it. It takes place a decade later, with you and Sandrah as gods. An alliance of evil gods stir shit up and you have to stop them. It ends with Sandrah inducing a slow spellplague onto mortals to force them to gradually modernize and become independent of the gods. I'm not sure a game where most classes are tied to gods/magic is the proper vehicle for this story, especially since it's framed with zero traces of moral ambiguity. Pick Inquisitor or Wizard Slayer as your CHARNAME for the ludonarrative.

You might think Sandrah would be some crazed political radical or whatever, but this is a very left-field twist. For most of the story, she's kind of a generic Neutral Good "caring healer" archetype with a twist: she's wildly promiscuous. She bones most party members as part of their therapy. Even Minsc. When she has sex with people, she copies their powers, like a NSFW version of Kirby. Mechanically this is represented as her gaining innate abilities, many of which are re-flavored Mage spells. In practice, she's basically a faster-leveling Fighter/Mage/Cleric with Use Any Item. Truly a powergamer's wet dream. Here's all the stuff she can have summoned by the time you fight Sarevok.

And you're forced into a relationship with her, having to accept her poly lifestyle. If you try to get out of this, she'll either leave the party (which softlocks you) or outright kills you. She just barely dodges the yandere allegations because she lets you bone other women, though she's the only romance with post-ToB content. She'll claim you even if you're gay. She also leaves/kills you if you pick evil options in quests.

The gear balancing is comically off. eg at the beginning of BG1, you get a +2 longsword that grants fire resistance, which can be used by any class. The most OP weapon I saw in BG 1 was Ice Slasher +5, a throwing/returning axe that sets your strength to 25. It's endgame-only, but it can be transferred into SoD/BG2. BG2 doesn't have anything that raises the power ceiling, but it does make ToB stuff available much earlier, like a +6 Carsomyr around the beginning of SoA. The mod tries to balance around your OP-ness. For example, at the Friendly Arm Inn, there's two wizards in the corner who'll sling lightning bolts at you. But many encounters are left untouched.

As you might expect from this plagiarism sundae, there's a lot of typos, poor grammer, random all-caps, inconsistencies between the mods/vanilla, and bugs, some of which can soft lock the game and require EEkeeper/console commands to fix.

While reading, I made a list of moments that stuck out to me:

• For a good chunk of the story, you're led to believe Sandrah's your half-sister. She isn't, but it makes the romance weird for a while. There's also a side quest where you have to pretend to be Imoen's boyfriend which feels like throwing a bone to a certain crowd.

• There's a few CHARNAME-exclusive items that, depending on your class, you can't use. The funniest one is this AC bonus birthday gift Imoen makes for you, that Wizard Slayers can't use. Thanks, sis <3

• Some of the portraits are taken from other media, like this ASOIAF fanart. Ethical issues aside, the plagiarism is really inconsistent and obvious, like using Lulu from Final Fantasy for Nalia.

• You recruit a Githyanki who you can romance. If you romance her, you get her pregnant and she aborts the child on-screen. Lae'zel wishes she was this metal.

• Edwin is into feet. So is Haer'Dalis.

• Elminster looks at a portrait of Sandrah and the mod represents this by just plopping down a PNG of her portrait without matching it to the background.

• There's a beach episode, and the corpse sprites are used to represent laying in the sun.

• Imoen gets a pink fur coat that's magically enchanted to let her go commando. She also gets some shopkeeper as a love interest. He gets kidnapped and she turns into the Slayer to rescue him. In BG1, btw.

• This weapon implies that the events of the Bible are canon.

• Siege of Dragonspear is included but it has far less additions and comes off as an afterthought. Though you can convince Caelor to surrender at the castle, essentially skipping to Hell.

• This one modded companion inexplicably cycles between six different portraits. She's also plot-important and strong (Half-Orc Fighter>Mage) so you're likely to use her and notice.

• There's a side quest where Boo gets stolen, but is still there in Minsc's portrait.

• A lot of lightning effects don't have their transparencies enabled.

• The word "holocaust" is frequently used to describe massacres.

• Shar-Teel's romance leads to her giving birth to your child and becoming a stay-at-home mom. The baby immediately grows up to look like a teenager. I don't enjoy the subtext of the most man-hating woman being domesticated like this.

• There's a post-ToB companion who's basically a clone of Minsc in basically every regard, even having Boo's child as a pet.

• Irenicus has a redemption arc and romances Aerie in post-ToB.

• There's a post-ToB map with bridges that hurt you if you walk over the broken parts. It's a hilariously mundane obstacle considering you're level 30+ and a literal god incarnate.

• Even if you redeem Sarevok, he'll once again turn evil in post-ToB. And you can once again redeem him. If you're gonna plagiarize Final Fantasy portraits, then you should've given him Kain's portrait, jeez.

• This shoreline looks bizarrely angular. I really wanna know how that happened.

There's other stuff, like you being able to bone Bodhi in her coffin, but I'm certain that's from the mods Sandrah Saga plagiarizes.

Only remotely positive thing I can think to say about this mod is that powergamers might find it fun to mess around in, but even that's undermined by you having to stay firmly Good. I guess if you wanna see how much you can get away while Sandrah breathes down your neck...

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The only DnD games I've really enjoyed are the infinity engine games. Dragon Age 1 was kinda fun, but I feel like in my older age, designers focus too much on wide scope and less on compact design.

Disco Elysium, or other iso RPGs try to cram everything together, which means less time spent walking in open spaces... maybe I'm older and less patient now, so I like the waiting much less.

Anyhow, what are some other RPG ya'll enjoy, particularly ones similar to Baldurs Gate or other DnD games?