finished throne of bhaal again just now and my first post about it that i made a couple of days ago broadly holds true for the whole expansion.
this time out though i decided to play through watcher's keep, which is the optional high level dungeon introduced with throne of bhaal. i'd never done it before because that pitch alone is really offputting; a lot of the dungeon design in ToB is a total slog and the idea of that but harder was profoundly unappealing. neither of those misgivings bore fruit though; the content of the dungeon is actually much easier than a lot of ToB (it feels scaled for you to do it right at the start of the expansion, and then to use all the sick ass loot you get against the ToB bosses).
more importantly though, it doesn't feel like a slog at all. it's actually one of the high points of baldur's gate for me, now that i've completed it. there's a lot of really creative design that leans as heavily on puzzles and storytelling as it does combat. it all just feels really polished and well thought out. its really interesting to play through it and realise how influential this specific dungeon has been on subsequent crpgs, and how much obvious imitators fall short (the endless paths from pillars of eternity 1, a game i otherwise love, springs to mind here).
but most importantly, on the bottom floor is demogorgon and i instagibbed him by just placing a shit load of traps on his spawn point. i whooped with joy when it worked.
