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Version used for review: 19.0.

You may or may not be aware of Saerileth’s position in the Baldur’s Gate community, but to sum it up, this mod is one of the most-downloaded BG mods out there. Saerelith is a human Cavalier, and is the epitome of lawful stupid. With no hyperbole, this mod is also one of the worst pieces of media I have consumed in my entire life. The only reason to play this mod is for the meme, for a history lesson, or out of self-hatred.

However, despite the fact that the mod is now older than the character herself, and those in the community almost universally agree that Saerileth is both terrible, and – quite frankly – old news, there is a distinct lack of compiled criticism against this mod that seems to have garnered many, many five star reviews from some people out there. I don’t think new players should be encouraged to play this.

With that out of the way, let’s get into some real critique of the writing, game design, and general concepts put on display in the Saerileth mod.

Saerileth is a paladin and Chosen of Tyr. She was born at the base of Mount Celestia, the lawful good plane in the Great Wheel – basically, heaven. Her family was touched by the Eladrin a few generations ago, which is her explanation for why she has slightly pointed ears.

‘Chosen’ are incredibly rare in The Forgotten Realms and are often known as hugely historical figures, the founders of cities, the right hands of deities, slayers of demon lords, and so on. Saerileth? Well, she’s just a 15 year old girl who “had the will.”

She is an author’s interpretation of a perfect person – if the author in question had the emotional maturity of a 15 year old. Saerileth exists only to be Tyr’s slave and to be a wife to the player character. There are many, many dialogues that focus on her age in relation to the player character’s – and how inappropriate it is for the two to be in a relationship.

I do not need to tell you what this is.

It’s true that in medieval times, girls would sometimes marry at the age of 12. I’ve seen this argument used quite a few times online to excuse Saerileth’s age. But we don’t live in medieval times, do we? We can choose today, in the 21st century, to sit down at our computers and download a mod for a roleplaying game that lets us romance, marry, and have kids with a 15 year old child. You can excuse it all you like – it just reflects extremely poorly on you.

The Saerileth mod wants to have its cake and eat it too – she will frequently state that she is considered a grown woman due to being a Chosen of Tyr. Yet everyone else will constantly call her a child. Her being so young adds absolutely nothing to her story and it says nothing about her character other than “look how powerful such a little girl is!” You could change her age to 25 and remove all references to how young she is and nothing about the mod would fundamentally change.

In your VERY FIRST banter with Saerileth, you can kiss her. The mod is so aggressive with its romance that it actively detracts from the character and the entire game in general. However, she will not have sex before marriage. She also believes that one of the prime purposes of marriage is to produce children, and that the only reason for divorce is adultery (otherwise divorce is a sin).

As a paladin, she is more righteous and uptight than Keldorn, Anomen, Mazzy, and Ajantis combined. Saerileth is everything that people hate about paladins dialed up to ten. She will not tolerate evil, though she predates the enhanced edition of Baldur’s Gate 2 so she doesn’t care if Dorn or Hexxat joins you. She’ll leave the party if your reputation hits 6 (Disliked), stating that your heart is infinitely black, or something like that. Not even Keldorn will leave at 6 reputation.

The Saerileth mod introduces another character named Edorem, and he’s also a Chosen of Tyr. Why was he chosen by Tyr? I’m not entirely sure. He’s a whiny, annoying paladin that was the head of Saerileth’s church, and he’s also head over heels in love with her. Edorem is involved with Saerileth’s quest, and will be extremely mad at you the entire time if you’re romancing her.

Yes, this guy (who is even older than the player character) is in love with Saerileth. We just HAD to have a love triangle, didn’t we? He says that as a fellow Chosen of Tyr, they were ‘meant for each other.’ That… isn’t how it works. He also lays flowers by Saerileth’s head every night, so clearly he doesn’t have anything to do.

Later, in Throne of Bhaal, we find out that Edorem killed himself because he couldn’t be with Saerileth. He believed that Tyr wanted them to be together. The entire thing is laughable, and the best part is that the mod wants you to be jealous of him after a conversation between Saerileth and Edorem’s spectre. She says that “he was masterfully attempting to seed jealousy in our relationship” but the only thing I’m jealous of is the fact that he’s dead.

It is actually awe-inspiring how little the mod seems to understand how people work.

Saerileth speaks in garbled Ye Olde Shakespearean that was clearly written by someone with an extremely surface level understanding of it. Half the lines that Saerileth speaks are just… incorrect. They’re wrong, on top of being badly written. Sometimes her banter is nigh incomprehensible simply from how badly written the prose is.

There are also some weird race-related lines that rub me the wrong way.

Shockingly, the mod doesn’t contain any spelling errors that I encountered. There are, however, many gramatically incoherent sentences. There is also extensive usage of descriptive parentheticals, and within these dreaded parentheses I have seen some of the worst written prose I’ve seen in my life. I will now give some examples.

My favourite is this, in response to kissing her fingertips:

(Saerileth’s whole body trembles, and she takes in her breath sharply) Charname. (She breathes your name like an invocation, and she stands motionless until you move)

Imagine someone kisses your fingertips, and your entire body starts trembling. Now breathe in sharply and say someone’s name “like an invocation,” whatever that means. That’s what it’s like to be Saerileth.

At multiple points in the game, Saerileth can die from a broken heart. She literally cannot live without you and if you do something to break her trust then there’s a solid chance that she will just die on the spot. Namely, if you sleep with Phaere or if you ascend to Godhood.

I have an intense dislike of media that romanticizes codependent relationships and Saerileth is the worst of the worst in that regard. Much of the player-initiated dialogue with her runs along the lines of “Saerileth, I live for you,” or “You are my life.” That’s not healthy!

Trying to explain what is so bad about Saerileth’s writing makes me feel like an insane person, because there is not a single redeemable aspect about it, yet there are people all across the internet that say it’s the best mod they’ve ever played.

I hate to say it, but the worst is yet to come.

The Saerileth mod includes four quests. The first involves Saerileth being kidnapped by a powerful devil, the second is an alternative to the Shadow Thieves and vampire guild choice, the third is a mission to find a Fallen Deva named Kesevar, and the fourth (in ToB) involves sex-workers and demons.

Of course, Saerileth has to be kidnapped. It’s an absolutely ridiculous trope that should not apply here. She’s a Chosen of Tyr; she should not be a damsel in distress. Regardless, this mod will introduce you to Edorem for the first time. He’ll tell you that the devil that kidnapped Saerileth is too powerful to take on by yourself, so first you must go and fetch an item called the Rod of Tyr.

Without an option to refuse, Edorem will teleport you to Sigil. The map here is taken directly from Planescape: Torment. Except, this isn’t Sigil. To even include such an iconic and important place from such an iconic and important game demands a certain level of effort and respect, but the Saerileth mod instead fills Sigil with some lore-breaking worldbuilding and backwards game design.

You’re here to find a man named Jharak, who has an item called the Scepter of Tyr. Edorem will tell you to ask around for him to find out where he is. Asking around is a prerequisite for Jharak to spawn in, even if you go into the building where he is first.

Once you speak to Jharak, he’ll tell you he wants a portal key held by an ogre named Mon. Mon will not spawn in either until Jharak tells you about him. So after you go outside and get the portal key from Mon, Jharak tells you that he gave the scepter to the barkeep.

However, if you kill or pickpocket the barkeep from the get-go, he won’t have it. If you kill him or speak to him after Jharak tells you he has it, then he does. The only way to finish this quest is to do it EXACTLY the way the creators intended you to.

Edorem will then teleport you to hell, where you can then save Saerileth and make Edorem angry when you tell her you love her.

The second quest, the Chapter 2 alternative to the thieves and vampires, involves the Order of the Radiant Heart. Once you obtain 15,000 gp, a knight named Havun Clarenshide will approach you, claiming he’s heard of your exploits and wants your assistance in slaying a gem dragon in the Umar Hills.

After you accept, you can simply go and kill it. There won’t be any knights there to assist you, though. It’s probably the easiest dragon fight in the game. It drops the Cloak of Balduran.

After you go back to the Order’s headquarters, there’s a pretty decent chance that Havun will not have spawned in. He did not spawn in either of my playthroughs with Saerileth. To manually spawn him in type into the console: C:CreateCreature(“NSHAVUN”).

I had to do this twice, because after you slay the dragon he then asks you to go and eliminate the vampires from the graveyard district. The scene with Bodhi will play out as normal and after your task is done, Havun will offer to hire a sailor to take you to Spellhold.

On the surface, this seems like a cool idea – to give the player a good alternative to the Chapter 2 choice seems smart. But the execution of it here actively takes away from the main story. There is next to no exposition delivered by the Order of the Radiant Heart, making the main quest feel empty and bereft of rewards.

Saerileth’s third quest is started when you meet her – the reason she travels with you is because she was told that being in your presence would bring her to Kesevar, the Fallen Deva to whom she needs to deliver justice.

Well, some random priest of Tyr comes up to you right after you meet Drizzt in Chapter 6. He tells you that he found Kesevar, so you are then forced to Watchers Keep, where Kesevar tells you he’s innocent and so on. You pardon him and are then free to attack Bodhi’s lair.

Bodhi will kidnap Saerileth and turn her into… a vampire ghost. She calls herself ‘doubly undead.’ Why does this happen? No one knows. Only Kesevar can save her, so if you attack Bodhi before doing the quest, you cannot get Saerileth back.

The creator of the mod was aware of this fact, and instead of doing anything to fix it they just put “make sure to do her quest first!” in the readme. It’s bad design through and through.

The last quest takes place in Amkethran and starts with a man advertising a sex worker who is “out of this world” and sends you in to see her. She greets you as such.

Of course, the mod couldn’t just have racist, sexist, and pedophilic undertones. It also had to compare sex workers to open graves in the ‘good answer!’

There’s no point in wasting time inside the building, because as soon as you leave the inn, Saerileth will tell you she senses their evil. From there you can dispel the illusion and they threaten to return and have their revenge. They never do.

Despite Saerelith being so special, she actually has no special skills or abilities from her celestial heritage other than having a stalker and having terrible stats.

Saerileth’s strength, dexterity, and constitution, all suck. She has, without a doubt, the worst stats of any frontliner in the game. The Brawling Hands and a strength belt should make her competent, however, but there is no way in hell that you’re playing this mod because you think Saerelith would be fun from a gameplay perspective.

As a cavalier, she’s immune to charm, fear, poison, and morale failure. She also gets a 20% resistance to fire and acid, and can’t use missile weapons.

There are multiple items added in by this mod.

Saerileth’s Holy Symbol is terrible, even if it’s just an RP item. It doesn’t protect from critical hits and it can’t be removed, so Saerileth is completely vulnerable to critical hits, meaning that she will die very consistently. Thus the only reliable thing you can have Saerelith do is be a ranged fighter. As a Cavalier, though, that will prove difficult.

In the Chapter 2 alternative route that this mod provides, you are given a quest, and one of the rewards for that quest is the Cloak of Balduran. It’s one of the best items in the game, no doubt. 25% MR is nothing to sneeze at, especially when stacked with other items.

The Hammer of Tyr is an item that Edorem gives you as a reward for Saerileth’s kidnapping quest. It’s basically a worse version of Defender of Easthaven. Not the worst warhammer in the game, but definitely not the best.

Late in SoA, Saerileth will receive two tomes. One will increase wisdom, and the other will increase charisma. Only good characters may use them. I don’t see any practical purpose for these except for increasing Anomen’s wisdom to 17 if he’s been knighted.

Saerileth’s Wedding Ring is received after you marry her at the end of SoA. It’s the same as a Ring of Protection +3, but it can only be used by paladins. You could give it to Keldorn and he would be able to wear it. The ring does stack with magical armour.

All in all, Saerileth is of below average versatility in terms of combat, and there’s always going to be a small chance that a powerful enemy will get a critical hit on her and kill her outright due to her lack of a helmet.

One area that I will admit isn’t terrible is the artwork that Saerileth comes with. She has quite a few portraits in her files, with multiple versions of her default portrait and a few different alternate portraits for her. There is a catch, however, to how un-terrible this is.

There is also another portrait. A portrait that is swapped in when you initiate dialogue with Saerileth in Throne of Bhaal, and request that she wear *that* outfit. Upon selecting this dialogue option, Saerileth’s default portrait will be swapped out for one titled “SAESEX.”

Just when you thought it couldn’t get worse, huh?

The alternate portrait I used is actually really good. It’s not an exact match with the SoA style but after I put it between my character’s portrait and Sarevok’s, it looked great. I feel like the only reason the mod creators used the default portrait they did was so that they could include the “sex” version.

The voice acting in this mod is not good. There is a significant amount of it, and most major characters in the mod are voiced, but it’s all bad. Saerileth herself sounds like they forced a piece of cardboard to read her lines at gunpoint.

It’s impressive how much effort went into this mod for it to end up being this bad. There are 442 audio files of dialogue in this mod. There are also some joke files, which pokes fun at Edorem.

Ironically enough, the track that plays during Saerileth’s romance is fantastic. It’s taken from Heroes of Might & Magic 3, and it sounds like it could have been a part of the vanilla game.

Saerileth is, perhaps fortunately, completely irredeemable. She completely breaks the immersion of Baldur’s Gate 2, sticking out like a sore thumb. She interjects so often that sometimes it feels like the story is about her.

She has opinions on everything and if you display even a hint of nuance in your opinions of things then she’ll claim you have a black heart or are in league with the enemy, at which point she will leave the party or simply die on the spot.

On one hand, it is truly, utterly awful. On the other hand, it is a total meme in how bad it is. It’s hilarious to watch the other NPCs insult her and to see her react to the evil things you can do just to spite her.

At the end of the day, I cannot recommend anyone play this. It makes a great case study of things to avoid when making an NPC mod, though, because it does practically everything wrong.

Thanks for reading.

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