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Mod author: Lava Del’V0rtel

Version used for review: 5.0.

“Southern Edge is a new district for our favorite BG2 city – Athkatla – available from the very start, once you talk to Gaelan and hear his offer. The aim of the mod is to make the first hours of the game more interesting, as some players might have gotten bored with doing the same quests over and over again.“

Southern Edge is a mod that allows the player to explore further into the city of Athkatla, and there are many ways in which it does this well, as well as some where it fails to stick the landing. Overall, though, it is certainly an enjoyable experience.

Athkatla feels like a much larger city than Baldur’s Gate, in no small part due to the fact that we only get to see selected districts of the City of Coin. There’s not much opportunity to get ambushed in the side streets of Baldur’s Gate, because the entire city is one near-seamless map.

Because of the district-based map of Athkatla, we miss out on seeing some of the smaller, more relaxed locations in the city. Southern Edge changes this, by introducing what is essentially a second City Gates area — it’s just a handful of buildings surrounding one of the many gates into the city. Visually, it completely succeeds in making itself feel like Athkatla, and I enjoyed the sense that I really was on the edge of the city as the path teetered off into a road lined with trees.

For such a small place, however, there is a lot of adventuring to be done here. Perhaps too much, in my opinion. I enjoyed the main quest of the district well enough; a librarian and former adventurer named Mairo is seeking out a parasitic shapeshifter that disguises itself as different types of texts. He’s the only custom-voiced character introduced by the mod, and he is plagued with a case of “bad-microphonitis” — the bane of Baldur’s Gate mods since the dawn of time, but I didn’t find it too distracting.

Once you’ve had a chat with him and accepted the quest, though, it takes little to no effort to find all four pieces of the puzzle. One of them is held by a character staying in the only room in the local inn, and the other three are just as simple to acquire. Once they’re all obtained, Mairo teleports you to another custom area that is equally as well crafted as Southern Edge to gather some items.

Once the items have been gathered, you can return to Mairo to fight and kill the parasite. For your trouble, he gives you a Tome of Clear Thought. All of this taking place within Southern Edge feels a little too grandiose for my tastes, but it’s a fine quest with some characters that are interesting enough in the moment.

This is just the largest of the quests within the district. Every single building in Southern Edge is associated with at least one quest, and there are more unique NPCs in this little place than the whole of the Government District. You’ll encounter two familiar faces from the first game — three, if we’re counting Nessa the Cow — and they have fairly involved quests as well. Some side quests start outside of Southern Edge and resolve within it. Overall, the place just feels a bit overloaded in comparison to the rest of Athkatla.

That very well could be a good thing if you’re looking for cool new quest content to experience, but if you’re looking for something that feels like an organic extension to Athkatla through-and-through, then I don’t think Southern Edge quite makes the cut. Don’t get me wrong, it’s a well crafted mod that serves its intended purpose of giving the player some new early-game quests, but in increasing the size of Athkatla, it also serves to make the world feel like a slightly smaller place — it feels like Dreppin and his cow have been placed into this area to wait to interact with you. Obviously they have, but you don’t want the player to feel like that’s the case.

There’s also the odd case of conversations being oddly cyclical. There is no clear end point when talking to a good number of the NPCs in the district and it can feel like you’ve missed something when you run through the same three dialogue options three times just to be met with a brick wall. Repeating dialogue in of itself is not a bad thing, it just feels a little odd here.

Other than quests, Southern Edge also introduces new merchants. There’s a wand merchant, and there are shops within the local inn and temple. Almost every vendor in Southern Edge offers some new and expensive magical item, and while none of them are particularly ‘overpowered’, their presence does feel a mite convenient.

Southern Edge is a fun mod that I’d encourage people to include in at least one playthrough. In terms of city extensions, I believe there’s still ground to be covered in this style, but the rest of the Athkatlan Grounds series takes a slight departure from what was done here in Southern Edge — to its benefit, in my opinion. Perhaps I’m being a little harsh on Southern Edge. It’s almost excessively creative for a place that feels like it should be a little boring, but if that sounds more like praise than criticism to you, then I wholeheartedly recommend it to you!

Thanks for reading.