Okay, I have almost finished the game, only last battles in Suldanessellar are remaining (the palace). So, here are my impressions:
First of all, I sorted out the "power" issues, by talking to that smith and purchasing first the boomerang dagger and later the firetooth in the Underdark. As an Enchanter, Xan gets a far wider range of spells, that work pretty well in combat. In fact, by whatever reason, I never got the fireball spell for Aerie either, and played without it till we got Deheriana. Well, apparently it's quite possible. Acid arrows, Malision, Confusion, Breaches, Death SPells etc are all working out very well
The mod is very very good. It is unfortunate that insanely-developped custom NPCs came so late... they are much better fare than Bio's as far as the game immersion is concerned.
I ended this game with only one BioWARE NPC in the party - Aerie (the ones I had previously, slowly substituting for the customs were Nalia, Cernd and Haer'Dalis). I have to say that between Kivan, Amber and Xan - all of them on *friendship* paths (!) - it was a rewarding experience, where NPCs felt like real companions, who paid attention to what was going on around them.
Aerie I had on the *romance* path, and one can really see the difference between BioWARE's writing recycling the same topic over and over and the custom NPCs variable conversations, covering a wide range of topics.I like Aerie's personality and the story-line, but at some point she just... stalled. If I was Aerie, I would be running away with Haer'Dalis not my PC, because *his* banter with her were much more inspired than my basic two options: a boring one (be strong) and a more boring one (stop whining).
In Xan's case, some of his personal conversations were particulary endearing (his poor health after the Mulahey's Dungeons, for example), and some were expected (covering the bases of PCs personal trials). This attention of the custom NPCs to PC problems leaves in the dust the old premise that there is nothing to talk about with the PC! Interestingly enough only very few of the thematic dialogues and interjections exhibited the "sameness" between Xan, Kivan and Amber, making it an ideal party both class- and content- wise. The number of the dialogues in the friendship path was enough to keep me occupied from the beginning to the end of the game, and I am not even sure if I finished the cycle (probably yes) The reply options were variable enough (except for one conversation, about money, which in my particular situation - I role-played a classical paladin that spends everything on the equipment or donations, and pretty much never had more than 8,000 gp in my purse- I found my self struggling to find some sort of a fitting reply). The timing of the dialogues was pretty good, I had only three of them showing up inopportunely - one that I have mentioned already, upon Xan's joining, and two in the dragon Layers - in Firkraag's and in Adalon's.
A big thumb up goes to the PID options which were the most developped I have seen to date.
Xan's story was quite nicely tied into the game, with a very in-character twist in the beginning and a few Xanish events as we went. It was in perfect accordance with his BG1 role.
The ingenious way of having the banters with the other NPC written and voiced was sweet, and they worked very well with BioWARE banters both style and length wise.
Interjections were numerous, and that in my view was the only minus in the mod. There were just too many... and in some areas they were overwhelming - the Sahuagin city was one, and another, in the Umar Hills inn, not only Xan interjected twice in the same convo with the Inkeep, he also broke into a dialogue at waking up. It was slightly irritating - but, again - for me, though I can't say how much I appreciate the work that went into looking for all these places to interject and adding them
There was only a couple of occasions, where I thought Xan's information was spoilerish (if one can be spoiled 5 years after the game release!): he mentioned that he was sent to fight the vampires at the time when everyone else in the game was vague about it (I have no idea why they did it that way to be honest) and when he piped in that Irenicus would lose his memory in the conversation with Demin (I always liked the Irenicus-Ellesime dialogue, so I was a bit pouty about having the er... "surprise" taken away). Other than that he was always spot on and aware of what was going on.
It's a great mod, and an interesting, well-developped character and definetly a keeper. In conclusion, the cross-mod banter content will be very welcome.