At long last — Baldur’s Gate II ships

Mac game publisher MacPlay today confirmed that the company is shipping Baldur’s Gate II: Shadows of Amn, a new fantasy role-playing game for the Mac. Those who pre-ordered the game from MacPlay should be receiving their copies soon.

Set in the Forgotten Realms, Baldur’s Gate II: Shadows of Amn is an Advanced Dungeons & Dragons-licensed role playing game originally developed by Bioware Corp. and published for the Macintosh by Interplay. It’s the sequel to Baldur’s Gate, a game that made it to the Mac courtesy of the folks at GraphSim Entertainment.

The game is set in the kingdom of Amn. You’ll travel through the wilderness and into the dread caverns of the Underdark as you go on a quest for artifacts of great power and hoards of treasure. The game enables you to play either as a good or an evil character depending on your predilections, and if you’re already a Baldur’s Gate player, you can import your existing characters from Baldur’s Gate and its add-on pack, Tales of the Sword Coast.

The game features real-time gameplay, and incorporates hundreds of monsters and new non-player characters to interact with. It sports support for 800×600 pixel resolution, a full-screen mode and 3D acceleration to improve the quality of visual effects. Multiplayer support for up to 6 gamers is also featured.

Baldur’s Gate II: The Shadows of Amn was declared gold master by MacPlay several weeks ago. Gold master is the final step before a product goes to manufacturing. Sources at MacPlay indicated that the game’s production was held up for non-technical reasons at the last minute, so this is indeed good news for Mac RPG fans who have been waiting for weeks to see their copy of the game.

Baldur’s Gate II: The Shadows of Amn is available for US$49.99. System requirements call for a Power Mac G3/233MHz or faster; 128MB RAM; Mac OS 8.6 or higher (and it’s been Carbonized for Mac OS X as well).