I finally got to this quest yesterday evening, and there was lots I enjoyed about it, including changing it up with respect to quest structure, feel and aesthetic. Personally I don't mind Baldur's Gate going through a bit of an industrial/steampunk revolution, but then I only really dip into Faerun for cRPGs so I obviously don't have the emotional attachment to it that others understandably do. It looks to be a questline that has mutliple options for resolving it, too, so I'm looking forward to trying out some new ideas next time.
Though one of my bugbears in many cRPGs are fights where there are civilians to save who don't seem to have any decent sense of self preservation, and that certainly was in evidence. And I did have some other niggles too.
I enjoyed the Iron Throne as a bit of change of pace, and managed to get most of the hostages out on my first playthrough without knowing what to expect. The main thing I found confusing here was on the approach when there was a message from Gortash telling me to turn around or he'd destroy the facility. It wasn't clear to me that there would be an opportunity to save people if I didn't turn back: I'd have liked a bit of reassurance when picking whether to progress or not that things were still salvageable and I'd not done something earlier on that meant I'd set myself up to fail.
Back in the foundry, the battle upstairs was okay-ish. I'd still have preferred the gnomes to put more distance between themselves and the enemies, and the blinded gnome did die. But at least everyone else survived without me having to nanny them.
Downstairs was a complete washout. The battle was already in progress when I got down there, with a bunch of clumps of enemies each attacking 1-3 gnomes so no real opportunity to use AoE spells/bombs to thin out enemy numbers early on to minimise casualties. Though frankly I might as well have just blasted them as all the gnomes died anyway. Even the guy who survived to the end of the battle got taken out when the final Steel Watcher blew. As I experienced it in my first playthrough, I can understand why this would be unbearably frustrating if someone were determined to save everyone - or indeed anyone - against all the odds. I just found it fairly disappointing that the setup at the start was so balanced in favour of the enemies and against the gnomes, and that the gnomes' AI didn't have them prioritise putting distance between themselves and enemies more.
I am assuming, by the way, that if I sneak past and don't trigger the cutscene upstairs with Toobin after rescuing the hostages and just go plant the bomb, then the Gondians would die along with everyone else. If that's not the case, then we could do with some sort of hint in game that the gnomes would know to escape in time even if I don't talk to them.
Obviously, if saving the Gondians isn't an issue, this would all be a hell of a lot easier! Or if it were possible to sneak back into the Foundry and tell Toobin and one of the gnomes downstairs to give me 5 minutes to plant the bomb then just make a run for it without trying to fight more than necessary, though I guess it's reasonable that my raid on the Iron Throne put the facility on high alert.
