You know, if it hadn't been for Athkatla in BG2, I would have had pretty much zero interest in the game. I didn't care enormously for the story, there weren't many interesting choices to make. But Ahtkatla. Exploring Athkatla was enormously fun. And it showcased that, maybe, just maybe, an isometric game that "abstracts" a lot of its world is the best way to bring a city to life in an RPG. It had character (it almost *was* a character), it was atmospheric, it was dense, it was occasionally dangerous.
The same goes for Sigil in Planescape: Torment of course. How exciting it was to explore j