Baldur's Gate Enhanced Edition

[Orv]

To be fair, BGTutu is the single acceptable first-time mod because it makes the interface and engine less horrendous.

[lobotomy42]

After a year of on and off playing (vanilla) Baldur's Gate, I decided to dedicate some time to finishing it this past week in anticipation of Shadowrun Returns.  Here is my thought-dump:

• D&D Mechanics are terrible for video games.  Is anything less satisfying than the save/rest/oh-crap-random-enemies/reload/rest/rebuff cycle after every major fight?  Is it really tactical to rest & "relearn" different spells, cycling through your entire spellbook, just to figure out which obscure buff counters the obscure curse this particular boss casts repeatedly? I posit: No.  These mechanics might not be so bad in a leisurely-paced tabletop game where a DM can adapt the challenges of the monsters ahead to match the characters who are playing with him, or "speed up" time where appropriate.  But in a computer game they are mostly tedious and I don't think they add any particular layer of strategy beyond "save frequently so you can meta-game."
• The tone is surprisingly modern. Going into this game, I was thinking of it as a "classic" and "Bioware's first ever RPG" -- something from the past that later RPGs would build on.  But what's really striking about it is how not-classic it feels.  The tone alternates between serious and humorous quite suddenly, and both other video games and RPG cliches are frequently taken to task.  To top it all off, the protagonist - whose character is made evident via the journal entries and dialogue options - seems pretty cynical about the whole endeavor, frequently being outright sarcastic or otherwise belittling the predictability of the events around her.  Somewhat ironically, this "classic" almost reads as a parody of RPGs more than a genre-defining piece itself.
• The protagonist is "fixed" not entirely unlike the way Shepard is. Her options in dialogue frequently amounted to "nice" or "nasty" versions of the same thing, much like the conversation wheel in Mass Effect.  In some ways, Baldur's Gate is actually more linear than Mass Effect - there aren't any particularly big choices to be made.  You can generally be good or evil, and sometimes kill some dudes instead of talking (or talk instead killing some dudes), but despite hours of aimless wandering in the early game, the course is essentially fixed.  Considering all the internet fanboy whining about how much deeper and more sophisticated the older RPGs are supposed to be (when compared to modern Bioware stuff) this was surprising.
• The expansion content is generally superior to the main game content. Although the expansion content features less open exploration and more linear sidequests, I found most of it to be considerably more developed and interesting than the main game.  Better integration of story throughout the gameplay (rather than an infodump at the beginning/end of a quest) and more condensed, interesting content all-around. 
• Christ, that was long.  Speaking of content - this game is HUGE.  The scripted/main content alone is enormous, and if you count the time I spent dying/reloading, than this game easily ate up hundreds of hours of my life over the last few years.  I didn't do every little niggling quest, but I think I saw all of the major elements.
• Character progression is really satisfying. The double-edged sword of D&D is that, since the combat is so hard and the save/rest/rebuff system so infuriating, every little improvement in your characters stats (mostly via items, not leveling) makes a huge difference and feels very good.  Maybe for not totally the right reasons, though.

Well, that's that.  My comments as usual sound negative, but I really did enjoy this one quite a bit.  At least, enough to stick with it (on-and-off) for 18 months.

[dibs]

Oh lucky you, BG 2 is even longer. And there are dragons!

[feelthedarkness]

I capital L love the Black Isle family of games and Dev's and only played BG1 for the first time when EE came out.

 

I understand what Lobotomy is saying about D&D mechanics, but I sort of disagree. It presents it's challenges, but ultimately I find it all interesting how limited things are, and how important stripping debuffs are. That might be kind of boring, but I think in game it makes things pretty tense, particularly if you are pushing through areas where you can't rest. 

 

BG2 is an incredible step up from BG1, and after playing them in reverse order, it makes sense how it cemented a legacy. The quest quality, and pacing is a huge step up. It's kind of strange how much of the game doesn't start until you reach the titular city, which doesn't happen until you near the final chapter. 

[lobotomy42]

I capital L love the Black Isle family of games and Dev's and only played BG1 for the first time when EE came out.

 

I understand what Lobotomy is saying about D&D mechanics, but I sort of disagree. It presents it's challenges, but ultimately I find it all interesting how limited things are, and how important stripping debuffs are. That might be kind of boring, but I think in game it makes things pretty tense, particularly if you are pushing through areas where you can't rest. 

 

I think it would be less infuriating if there were clear ways IN GAME to acquire debuffs for certain buffs or at least figure out what the hell debuff you want.  When I got to Aec'Letec and he "held person" my entire party, I tried every single potion and spell I could get my hands on to figure out what would prevent that.  After some googling, I discovered that I needed a Cleric with "Impervious Sanctity of Mind."  I didn't have a cleric, and even if I did, that spell was levels away.  Potions of freedom didn't work.  More googling revealed that "Cloudkill" was effective.  But I didn't have cloudkill.  I could have kept googling to find the location of that spell scroll, but at that point, I'm already pretty out of the game.

 

BG2 is an incredible step up from BG1, and after playing them in reverse order, it makes sense how it cemented a legacy. The quest quality, and pacing is a huge step up. It's kind of strange how much of the game doesn't start until you reach the titular city, which doesn't happen until you near the final chapter. 

 

That is weird! The game is suddenly very different once you get to Baldur's Gate, with most of the action happening there rather than throughout the fields and mountains and such.

[dibs]

Find the list of spell shield and counter spell shields in BG2. It is hilarious, cogs within cogs.

Was the hold person a normal hold person? Can you avoid it by spreading out, or freedom or protection from evil to boost your saves? Ignore me if required, it's been years since I played a BG game, but I often get itchy fingers to install number 2 again.

Edit: looking it up it is a death gaze seems to be dispellable using dispel. Maybe he out levels you a bit! It can be nasty to wander into something you are not prepared for.

[feelthedarkness]

i think free action potions worked, which are different than potions of freedom (haha, maybe a problem in itself) and i think the spell protection from chaos or negative plane protection worked.  I think  i was able to free 3 of my people, and if your ranged ran to the far corners they could range out the demon's spell. that part was really hard. 

[lobotomy42]

I eventually got through it by putting him in one of those invincibility spheres so he didn't bother me, taking out the cultists, running home, sleeping, rebuffing, then walking back in with a bunch of summoned monsters so that he would attack those instead of me, and just spammed him with every direct damage attack I had.  So, there was a solution, although I don't think it makes much sense in the game world context.  (Demon arises to take the world, hangs out in a basement doing nothing for a night.) 

[Gormongous]

I eventually got through it by putting him in one of those invincibility spheres so he didn't bother me, taking out the cultists, running home, sleeping, rebuffing, then walking back in with a bunch of summoned monsters so that he would attack those instead of me, and just spammed him with every direct damage attack I had.  So, there was a solution, although I don't think it makes much sense in the game world context.  (Demon arises to take the world, hangs out in a basement doing nothing for a night.) 

 

That's kind of fair game, though. I think everyone beat Kangaxx the Lich pretty much the same way in Baldur's Gate II. Developers used to include stuff that had to be cheesed around in older RPGs, for some reason.

[Dewar]

Every time I think about starting this game on Steam, I think about how I've never beaten Neverwinter Nights or Icewind Dale.

[lobotomy42]

Well, I guarantee you its better than Neverwinter Nights.  I haven't played much Icewind Dale, but my sense is it's more approachable than that game as well.