I am still playing the Original. I can’t make the move to BG EE because many of the mods I like weren’t converted over.
I felt exactly the same way when I tried playing. It’s just not aged at all well.
That doesn’t sound all that different from when I originally played it. Usually people hand wave the lack of options during combat by saying “that’s just low level D&D”. Try doing the same thing when you’re playing. Maybe it will help.
The story stays thin for a while. After you get to Baldur’s Gate itself, that aspect will get a little bit better. But not too much.
Part of why I find it hard to go back to the old IE games is 2nd Edition DnD is such a chore compared to 3rd and later editions.
I recommend you keep an eye out for Pathfinder, which is the closest to a modern (Pathfinder/3.5 Edition) IE DnD game we’ve yet had, and from the alpha I played it’s going to be very special.
In the meanwhile why not play some of the (amazing!) Temple of Elemental Evil w/Circle of Eight mod? That’s probably (currently) the best DnD experience to be had outside of actual DnD.
You can have my THACO when you pry it from my cold dead hands
You know, there was a time I would have agreed with this. But… it’s a terrible system, despite it being how I learned DnD to begin with, and I don’t miss it at all every time I fire up BG or IWD. :)
OK, maybe BG’s had it’s time in the sun and I’ll just have to appreciate it for the time that I enjoyed it.
@Scotch_Lufkin, I think I saw you talking about Pathfinder in a different thread and what you posted made it sound pretty cool. That is definitely on my radar.
I did try ToEE with the mod a while ago and I enjoyed the initial part but I kinda fizzled out when I entered a town. Towns are usually my least favorite part of a party-based RPG like this. For some reason I got the impression I’d be in town for a while and decided to move on - but I may not have given that part of the game a fair shake.
I have probably played thru BG 4 times, the last time being maybe 10 years ago. It does start slowly, by design I think. You are meant to wander around killing things, finding friends and treasure. The mines are part of the plot so you can just follow the plot if you prefer.
I always managed my whole team, never letting their own AI take over, so that kept me busy.
I actually know exactly what you are talking about. The “analysis paralysis” sets in and I fear suddenly I’ll have a dozen side quests and there is almost too many things to do. Thankfully, ToEE is almost 100% dungeon crawler, so you don’t spend much longer in town than it takes to resupply, rest, and get back to the Temple proper.
Yeah, Icewind Dale is the same way. I’m more of a story person, but for Icewind Dale, I loved it.
I pretty much bought it Day 1 and played right through it. Never came back, though. While I enjoyed it I felt it was completely overshadowed by the masterpiece that was BG2. Granted they are very different games. BG1 is about the low-level D&D experience which has its peculiar charms.
I think the extreme advantage of ranged weaponry (bows! bows! bows!) and the exploitable fog-of-war creep approach left a bit of a bad taste in my mouth.
What I chiefly remember now, apart from “You must gather your party before venturing forth,” is a few other snippets of voice work: “Somebody get me out of this hellhole!” “Spare no one!” “Shall we continue your lesson?”
Yea, the memories of those will go on forever.
BG2 does start with your characters having more firepower and so the game seems a little quicker I guess.
I would think if you follow the plot and leave out the wandering around you could finish BG1 and move to BG2 in about 1/3 of the time.
Maybe I’ll have to give ToEE another chance.
I’m usually a story person too in an RPG, but if a game has good enough mechanics / systems that can carry it too.
Maybe BG is just a game now where I can only make a little progress per play session before I tire of it, say 1 map clear. I was hoping to play BGEE and then take that character into BG2EE (after a break). I guess I’ll play it by ear and if I feel like stopping then so be it.
Icewind Dale doesn’t have the companion character development of BG but it is a great game. Create your own party and have at it.
I’m also one who prefers controlling a single character over controlling a whole party. It just helps in my mind with the roleplaying aspect, as well as being less busy-work. Luckily, after I hit a brick wall in difficulty with my 6 member party in the first dungeon in Icewind Dale, two friends and I decided to play it through in multiplayer on a LAN. So I controlled a Ranger through the adventure, and I was only a Ranger. And my one friend controlled a Fighter/Mage. And my third friend controlled a Thief.
(Sidenote: The thief got so tired of doing less damage than the two of us that at the end of the game, in the final 10 hours, after playing through the whole 50-60 hours as the Thief, he gave up in disgust and started a new level 1 Paladin. And the Level 1 Paladin almost caught up to the two of us by the end of the game, and not just that, he started doing more damage than the two of us soon after starting too, since we’d found quite a few Paladin-only items through the course of our adventures. I honestly thought his griping about Thieves sucking in D&D was just griping, but after seeing how his Paladin was god mode compared to his Thief, I was convinced).
Thieves can be very deadly in BG or IWD but they do it in sneaky ways, laying traps etc. In a big fight short of plink plinking with a bow they kind of lose their worth. I always liked the dual mage/thief option.
I have solo’d BG as a mage/thief.
There was a big problem in level design in IWD with regards to thieves too. We’d go into a situation, and the two of us would stand absolutely still, while I our thief friend searched for traps, and disarmed them. Except that nearly every place had some traps that you couldn’t disarm. In fact, they were traps that had to be triggered for doors to open and enemies to come in, so that we could advance in the dungeon. It was really frustrating because here’s our Thief, and time and again, he’s basically worthless. He saved us a little damage by finding those little traps, but we knew we had to trigger the big trap, and the enemies would instantly see all of us, and he wouldn’t be able to backstab in most cases because the traps were scripted that way.
Edit: When he switched to being a Paladin, we just triggered all the traps, and those little ones that he’d been disarming weren’t really a big deal at all. We took a little damage there, but in exchange for him not being a Thief, we also dished out much more damage than when he was a Thief.
Yeah, to me the biggest weakness of BG I and II is the D&D ruleset. It was barely adequate for pen & paper games, and for computer gaming – with computers able to generate situational mods and complex systems easily – those craptacular underlying rules stood out like sore thumbs.
I know the early AD&D systems in my bones, so I find the low-level meanderings of BG fantastic and charming, but I would recommend it only with reservations.
Playing it back in '99 pushed buttons I had forgotten were so deeply connected to my brain. Looking at it now, the appeal is a weird little thrill of nostalgia, for a game whose original appeal (for me) was… nostalgia.
Hah! I’d forgotten “Spare no one!” Every now and then I’ll get a sudden flash of “Me onions are waiting,” mainly because what the hell are you talking about, lady?
I recently finished a BG:EE with an undead hunter. Pally. Weird I now see I have this dragonspear add on. I guess Ill roll with it. They still kinda hold up. I saw earlier that It was a “Mask of betrayer” anniversary for NW2. As someone that ran through all of that stuff it would be nice to get a common system. Perhaps this new pathfinder is the right thing? Or the new Pillars?