Hmm… not sure. What are you playing in (full screen/windows/borderless)?
It was a messed up steam notification apparently. Its gone now after a reload. Also I changed my rez to 1920x1200 so it fits my screen right. Glad I got that fixed as I am only like 8 hours in.
How does hiring an adventurer work? Can I hire them just to guard my keep? I have gotten far enough along that I have barracks built at my keep.
As I recall, once you hire one, they’re available for the whole game, just as any other companion, and yeah, you can just remove them from the party and use them for stronghold quests.
Would be interested to find out what you think of the characters and story after your replay. I think I’m the only on the board who finds the writing dated and subpar compared to more recent RPGs.
I’m about 60 hours into my replay, nearing the end of Chapter 9 (the middle of Throne of Bhaal) and I have some thoughts. Note that I’ve put hundreds of hours into PoE 1 & 2 as well as other RPG fare such as Pathfinder or Tyranny.
I think the writing is very good, and the stories they tell are just as good as the modern stuff, so I don’t agree about sub-par writing. The tales being told, from serial killers to mystery of the Planar Sphere are all really engaging and fun, and the dialog has ranged from laugh out loud funny to very cool history that really draws me in.
I don’t think the companions are as interesting as what everyone remembers, or I just have a party composition that doesn’t engage much with me or one another. There is some interaction and it’s fun when it happens, and I do really like these characters - don’t get me wrong. There are a lot of them, too - quite a few companions here, with unique equipment and (most of them have) side stories to resolve.
But the villains are excellent, the enemies are really fun to tackle, and overall BG2 even 20+ years later (especially with the EE quality of life improvements) it’s a fantastic, old-school game hindered mostly by it’s ancient mechanical system than anything else.
I’m surprised by how bland the Throne of Bhaal is though - I remember just loving it so much, and have played through it twice now (this is my third overall play through of BG2+expansion) and it’s really just one big combat slog after another, with some small errands here and there to run. And the level/power creep is crazy, another case for low level D&D being just more interesting fundamentally than the high level stuff. I’m still enjoying it because the combat is a lot of fun for me and the enemies and encounters are really well crafted, but BG2 has a LOOOOOT of content and that includes combat but also great locations, many fun characters and entities to interact with, and a lot of really fun ways your previous choices can bite you in the ass (though there has been some really cool “hey look who’s back from BG2” moments for sure). I’d give BG2 EE a 90% and Throne of Bhaal an 8.5 in today’s review system.
EDIT: In fact, playing BG2 again has gotten me feeling like reading some of the old AD&D novels that I enjoyed in Junior High/High School, so I picked up a copy of The Annotated Dragonlance Chronicles and already put nearly 200 pages in this last weekend, it’s a ton of fun.
I don’t think it is, but it also just tries to be a pretty straight-up heroic fantasy. While there’s a lot of care put into every quest and there’s basically no fetch quests at all, it also doesn’t try to hit a lot of complexity. You never question the nature of a man or fall into murky moral waters. You’re being served a burger, and it’s the most delicious burger ever crafted, but it’s still a burger.
Ah, maybe I’m being a bit harsh, and maybe I have a lower threshold for humor/silliness in RPGs (wasn’t a fan of the humor in Divinity OS either) Still, I checked online for some samples of banter from the two games BG2 / PoE, and I like the ones in PoE a lot better. The BG2 banter feels like the characters are acting out some amateur skit. For example:
vs
I guess to me both of those are entertaining.
Act 1 complete ! Onward into the city!
I’m not sure how far I’ll get. The UI and its clunkiness, the quality of animations in 2019, etc. are pretty off-putting to me (a confessed graphics whore). So much so I installed Tides of Numenera since I bought it two years ago and never played it.
That’s literally the best dialog scene in all of PoE1 vs. some dialog in BG2 that I’ve hardly ever heard because I never have Korgan in my party.
As terrible as Korgan is, he’s a lot more interesting than Sagani.
That’s not PoE’s best. Eder might be my all-time fav companion in any RPG.
Got to admit that is one of my favorite exchanges in PoE, paired against one of the less bad banters on the BG2 link I found.
I never used Korgan either. Was there anymore to him than grouchy mercenary dwarf? I quite liked Sagani though.
Korgan is fabulous. Shoddily made, indeed. Gutter water, I heard you man.
Imoen is kinda meh, whatever. She’s more of a MacGuffin than a proper NPC.
Eder is fabulous. Sagani I liked okay; she’s not super deep but her story is far from bad if you spend the time with it.
Eder and Aloth are the best characters in POE1. I found Durance just tedious (most likely due to that massive info dump/conversation options that you get first meeting him and later on, that I confess I just turned off my brain). The banter with Eder and Sagani in POE is the only memorable one that I recall and in general the banter is few and far between. Not even close to dragon age levels of banter. I am quite surprised that anyone would remember these games for the banter, it seems to me that there was more banter in the BG series but my memory is foggy and the banter didnt seem to be particularily memorable.
Every Dragon Age game is far from perfect, some more than others, and each one differently so. But they each have some of the best companions in any RPGs I’ve played.
I would agree with that. You change party members around just to hear the banter.
@Scotch_Lufkin thanks for mentioning the Dragonlance books. I just finished Dragons of Autumn Twilight and have started Dragons of Winter Night.
You’re very welcome! I’m enjoying them quite a bit myself, I’m about half way through Winter Night!