Is this really such a big problem when your DM is a computer?
I guess? Wasn’t it based on the modifier or something? So instead of subtracting the positive AC your add the negative AC? I really don’t remember this bending my mind.
Does IWD 2 fully utilize those features? I really had meant to play it but never got around to it. It’s still sitting somewhere. If it has all that stuff I’ll really want to pick it up.
IWD2 is 3.0, if I remember correctly, which isn’t quite as good as 3.5 (the latest version), but it’s still got most of the customizable stuff (feats, skills, races, etc), and you can multiclass, etc.
Things like rangers are ridicolous to take more than one level in because you get just about everything a ranger has at level one, for instance.
I just did this a couple of months ago. Replayed both BG1 and BG2 in sequence with a ton of addons. Most of the larger BG2 addons are extremely low quality. In particular, everybody says that The Darkest Day is excellent… don’t you believe it. Stay away. The only really well done new content is the Soulafein NPC. I gots me some kinky drow gay sex with him. Oooooh yeah.
IWD1 and 2 are underrated games. They pale compared to BG2 and PS:T, but seen on their own they were really pretty sweet hack and slash RPGs.
Ahh Solaufein. The Eclipse killed my überleat party in 15 seconds and then crashed my computer. They killed my computer!
Dude you’re not kidding. That is a tough fight, even on easy difficulty!
It is when you’re trying to understand the mechanics of the game and can’t figure out why you’re getting pantsed by a goblin. :-)
IIRC, it is based on 3.0 D&D, same as NWN, though its interpretation is a bit different (e.g., it has the special races like Drow in it). No prestige classes, from what I remember, but it still had the base 3.0 D&D experience going for it. Solid hack fest.
Also, ToEE used the 3.5 D&D rules and was the only D&D game to do so pre-NWN 2, I believe. It’s more than a little buggy and not much more than a dungeon hack either; but if you loves yourself some tactical turn-based combat, it’s a good’un. :-)
. . .
OH GOD IT BUUUUURRRNNNNSSS! GET IT OUT GET IT OOOOUUUUUT!
Hmmm, Big Picture is simply a way of crowbarring in stuff that was never intended to work together. Almost every BG2 mod is written using WeiDU, a system that was intended to make stuff work together.
If you want the ultimate BG2 experience then you grab every WeiDU mod in existence, and there are hundreds, and leave the Big Picture at home.
I like the fights-on-steroids encounter boosts to vanilla that Big Picture adds.
The actual content mods I’ve found are… really, really, really bad, like a few here already mentioned. So from the list I posted, I’d revise it to install:
BG2 Fixpack
BG2 Detectable Stats (needed for AI scripts below) (note: you need to remove STAF15.ITM from your override directory first; this is a bug in BG2 fixpack) http://america.iegmc.net/bpdetectstat/BP_DS_1.2.rar
The Big Picture (without all the happy mods it still installs AI and encounter tweaks, worth the effort)
NPC Banter Pack http://www.pocketplane.net/banter
More interjections, more often. Unlike most fan content these are actually well written.
NPC Flirt Pack http://www.pocketplane.net/npcflirt
Ever wished BG2 had X-rated options during your NPC flirting? Then this mod is for you. Now you can know precisely how bad a lover Anomen really is. (Also fairly well written. Women write good porn.)
eSeries AI scripts http://www.gibberlings3.net/cirerrek/eseries.php
Run your NPCs on autopilot. They’ll use pretty much every wacky ability they have, heal each other, use potions, etc.
BG2 Tweak Pack http://www.gibberlings3.net/bg2tweaks/index.php
Should be called “Cheat Pack”. Allows you to do thinks like make all items already identified, make ammo stacks unlimited in size, etc.
Worldmap
With that, you have a huge game without the gaping maw of suck that is most user-generated content. It’s still somewhat more challenging than generic BG2.
I mucked around with BG Trilogy this weekend a bit as well. It works pretty well, but I really didn’t like being level 1. If you DO try it, be sure and get
BG1 NPC pack http://www.gibberlings3.net/bg1npc/index.php
which brings the NPC banter up almost to BG2 levels (although Imoen becomes REALLY annoying… she’s supposed to be.)
If you want to just download everything everyone ever made:
http://modlist.pocketplane.net/
If you want to add new NPCs these reviews seem fairly accurate from my mucking about:
http://www.ironworksforum.com/ubb/cgi-bin/ultimatebb.cgi?ubb=get_topic;f=2;t=024694;p=
You still don’t seem to understand that you are missing all the WeiDu mods, which are the GOOD ones.
Get them.
Edit: ok, I type too fast for my own good, some of those listed are WeiDu. But there are lots of others.
Waiting for NWN2 was driving me crazy, so I started Baldur’s Gate 2. I’d never got around to playing it. I’ve loved most RPGs I’ve played except for the original Baldur’s Gate, which I absolutely loathed. I thought it was the most boring game I’d ever played through. The combat wasn’t fun at all with its RTS interface, the dialogue and story weren’t interesting at all, and worst of all, the world itself wasn’t very fleshed out. They never really explained what kobolds were, what goblins were, etc. Unlike Planescape and Fallout, and other RPGs where you explore a world and you find out things about it, in Baldur’s Gate they just assume you’re familiar with that particular D&D world, and frankly, this D&D world just didn’t seem all that interesting to me.
So I started Baldur’s Gate 2 (with Throne of Baal also installed, but I started with Shadows of Amn, of course), and after two nights of play, I’m already bored to tears. Is the story ever going to get compelling? Is the dialogue going to get better? Imoen was the only one I kind of started caring about, and they took her away, so that was nice. Unlike BG1, I now have a quest that I somewhat care about, since I started liking Imoen in BG2. Arie had absolutely terrible dialogue with her uncle after I rescued them. “Uncle, you’re safe! Yes child, but now you must go out into the world, blah, blah”. It was so cheesy and stupid. I’ve just rescued this guy and the first thing he says to his niece is that she has to leave the circus and make her own way in the world.
Whatever. Everything feels like a caricature at this point. Just like Baldur’s Gate 1, there’s no explanation of the kinds of creatures I’m fighting. In the laboratory I escaped from I was fighting these things that kind of looked like bats or something, and they had a funny name, but I guess in a game like this it doesn’t matter what you’re fighting.
Please tell me it gets better. I bitterly played all the way through BG1 because people on the CGS+ forums kept telling me it would get better later. And then when BG2 came out, everyone said it was more like Fallout and Planescape, the dialogue was better, the NPC interaction was better, there was more story, etc. So I really had high hopes for this one, but so far, this game has really sucked almost as bad as BG1.
Lum: Should I add the two banter and flirt packs from above? Do they make the game more enjoyable?
Is the dialogue going to get better?
Good God no.
The banter and flirtpacks will not help with what you dislike about the game. They just add more talkiness to the NPCs - more of the same sort of dialogue as is already there. If you like the existing party member lines, it’s good. If not, not.
And you definitely won’t like the romances.
I can’t imagine comparing BG2 to Torment. They are complete opposites.
Everything I listed was WeiDu. If you mean the ones written by the author of the WeiDU format, well, there’s a few rebalancing mods that are included in the “Big Picture” pack, some extra weapons that are wildly broken in terms of play balance and a bi-curious male Drow. I had little interest in the bi-curious male Drow.
BG2 is very much D&D; so if you’re not a D&D aficionado you won’t get most of it.
Although seriously who gives a shit where the kobolds come from? I mean honestly do you ask yourself that in every video game you play?
Kick Aerie the fuck to the curb, with a quickness. She NEVER gets any better. She is a whiny annoying git. NPCs I find interesting, and why…
Minsc: he’s just a caricature. If you like him, keep him. You’re not going to get deep Shakespeare from him, but I find his gleeful idiocy amusing.
Jaheira: possible love interest. Pretty well written. I won’t say more to avoid spoilers, but if you boot her from your party ever you close off most of the romantic angle.
Viconia: possible love interest, if you like insane Drow women. Amazingly, most people seem to like insane Drow women. Amusingly evil in general.
Jan: I think Jan’s great, both from a powergaming standpoint (thief/illusionist multiclass) and from a dialogue standpoint. He’s a Chaotic Neutral gnome who constantly goes off on these rambling wacky dialogues about his “relatives” that are actually mocking you or someone else in your party. Plus in the banter pack he tries to steal Minsc’s hamster several times just out of spite. Great stuff.
Anomen: Almost as irritating as Aerie.
Nalia: Almost as irritating as Aerie.
Edwin: Almost as irritating as Aerie.
Yoshimo: Don’t bother with him as you don’t keep him the entire game. Further explanation would involve spoilers.
Imoen: Returns midway through the game. Again, spoiler, yadda (but not much of one, as you kind of know you need to rescue her and all).
Keto: fan-made NPC that’s one of the few good ones. Drunken cowardly female bard, what’s not to love. (Note: not a possible romance, she has some standards)
The rest of the NPCs are ciphers: not a lot of personality. Personally to experience the game with decent NPCs both for balance and dialogue I’d play through with Minsc, Jaheira, Viconia, and Jan, and keep swapping different characters in the 6th slot doing their storyline quests during Chapter 2 (you get Imoen back during Chapter 3, and need to keep her). Minsc is a good tank, Jaheria and Viconia can handle healing, and Jan makes a good caster/thief. Hit on Jaheira or Viconia depending on which type of elf you write fanfic for.
The banter pack is good, it adds more dialogues that are usually pretty amusing. The flirt pack is also pretty amusing. The new R-rated romantic options are… funny.
As for the game’s plot? Chapter 2 is HUGE and non-linear. Chapter 3 (after you pay off someone to take you to Spellhold to rescue Imoen) is where the actual plot of the game kicks off. The writing isn’t up to Planescape standards, but few games are.
Hmmm, thanks Lum. That was really detailed, and very helpful! You’re awesome!
So where do I find this Viconia, if I want to get her in my party sooner rather than later? Is this in the bigass starting town? Or one of the towns I’ll go to later? And if she’s in the starting town, which district?
Jan also sounds interesting. Where do I find him?
Well, kobolds were a bad example I suppose. What I’m trying to say is that there was very little explanation and description of the world around me in BG1. In Planescape, right off the bat, they start slowly explaining why there are corpses walking around. Then they explain about the Dustmen, then they explain about the City itself. Then they start explaining the planes. And so on and so forth. Every time you meet or fight a new creature, it shows up in your journal, along with a huge portrait and nice description. Same with NPCs you meet. There’s just a lot of investment into describing the world around the player.
Now, the Fallout games didn’t have the portraits and the descriptions in the Journal, but they had a lot of NPC dialogue describing mutants and ghouls and all the different factions and their motivations, and the post-apocalyptic world in general. So again, there was a lot of time and effort invested in making it a rich world for the player.
Baldur’s Gate kind of pretended to have this, but it didn’t really. Now, since I’ve played BG1, I’ve met some friends and played lots of pen and paper D&D with them. I’ve become a lot more familiar with that world than I used to be. But Baldur’s Gate sure didn’t help me much in that regard. Kobolds are a bad example now, because I’ve seen them in other games, and I know of them now from D&D. But at the time I played BG1, I had no idea what they were or why they were attacking me. I just took them to be some kind of wierd wild animals, but I had no way of even knowing what they looked like beyond the small blurry graphics of BG1.
In Icewind Dale, they pulled off another trick, where they made the one city of Kandahar seem very warm and inviting, and then told you go fight in the dungeons. I played that game multiplayer all the way through with my friends, and we had a blast. The game never pretended to have a long detailed, interesting storyline, it was kind of like Diablo in that it gave you a reason to go into dungeons and have at it. Baldur’s Gate seems to create this false expectation of a more detailed story when in essense its kind of like an outdoor dungeon crawl absolutely brimming with Fedex quests and “Go and kill this thing and come back” quests.
Actually, I recommend saving most of the sidequests for Ch. 6. That way, if you decide the plot is dragging at the 150-hour mark, you can go straight for Ch. 7 and complete the story. Plus, this way you have more opportunities to level up Imoen, who simply rocks from a powergaming standpoint (level 7 thief dualed to mage).
I typically run through with Minsc, Jaheira, Keldorn, Jan, and rotating 6th slot, which is used for plot characters and Mr.-kicks-ass-and-takes-names in ToB.
Viconia and Jan can be found in the Government District. Viconia is actually a pretty good NPC, but watch out for the reputation hit (which can be annoying in the early game).
Fuck that gay city. Oooh, it had nice, soothing music to distract you from the fact you were tripping over roots and rivers and hill gradients and anything else they could think of to make navigating that hellhole as difficult as possible.
Kuldahar: the trailer Park of the Forgotten Realms.
My favourite NPC related moment of BG1 was getting to the titular Gate of Baldur, finally, and meeting a party prospect in the first screen. We had a chat, he was a cleric (chaotic neutral and crazy IIRC), I joined him up and gave him all the heavy armour I’d been carrying since the fuck I don’t remember when. Plate helm, plate pants, plate boots, plate breast-, uh, plate and a honking big morning star.
I walk off with the rest of the party and he just stays there - and I realise he is too encumbered to move. For some reason this struck me as really funny so I kicked him out of the party and left him there. To the best of my knowledge he is there still, immured in metal, awaiting my return.
He later shows up in PS:T as Vhailor. He’s a little crazy after spending all that time as an armor display.