Why do you think that? IWD and Baldur's gate use the same ruleset, so if you could handle endgame IWD I don't really see why BG would be too overwhelming.
-
Hey, guest user. Hope you're enjoying NeoGAF! Have you considered registering for an account? Come join us and add your take to the daily discourse.
17 years later Baldur's Gate 2 is still one of the best rpgs ever made
- Thread starter bati
- Start date
Why do you think that? IWD and Baldur's gate use the same ruleset, so if you could handle endgame IWD I don't really see why BG would be too overwhelming.
Probably in IWD i need to focus on the combat while Baldur's gate i also need to focus on the RPGish part.
I like dungeon crawler aspect of IWD. More battles less talking.
bati
Member
That's true, if you want a balanced party it can take a while before you collect all the npcs. I actually had a minor problem with that in my last campaign because I wanted Mazzy in my group and didn't get her until I was about 15-20h into the game.
Right now I'm gearing up for an evil playthrough, will likely use a PC Swashbuckler (will not dual) with scimitars (Belm + Scarlet as soon as they become available), Edwin, Viconia, Korgan and Dorn. Last spot will be open so I can do npc quests but I might eventually fill the spot with Haer'Dalis or Sarevok later in ToB.
loganclaws
Plane Escape Torment
Guys do I play the EE with party AI on or off?
bati
Member
On, but tweak their profiles so your casters won't waste their spells needlessly.
Barrel Cannon
Member
That warm fuzzy moment when you read a gaffers post that resonates with you.
Alrighty folks, just bought BG1+2 EE. First time playthrough decided to go paladin, from reading around I've picked the following stats/proficiences. Will these suffice for a noob?
Inquisitor
Str: 18/70
Dex: 18
Con: 18
Int: 11
Wis: 13
Cha: 18
Weapons:
2-h swords ++
Crossbow +
2h weapon style +
Thoughts?
Inquisitor
Str: 18/70
Dex: 18
Con: 18
Int: 11
Wis: 13
Cha: 18
Weapons:
2-h swords ++
Crossbow +
2h weapon style +
Thoughts?
plushyp
Member
Both games focus on different things so your enjoyment depends on whether you like story or combat more.
That said, the one thing I hated in DnD games was killing trolls. Always that annoying requirement of of fire/acid weapons etc etc
bati
Member
Looks good.
Audioboxer
Member
The combat in this game really is a chore. Walking everywhere too :| (I read there are spells and what not for faster movement). I've put the game on easy basically just to auto-kill everything as I can't see me caring to invest any time into the combat.
I've gone back to playing Planescape EE for now after putting a good few hours into BG2.
I've gone back to playing Planescape EE for now after putting a good few hours into BG2.
MisterShine
Member
Go to the BaldursGate.lua in your doc folder and increase the fps to 45 or 60. This will speed up the game. It is pretty much mandatory for me now.
Also rtwp combat just isn't for everyone. I hope Planescape clicks better with you.
Very good. Try and use the crossbow more at low levels, but after 3+ you should be fine for melee all the time. Make sure in BG1 you gather the stat tomes (later in the game) and use them on yourself.
Also add halberd/2h style pips as you level.
Edit: if you'replaying on easy don't bother with ranged unless forced to. You're plenty tough enough
Excellent. I've started on Normal for now. Won't be able to play any tonight got work early but I'll dig in tomorrow.
Count of Monte Sawed-Off
un33dab@dpu$$y
Audioboxer
Member
Great tip, everyone new should know this. Unlike Planescape there is nothing under options to change FPS in-game. 60 might be a bit fast, 45 seems a good inbetween.
Planescape seems more story based. although everyone keeps saying how good BG2 is on the story front.
CrichtonKicks
Member
it is
BG2 is not that content-rich. The ES games and Witcher are much, much longer games when played to completion
I love BG2, but some people here are exaggerating quite a bit
My initial run of BG2 back in 2000 took me in excess of 150 hours. That's right in line with my initial run of The Witcher 3.
read the scrolls in the loot chest from the mines
Part of the appeal of BG2 isn't quite so much the core narrative(which is more endearing if experienced in its entirety as part of the trilogy), but the sheer volume and rewarding sidequests. Now a staple of most Bioware games(and other CRPGs) to feature a multitude of ancillary stories and decision points(many which reflect on how your party responds), but BG1, and BG2 especially pushed these concepts forward and somewhat revolutionized the genre as such. The sheer freedom at play in progression was really inviting and unique.
Planescape is better known for its narrative strengths and worldbuilding, but BG certainly is a well-rounded package even if the highs don't quite reach Torment.
bati
Member
I think this also messes with spell durations which could cause balance issues in some cases, so use at own risk. And some battles are already hectic at 30 fps if the enemy is hasted, you'd have to be really on your toes to react in time at double that speed if one of your squishies gets targeted .
I agree though, default movement speed is a little on the low side and you don't get enough Boots of Speed for your entire party until you hit ToB. Haste isn't a good solution either because it causes fatigue.
Truth. BG2 is still a phenomenal achievement. Heck, BG1 was just phenomenal, too.
I'm currently replaying the game (EE + tons of mods).
Definitely still the best WRPG, although the Witcher 3 was close.
Definitely still the best WRPG, although the Witcher 3 was close.
Thankfully.
bati
Member
Opposite for me. Those areas were too big for the amount of interesting content they had - and there were too many of them scattered all over the map.
Yeah definitely, it had a lot of big areas, but I wouldn't call them "fun" to explore. They felt more like a chore than anything.
bati
Member
It's a bit extreme, yeah. Armor class becomes largely irrelevant in ToB because enemies have such ridiculous thac0 levels. And most of the HLAs on their own are kinda overpowered.
I've done multiple campaign restarts over the last few days, trying to get different party compositions going, and even though I was really reluctant to play it at first I now keep sticking with my evil party - PC (swashbuckler), Edwin, Dorn, Korgan, Viconia (Sarevok will be added in ToB). Not only are these npcs creme de la creme when it comes to combat (relative to other npcs available, of course), they also have this no-nonsense mentality and they don't take shit from anyone. I only wish I could have inquisitor in my party for the high level dispell.
This sentiment makes me sad. The exploration in the game MADE the experience what it was for me. My father used to watch me explore every nook and cranny of every area in both Baldur's Gate games, and that's equally as fond of a memory as the game itself.
bati
Member
Some of the magic was probably lost in EE with the introduction of highlight key. Nowadays it comes down to 'scanning' the areas with your TAB button pressed. And I'm probably not exaggerating when I say that these maps have maybe 10% of surface area that's actually interesting (random encounter, quest, etc) and the rest is just filler with often extremely annoying layout to navigate through. By the time I usually reach Nashkel I'm completely sick of the wilderness areas.
Lancelot
Member
bati
Member
Well, since the thread got bumped I'll put down some of my impressions from playing an evil aligned party (PC, Dorn, Viconia, Korgan, Edwin):
It's great. Amazing even. At the beginning I was somewhat worried because this game tends to give out reputation points just for showing up but if you start at low rep (for playing any of the evil alignments) and pick up Viconia and Dorn, both of which come with a -rep modifier, you end up with plenty of buffer. In fact, after being pretty rude to some of the quest npcs my reputation got so low that I became worried I'd have to deal with guards in the city so I had to reign in my chaotic evil nature a bit. After that it was smooth sailing. I lost access to some of the factions like Order of the Radiant Hart - honestly, after the shit I pulled there with Dorn I'm surprised I wasn't hunted down like an animal for the rest of the game; this naturally limited my opportunities to get even more good reputation by locking me out of specific quests so in that respect I'd say the game tends to auto balance itself pretty well. The same goes for recruitable companions, some of the more noble ones will refuse to join you - and can I just say how amazing it is that you get the opportunity to kill a lot of them on the spot, when you meet them? Works for good aligned characters too, it's fantastic. Good luck seeing anything like that in a modern Bioware game.
XP wise I think I'm in a pretty good spot. I just entered Ust Natha and my party has ~2.65m XP on average. I did finish all of the accessible content in chapter 2, which includes optional fights like the liches (including Kangaxx), Guarded Compound, etc, but I didn't do any of the companion quests, except for those that are in my party. I rescued Haer'Dalis and Hexxat but dropped them afterwards. I wanted to do Neera's quest but Edwin protested about her presence in the group and gave me an ultimatum - and it wasn't even a contest, one npc is a random whiny wild mage and the other is arguably the most overpowered caster in the game. Now it's true that my XP is a little higher because I'm not playing with a full party but I don't think I'd be in a significantly worse spot by having a full roster when compared with a good aligned party that had access to more quests and better XP rewards in some cases. tldr - going full evil won't penalize you too much when it comes to XP.
Companions are amazing. They're either killing machines (Dorn, Korgan) or incredible support and utility (Viconia, Edwin). I rolled over the Illithid lair so hard that it felt like taking a bulldozer to a weed garden. Undeads? LOL says Viconia as she turns two thirds of enemy groups and completely trivializes these encounters. Unlike their good counterparts everyone in my group is a single class which means their progression is faster - you get access to better spells sooner, your special abilities get stronger sooner, etc. Couple that with pretty good stats for their respective roles and you get a party that will mop the floor with every enemy you come across. And oh man do they have personalities to match. My only regret here is that I fucked up at the character creation and made an elf which locked me out of romance with Viconia. But seeing Edwin put the moves on her is equally amazing so I'm not even mad. I also wasn't able to side with Bodhi because I'm a thief, but I had no intention of doing that anyway.
Roleplaying wise I'm pretty happy with the options provided - you can flaunt your ego and power at almost every opportunity, display impatience, threaten people with violence, make good on those threats, etc. As mentioned before I had to hold myself back due to my already low rep which alas allowed the annoying npcs in De'Arnise keep to continue breathing. At least I got some minor satisfaction by checking out alternate paths and seeing what the outcomes are -
. At this point I have to mention the extra content put in the game by Beamdog - you can tell right away that it was written in a different time period and yet it doesn't seem out of place relative to the rest of the game. Pretty good job all around I'd say - Dorn's quest in particular was excellent.
Anyway, to anyone on the fence about playing an evil party - give it a shot, it's worth it if you can suppress your goody two shoes nature for long enough that you start enjoying the darker side of this amazing game.
It's great. Amazing even. At the beginning I was somewhat worried because this game tends to give out reputation points just for showing up but if you start at low rep (for playing any of the evil alignments) and pick up Viconia and Dorn, both of which come with a -rep modifier, you end up with plenty of buffer. In fact, after being pretty rude to some of the quest npcs my reputation got so low that I became worried I'd have to deal with guards in the city so I had to reign in my chaotic evil nature a bit. After that it was smooth sailing. I lost access to some of the factions like Order of the Radiant Hart - honestly, after the shit I pulled there with Dorn I'm surprised I wasn't hunted down like an animal for the rest of the game; this naturally limited my opportunities to get even more good reputation by locking me out of specific quests so in that respect I'd say the game tends to auto balance itself pretty well. The same goes for recruitable companions, some of the more noble ones will refuse to join you - and can I just say how amazing it is that you get the opportunity to kill a lot of them on the spot, when you meet them? Works for good aligned characters too, it's fantastic. Good luck seeing anything like that in a modern Bioware game.
XP wise I think I'm in a pretty good spot. I just entered Ust Natha and my party has ~2.65m XP on average. I did finish all of the accessible content in chapter 2, which includes optional fights like the liches (including Kangaxx), Guarded Compound, etc, but I didn't do any of the companion quests, except for those that are in my party. I rescued Haer'Dalis and Hexxat but dropped them afterwards. I wanted to do Neera's quest but Edwin protested about her presence in the group and gave me an ultimatum - and it wasn't even a contest, one npc is a random whiny wild mage and the other is arguably the most overpowered caster in the game. Now it's true that my XP is a little higher because I'm not playing with a full party but I don't think I'd be in a significantly worse spot by having a full roster when compared with a good aligned party that had access to more quests and better XP rewards in some cases. tldr - going full evil won't penalize you too much when it comes to XP.
Companions are amazing. They're either killing machines (Dorn, Korgan) or incredible support and utility (Viconia, Edwin). I rolled over the Illithid lair so hard that it felt like taking a bulldozer to a weed garden. Undeads? LOL says Viconia as she turns two thirds of enemy groups and completely trivializes these encounters. Unlike their good counterparts everyone in my group is a single class which means their progression is faster - you get access to better spells sooner, your special abilities get stronger sooner, etc. Couple that with pretty good stats for their respective roles and you get a party that will mop the floor with every enemy you come across. And oh man do they have personalities to match. My only regret here is that I fucked up at the character creation and made an elf which locked me out of romance with Viconia. But seeing Edwin put the moves on her is equally amazing so I'm not even mad. I also wasn't able to side with Bodhi because I'm a thief, but I had no intention of doing that anyway.
Roleplaying wise I'm pretty happy with the options provided - you can flaunt your ego and power at almost every opportunity, display impatience, threaten people with violence, make good on those threats, etc. As mentioned before I had to hold myself back due to my already low rep which alas allowed the annoying npcs in De'Arnise keep to continue breathing. At least I got some minor satisfaction by checking out alternate paths and seeing what the outcomes are -
they're hilarious but -4 rep isn't worth it
Anyway, to anyone on the fence about playing an evil party - give it a shot, it's worth it if you can suppress your goody two shoes nature for long enough that you start enjoying the darker side of this amazing game.
FrontalMonk
Banned
Agreed with both of these sentiments, but I think a big part of the problem is that while I did play BG1 before BG2, I didn't get past Nashkel until after I had beaten BG2 for the first time, and I had decided to go back, so I was pretty spoiled by BG2's zones full of stuff to do, and when I got into BG1's wilderness it felt a lot emptier.
Edit:
I've thought about going all evil but always figured you'd get locked out of a lot of quests and find yourself underleveled as a result. Good to know that's not the case.
Are you planning to 5 man it all through SoA and (ToB spoilers)
pick up Sarevok?
bati
Member
(endgame spoilers, read at own risk)
SoA will be 5 manned until the end where I'll go back and pick one of the npcs so I can sacrifice them for +2AC, but mostly to avoid the dex loss. In ToB I'll probably pick him up because I've never used him before. Even with Geas it feels weird to have him in a good aligned party. I'm pretty happy with my current setup of 3 melees (swashbuckler, Dorn, Korgan), especially given how little space you have in most areas, but I plan to give him Ravager so reach won't be a problem and he can attack from the back line like Dorn.
About that. If you haven't used him before, you might look up Deathbringer Assault before you settle for using only the Ravager. As far as I remember, the Deathbringer features are locked to 2-H swords only, so using the Ravager has a bit of give and take to it, even if using it is likely still the best option meta-wise.
JayWood2010
Member
Is the story really that good? And should you play the first one?
FrontalMonk
Banned
The story is pretty good and it has arguably one of the best (and best voice acted) villains in VG history. BG1 is a good romp too, but the pertinent plot points from the first game are all established inside the first hour of gameplay so it isn't required (and BG2 is the better game anyway).
Edit: Unai's post is eerily accurate.
It's not Planet Escape: Tournament, but it gets the job done.
It's pretty much the quintessential fantasy adventure, a lot of memorable characters, a villain you'll love to hate and great, memorable side-quests.
I would say skip BG1, personally.
bati
Member
Good point, I'll have to check the description once I can recruit him. Do you know if it's possible to game the Trial of Selfishness? Specifically, which party member gets targeted (so I could bring one that I never used). I can live with random on each game load but if it's tied to something more static I'll just eat the dex loss.
edit: Finally got Sarevok and the Deathbringer Assault passive isn't listed anywhere. People on forums are saying that it works with Ravager though. I also ran into a situation where the same NPC kept getting held in the Trial of Selfishness so it's definitely not random.
I play Baldur's Gate 2 almost once a year and have since 2000. Thanks to the modding community that's still thriving even to this day, every playthrough feels original. And that's just the thing. There's REPLAY VALUE, which seems to be missing from almost every cRPG made nowadays (Witcher 3? PLEASE. It's not even a RPG. However visually stunning, it's just an action game with crap game-play and a few poorly executed role-playing elements tossed in). There are exceptions to what has become the disappointing rule. Dragon Age Origins was one. Love that game, too. Assassin's Creed Odyssey is pretty decent, which is amazing considering it's open-world.
But let's be honest. I doubt any game will ever top BG 2 for me. As a role-playing game, it's got everything a player would ever want and more.
But let's be honest. I doubt any game will ever top BG 2 for me. As a role-playing game, it's got everything a player would ever want and more.
bati
Member
P
pcg
, if you're looking for newer RPGs with good roleplaying and C&C I'd recommend Age of Decadence and both Expeditions games (Conquistador and Vikings). AoD has insane replay value and allows you to observe the story from multiple different angles, the two expeditions games are more Ike traditional RPGs but they heavily feature cyoa events and stellar writing with plenty of roleplaying opportunities.
Last edited:
MiyazakiHatesKojima
Banned
I want to play those game so much! I have the time to invest into it but first, I need to finish Splinter Cell and Persona 3 FES on the PS2 before delving into this wonderfully compelling RPG. What's the consensus on the PS2 version?
klosos
Member
Yep same here, BG2 is the greatest game of all time imo. Yes games can be prettier, longer etc, but for me BG2 will always be the grand daddy of all rpgs.
I would also recommend underrail and the great Divinty original sin 2 which is a game which comes close to the BG2 greatness.
