Author Topic: What's so great about Baldur's Gate?  (Read 13808 times)

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Offline Herra Tohtori

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Re: What's so great about Baldur's Gate?
So, if one is just getting into this.... Baldur's Gate original, or the Enhanced Edition?

EE. Even if just to save yourself fron the pathfinding issues of the original.
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Offline Polpolion

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Re: What's so great about Baldur's Gate?
FWIW I've heard that EEs are a waste of money since both the games have an active modding base that's already fixed most of the issues the EEs address. Disclaimer: I've only played stock BG1 and about 30 minutes of a fanmade sourceport on Android. I have BG2EE but I haven't had the time to actually get around to playing it yet. :nervous: Still, I'd suggest looking into it, or better yet if anyone has any comments on this I'd be happy to hear a more reliable appraisal.

EDIT: Though if you have nothing right now I doubt EE is a bad deal, unless you manage to snag the originals on sale.
« Last Edit: March 06, 2014, 08:55:22 pm by Polpolion »

 

Offline AdmiralRalwood

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Re: What's so great about Baldur's Gate?
FWIW I've heard that EEs are a waste of money since both the games have an active modding base that's already fixed most of the issues the EEs address.
On the one hand, yes, most of the bugfixes in the Enhanced Editions (not all, but most) were taken pretty much straight from popular "fix" mods. On the other hand, the main reason people get the EEs (besides having those fixes in the base game) is for the upgraded engines. The EEs are still perfectly moddable; most major mods had EE-compatible updates within a week of BG2:EE getting released, if memory serves.
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Offline Fury

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Re: What's so great about Baldur's Gate?
Not to mention some people might prefer to simply install a game and get to play, rather than wrestle with finding and setting up mods.

 

Offline TrashMan

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Re: What's so great about Baldur's Gate?
Except for the ****ty railroad plot.

"You are suddenly captured by bandits who appeared out of nowhere and somehow surprised you all! You wake up in a dungeon with all of your stuff gone." ****! Why not just say "Rocks fall, everyone dies is knocked unconscious" and be done with it! :p 

I loved BG1 but whoever wrote the plotline for BG2 needs ****ing shooting. While there are some great ideas in there did they have to tramp them through every ****ty D&D cliche? Thank **** they didn't do that for BG1 or it would have been "**** Candlekeep, let's have them all meet in a tavern where a shady guy gives them a quest!"

I don't see anything s***Y in it. At some point you have to accept the DM's story direction.

There's nothing unbelievable about being captured by master bounty-hunters/asssins/whatever backed up by a VERY powerful mage, in your sleep.
From the PC's perspective, he defeated Sarevok and was the hero of Baldurs Gate. The danger was over.
There would be no need to keep a high guard. And again - Irenicuses spells.
It's not like you could win against Irenicus at that point anyway, so even if they had Irenicus come and fight you in a battle that you *WILL* loose, I don't see how that is better.


Quote
From a new player's perspective BG2 is even worse quite frankly. Thrown in a dungeon with a bunch of random nobodies that I'm supposed to care about/find funny/endearing whatever and to me it's just a huge wall of dialogue and chat I don't give a damn about.

Isn't that kinda the problem when a protagonsit has established ANYTHING?

PC comes from town X? Well, I don't care about that town, I didn't live there.
PC has a mother? Well I (the player), don't know her, why should I care?

It's bloody hillarius, when people ask for PC's to have some connection to the world, but when when that connection is give, it's is "fake" and "stupid".
Unless they have a few hundered hours worth of content of the PC just living his normal life with his family before the call comes, they will NEVER do it proper justice.
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Offline karajorma

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Re: What's so great about Baldur's Gate?
There's nothing unbelievable about "Rocks fall. Everyone dies".

It's still a ****ty plot twist though. If you can't see that, there's not much point in arguing with you though.
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Offline TrashMan

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Re: What's so great about Baldur's Gate?
Meh.

I don't consider it that ****ty.
Sometimes such things happen and it's certainly a rare and unexpected plot twist.

Death seems so unacceptable an end to so many people in fiction (unless it's a death they engineered).
I personally don't have a problem with it. We'll all have to die sometimes and we're not going to be the ones to pick how and when.
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Re: What's so great about Baldur's Gate?
Quote
From a new player's perspective BG2 is even worse quite frankly. Thrown in a dungeon with a bunch of random nobodies that I'm supposed to care about/find funny/endearing whatever and to me it's just a huge wall of dialogue and chat I don't give a damn about.

Isn't that kinda the problem when a protagonsit has established ANYTHING?

PC comes from town X? Well, I don't care about that town, I didn't live there.
PC has a mother? Well I (the player), don't know her, why should I care?

It's bloody hillarius, when people ask for PC's to have some connection to the world, but when when that connection is give, it's is "fake" and "stupid".
Unless they have a few hundered hours worth of content of the PC just living his normal life with his family before the call comes, they will NEVER do it proper justice.

It's just a matter of pacing.

On the one hand you have your typical start where you wake up in some town/vault/whatever, go and talk to everyone, slowly learn the game and so forth and get on your way. The sort of story where characters are introduced to you one or two at a time, and you get a little bit of time with each of them before moving on and meeting the next.

Compared to Baldur's Gate 2 which is:

Throwing you into the middle of the story, or, technically after the end of the last one with four or more characters that you know nothing about and which engage in overlong conversations with you.

Even compare it to another RPG I started but haven't gotten far with:

Planescape Torment. In that game you wake up in a morgue or somesuch, basically a very similar looking setting to BG2. But in that game you don't have four or more people with you, you just have some skull guy with a bit of exposition. Then you go around and learn about the world with this one companion. Not only that you but you talk to him becuase you need to, because you don't know what the heck's going on. Compared to BG2 where you're talking to a group of people and you're more/less expected to help them out and so forth.

The start will probably be cool if I ever finish BG1 but as a new player it's a bit of a wall of exposition sort of thing.

--------------

Anyway, made a bit more progress on the mines. Jaheira leveled up I guess, though I didn't actually get to spend any points on anything.
But now all my guys are getting one shot by "Kobold Commandos" with flaming arrows :P sigh. Well the level 1 guys anyway.



 

Offline Fury

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Re: What's so great about Baldur's Gate?
But now all my guys are getting one shot by "Kobold Commandos" with flaming arrows :P sigh. Well the level 1 guys anyway.
No surprise there, your characters should be way beyond lvl 2 by that time. It's been really long so I don't remember where the level should be, but I know there's something wrong with the game or you're doing it wrong.

  
Re: What's so great about Baldur's Gate?
But now all my guys are getting one shot by "Kobold Commandos" with flaming arrows :P sigh. Well the level 1 guys anyway.
No surprise there, your characters should be way beyond lvl 2 by that time. It's been really long so I don't remember where the level should be, but I know there's something wrong with the game or you're doing it wrong.
Oh, I often went for the kobold mines when I was lvl 1.

The thing is that, if you do all the candlekeep quests, then go straight from the friendly arm to Nashkell, you won't level up  at all (esp. not with 6 party members)

 

Offline Sarkoth

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Re: What's so great about Baldur's Gate?
"You are suddenly captured by bandits who appeared out of nowhere and somehow surprised you all! You wake up in a dungeon with all of your stuff gone." ****! Why not just say "Rocks fall, everyone dies is knocked unconscious" and be done with it! :p 

I loved BG1 but whoever wrote the plotline for BG2 needs ****ing shooting. While there are some great ideas in there did they have to tramp them through every ****ty D&D cliche? Thank **** they didn't do that for BG1 or it would have been "**** Candlekeep, let's have them all meet in a tavern where a shady guy gives them a quest!"

Oh I see you DID play that certain D&D adventure of epic character death! That was a good one. ^^ And probably the worst ever done to players in regards of random acts of punishment based on random choices.


As for going to Nashkell straight off the bat ... I sincerely believe that oldschool RPGs are not designed to take up a quest and then just immediately go and follow it. That's not exploring properly. And will get you killed in 9 out of 10 times. "Oh, I've got this quest to kill a lich named Kangaxx at lvl 3. I should definitely visit him right away!" (If anyone ever played Gothic 3, the first main quest is also the second to last main quest. It is titled "Find Xardas". You likely will be more than 40 hours into the game before even getting near him, although it is theoretically perfectly possible to do so right after the game has started.)
« Last Edit: March 07, 2014, 12:39:47 pm by Sarkoth »
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Re: What's so great about Baldur's Gate?
As for going to Nashkell straight off the bat ... I sincerely believe that oldschool RPGs are not designed to take up a quest and then just immediately go and follow it. That's not exploring properly. And will get you killed in 9 out of 10 times. "Oh, I've got this quest to kill a lich named Kangaxx at lvl 3. I should definitely visit him right away!" (If anyone ever played Gothic 3, the first main quest is also the second to last main quest. It is titled "Find Xardas". You likely will be more than 40 hours into the game before even getting near him, although it is theoretically perfectly possible to do so right after the game has started.)

Well I didn't go right off the bat technically.
First I started looking for it, looking for it in the wrong places at which point I killed a bunch of mobs (Hobgoblins, Dire Wolf, etcetera).

Then Xvar or whoever the Necromancer is, he was "getting tense" because we didn't go to Naskel yet like I'd promised him. So then I headed down there.


Hell when I first got to the Friendly Arm Inn I had 4 people and then some wizard assassin met me on the stairs. I had to fight him a couple of times because he kept kickin my ass and when I defeated him I still had a dead thief on my hands. That suggested to me the game wasn't above sending higher level characters at you. It also suggested to me that the dialogue options were sometimes pointless because even when I lied to him about who I was he didn't believe me.

Jahiera is level 2 at least with 23 HP so she can soak a couple hits and can maybe ride point against the commandos. But even then she's got only a sling which I believe to be shorter range than the bows everyone else is using. Maybe I'll clear out that 3rd level of the dungeon a bit more, I killed a ghoul and a couple spiders but left a few places unexplored.

Also aren't Ghouls undead? Or maybe they're just flesh eaters and not technically undead. I hit the Cleric special ability, ward undead or whatever and the guy didn't react at all. Took him down without trouble anyway
« Last Edit: March 07, 2014, 02:04:40 pm by Akalabeth Angel »

 

Offline Herra Tohtori

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Re: What's so great about Baldur's Gate?
Xzar and Montaron are two sacks of **** and you'd be well advised to ditch them ASAP and replace them with some people that can actually contribute and not be a pain in the arse.

Although my impression of them was probably coloured by the fact that I prefer playing neutral good or true neutral characters, and don't get along with evil characters very well
Spoiler:
(not only do they irritate me but also my other good-aligned companions)

Besides your leveling will be faster with just a party of four - PC, Imoen, Jaheira and Khalid - so the initial level grind wouldn't be quite as bad as you don't need to give precious XP to Xzar and Montaron, who were largely useless in my first game attempt and I basically started anew at some point and told them to take a hike when I encountered them. There are other, much more worthy companions waiting ahead somewhere... There are much better evil characters, too, if you insist on having them in your party.
« Last Edit: March 07, 2014, 02:45:08 pm by Herra Tohtori »
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Offline Aesaar

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Re: What's so great about Baldur's Gate?
First time playing and doing the Nashkel Mines without Minsc?

A) you should take him because he's awesome, and
B) you should be around his level before you do the mines.  Which is, IIRC, level 3 or 4.

And yeah, Xzar and Montaron are pretty much completely useless for a good-aligned party (and most evil-aligned ones).  Xzar is a low-level mage, which is the most useless thing there is, and Montaron does nothing Imoen can't do.  Drop them asap.
« Last Edit: March 07, 2014, 04:22:35 pm by Aesaar »

 
Re: What's so great about Baldur's Gate?
Well, some of their dialogue is a bit annoying like "STOP TOUCHING ME". I guess it's riffing on Warcraft or vice versa. Gets tiresome though :)

 

Offline AdmiralRalwood

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Re: What's so great about Baldur's Gate?
Minsc is great; if you're not making an evil character, you mustmost have him in your party.
Ph'nglui mglw'nafh Codethulhu GitHub wgah'nagl fhtagn.

schrödinbug (noun) - a bug that manifests itself in running software after a programmer notices that the code should never have worked in the first place.

When you gaze long into BMPMAN, BMPMAN also gazes into you.

"I am one of the best FREDders on Earth" -General Battuta

<Aesaar> literary criticism is vladimir putin

<MageKing17> "There's probably a reason the code is the way it is" is a very dangerous line of thought. :P
<MageKing17> Because the "reason" often turns out to be "nobody noticed it was wrong".
(the very next day)
<MageKing17> this ****ing code did it to me again
<MageKing17> "That doesn't really make sense to me, but I'll assume it was being done for a reason."
<MageKing17> **** ME
<MageKing17> THE REASON IS PEOPLE ARE STUPID
<MageKing17> ESPECIALLY ME

<MageKing17> God damn, I do not understand how this is breaking.
<MageKing17> Everything points to "this should work fine", and yet it's clearly not working.
<MjnMixael> 2 hours later... "God damn, how did this ever work at all?!"
(...)
<MageKing17> so
<MageKing17> more than two hours
<MageKing17> but once again we have reached the inevitable conclusion
<MageKing17> How did this code ever work in the first place!?

<@The_E> Welcome to OpenGL, where standards compliance is optional, and error reporting inconsistent

<MageKing17> It was all working perfectly until I actually tried it on an actual mission.

<IronWorks> I am useful for FSO stuff again. This is a red-letter day!
* z64555 erases "Thursday" and rewrites it in red ink

<MageKing17> TIL the entire homing code is held up by shoestrings and duct tape, basically.

 

Offline Herra Tohtori

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Re: What's so great about Baldur's Gate?
Since your party is currently missing an offensive spellcaster (Xzar doesn't count) you should definitely find Minsc and do his quest.

Although, if your PC is a cleric there may be some redundancy in your party (Jaheira, specifically). She's not all that good in offensive capability and while she fulfilled the role of cleric in my gameplays where my characters were more physically aligned (ranger or fighter most of the time, for some reason I prefer playing characters with no magical abilities), I'm not sure if you need her with your party configuration. I guess it depends on what kind of cleric spells you need to have at your disposal.

Or if you play it in roleplaying spirit, she sort of "belongs" to a good or neutral-oriented party, at least while the PC is still a lvl 1 noob (which was always a head-scratcher to me - why are these experienced adventures lvl1 when they're supposed to help my PC... but whatever).

If I were playing a PC Cleric, I'd probably have my group as

Spoiler:
PC (cleric) - Imoen (thief) - Minsc (ranger) - Dynaheir (invoker) - Ajantis (paladin) - Faldorn(druid)

or

PC (cleric) - Imoen (thief) - Minsc (ranger) - Dynaheir (invoker) - Ajantis (paladin) - Xan (enchanter)

...depending on whether I need another wizard or a very good healer. Jaheira's multiclass fighter/druid configuration means she's not going to be ideal as either fighter or a druid, so if you need healing a lot, Faldorn would be a good choice. If you need some more magic in your party, Xan would probably be the best choice. Ajantis and Minsc are both good muscle, while Imoen will eventually be decent with ranged weapons.

There are three things that last forever: Abort, Retry, Fail - and the greatest of these is Fail.

 

Offline Fury

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Re: What's so great about Baldur's Gate?
Also, in BG1 ranged was way superior to melee. So if you're feeling really underpowered and would just like to get on with the game, switch your party to ranged weapons with one tank with best armor and shield you have. Have your tank initiate combat whenever possible to let enemies focus on the tank, while rest of the party stays back throwing whatever they can at enemies.

 

Offline Aesaar

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Re: What's so great about Baldur's Gate?
Yeah, bows are brutal at this level. 

Minsc has a longbow and a couple points in the skill too.  There's a good reason he's one of the game's best party members (even beyond how great he is as a character).

Herra's party build is pretty good, though I'd go with Coran instead of Faldorn.  In a game where bows are already somewhat OP, he turns them into death rays.  Nearing the end of the game, most people tend to dual-class Imoen to mage, and she'll never be as good as him with a bow anyway (because 19 dex and 3 points in bows).

Yeslick isn't a bad choice either.  Very good frontline healer.
« Last Edit: March 08, 2014, 08:42:33 pm by Aesaar »

 
Re: What's so great about Baldur's Gate?
Okay, well I don't think I've met most of those people yet but I'll check it out.
The thief died (the bad guy) and I found some elf guy named Xan in the mine so for the moment he's in my party though, he seems a bit crap. He has some moonblade thing so I tried to throw armour spell on him and have him go into close combat but he gets killed pretty quick. Maybe I'll grab that Minsc guy instead if he's a wizard.

The XP system in BG1 is rubbish though. Like, 7 for a Kobold that can kill me in a shot, or 135 for a ghoul which is rarely any trouble, or 650 for some random surely patron at the Bergfost (whatever) inn. Doesn't make any sense at all. Or heck I got 900 XP just for carrying some dagger to a tomb and giving it to a dead guy. 30 seconds of work with little combat gives me more XP than a 5-6 hours of trudging through the mines. Silly.