Were you expecting anything coming in that you didn't get out of it at the end? I'm asking about what you mean by "good" so that I can give you a better answer to your original question.
i didnt play it expecting something, i think my main problem is that i only played dos2 and bg3 so my zoomer brain feels the gameplay is less rewarding in older games
i just want to know if there are improvements in bg2 regarding the first game or if it is more of the same
Bg2 did make some larger overhauls that I felt were a big improvement from bg1, yes. The companions in bg2 have a lot more banter between one another, and many of them have their own personal quests that you can help them out with. Exploring the wilderness by and large isn't a thing in bg2, but you do get beads on quests that will update your map.
A big part of the bg series is being able to import your character from 1 to 2, so the gameplay is still largely similar (mages will come with a lot more spell protections).
I guess to me the biggest thing is a story that affects you more directly. BG1 is a story of self-discovery and your place in the Sword Coast, while BG2 deals more directly with your birthright.
The BG2 expansion Throne of Bhaal is what I felt BG3 should have been, but WotC wanted it to be D&D 3.X instead of AD&D, and the two systems aren't directly compatible so that they had to make do with an expansion that gives it a conclusion. It's a boss-rush in the end, but it wasn't all bad (Yaga-Shura and his buildup was pretty fun imho).
Not sure that answers your question, but it's the answer I have so far.
the combat is actually shit dont worry. RTWP is garbage and im glad its getting phased out
1 week ago
Anonymous
I don't get it, just hit pause when you feel like it? >phased out
It never was super prevalent but keeps popping up in different forms all the time. One popular type has been the VATS-type time slowing "soft pause" or menu pause.
1 week ago
Anonymous
RTWP was them wanting to copy Diablo while having to remain faithful to the D&D licence. It collapsing to whatever Veilguard is was inevitable.
1 week ago
Anonymous
It plays absolutely nothing like diablo though.
Fun fact: diablo was originally meant to be turn-based and the animations were made with that in mind.
It's a title that has had perhaps more impact on the genre than any other game, so many things have since been lifted from it to later titles (for better and for worse). If you like crpgs you should by all reason like bg2, unless the UI/look of the game is just too antiquated for you, which seems unlikely if one already completed bg1. It's deservedly a classic, but just how much you like it is a matter of taste.
BG2 is where all the meat is. 1 is just a leadup to the events in 2. The gameplay changes due to access to higher tiered spells and you'll experience much more nasty d&d shit like level drain or invincible enemies until you know how to counter the mechanics. I also really dig the 90s grimdark aesthetics. People love to shit on the first dungeon but I quite enjoyed the feel and atmosphere. Quests also go into a much darker direction, more alike to durlags tower I'd say.
I think people hate Irenicus's Dungeon on later playthroughs rather than the first time, because you just want freedom to explore and build your party.
BG1 is like the old-school dungeoncrawl/hex campaign where 90% of your time is spent gaming out stats and gear choices to optimize your room clear rate.
BG2 adds a ton of story and roleplaying on top of this, improves your selection of abilities and skills, and gives you better/more gear to take advantage of the higher level cap.
BG1 is like the old-school dungeoncrawl/hex campaign where 90% of your time is spent gaming out stats and gear choices to optimize your room clear rate.
BG2 adds a ton of story and roleplaying on top of this, improves your selection of abilities and skills, and gives you better/more gear to take advantage of the higher level cap.
Lessons should be learned from BG2 in regards to loot.
Perfect frequency of unique loot so you were always equiping at least one of your party with a unique item after a quest.
>Viconia is literally the only WRPG romance in any game that's actually good.
Wrong. Morrigan (Dragon Age), Tali (Mass Effect), Panam (Cyberpunk), Cassandra (Dragon Age), and Yennefer (Witcher) are all great romances.
Hell no. They feature an awful worst-of-all-worlds system (incredibly inelegant even in /tg/ context but neither takes advantage of possibilities opened up by computerized systems while at the same time implementing all the things calling for DM judgement in the context where human judgement isn't present, offers basically nonexistent tactical depth, offers minimal character-building depth, gets in the way of rather than supports roleplaying), all the misguided genre conventions, they're "dated" (in the poor-UX-and-all-that sort of sense, which isn't justified by some more recent games with consolitis or mobile game UIs being no better, or even worse), Forgotten Realms setting is pretty much by design unremarkable which isn't necessarily a con but isn't an argument for the best possible experience either, they don't look particularly great (even within their own reference class of Infinity Engine games, there are much better-looking games), etc.
Basically, looking up to Baldur's Gate is pretty much an admission you aren't familiar with the genre or you're arguing something else ("b-but they're influential"), and I personally would go further than that, and claim that not only are they not great, but they are in fact worthless, and that the only Infinity Engine RPG even worth playing is Planescape: Torment, on account of being combat-light (the system is still there, in form of skill checks), and having the most interesting setting and atmosphere.
>But what are the good games
Well, here's the difficulty, because the games that people would most universally agree are CRPGs tend to be bad in mostly the same ways because there was an insistence of using well-known /tg/ rules, and "AA" games are kinda sorta dead nowadays so contemporary games tend to be bad in the sort of ways that the classics were not. But I mentioned PS:T, Pathfinder games for instance are better in that they do at least ONE thing (build autism) well, etc.
eh , no , I don't see it.
The combat syystem is fine , better than most in fact.
Having a problem with 2nd edition DnD Forgotten Realms is a "you" problem.
The sound design alone is top tier , even by today's standard , and the content is double what everything else has.
I don't even need to point out how wrong and stupid this post is, since I can pretty much just summarize every single thing you said as being "wrong".
Also, the Planescape setting is fricking putrid liquid rancid dogshit, and Planescape was interesting in spite of its setting, not because of it. It's just a big fricking mish-mashed moron pot of everything thrown together at the same time and doesn't actually work at all, because it idealizes a hyper-egalitarian society in a fantasy world with the most extremes, which makes zero fricking sense. Baldur's Gate 2 is objectively a better RPG than it because Baldur's Gate allows you to actually roleplay within the world, and offers you genuine choices that matter, and has a far more realistically realized world for it to take place in.
Pathfinder games are all almost all shit as well, since they're monotonous directionless garbage that aims for sandbox gameplay when a million other games do that better, and the strength of an RPG, as every single person who actually plays them knows, the strength of an RPG is in its hook for the player in regards to interesting them in the game's story and world. If there is no hook (IE a main quest), it's fricking god awful trash. The walls-of-text in Planescape is also another criticism many have with it, since it is extremely inelegant and very exhausting. I would say that if you look up to Planescape Torment, you don't actually like RPG's and would be more suited to playing Point and Click adventure games, which is fine and there's nothing wrong with those, but it is decidedly NOT an RPG game, and saying it's better than Baldur's Gate 2, the best RPG ever made, is cutting off your own balls to pretend how hip you are while everyone sits and looks at you confused like you're a fricking idiot who needs to be thrown in a mental asylum.
Been playing BG 1 after playing BG3 and I'm having a blast, it's genuinely way better than the third game (which I initially thought was great until I went back and started playing the first game)
Everything really just kicks into overdrive once you actually reach Baldur's Gate but the rest of the Sword Coast is fun to explore regardless, the unforgiving difficulty makes it less tedious.
Adding onto it, the only "real" problem I'm having with BG 1 really is returning to Baldur's Gate after fighting through the Candle Keep crypts is that the limitations of the game's storytelling in relation to exploration is really starting to show.
From going to to the Undercellar to freeing the Duke in the Flaming Fist barracks, to barging into the Iron Throne's tower (these three things is where I left off/where my playthrough is currently at), it just feels like the game expects you to tackle these things in a specific order because you do one thing and the game tells you "Maybe you should go to the Undercellar and kill those two assassins" or "Hey, the duke's sick and his cleric's evil" even though I've already done these things
I could credit it to the npcs not knowing you've done these things but then you get journal entries saying "I should go do this shit I literally just did"
It's the only time in the game so far my immersion's broken/the story's fricked up. And I really don't like the angle that the game feels like it's starting to push on me with a few NPCs pushing "If you kill the big bad, you're just like him" or "Heh, you really ARE just like the big bad"
I played BG 1 and 2 after 3 as well. Incredible games that still hold up IMO, some maddening design choices aside. That said, I can't imagine preferring them over 3. To each his own, I suppose.
>first character was a chaotic good halfling thief with a good party and generally doing the right thing (without being goodie-twoshoes about it since we're still robbing houses and killing bad guys/standing up for ourselves) >had mediocre stats since I was playing blind and didn't want to minmax or metagame >explored as much as I felt like exploring but didn't want to 100% or explore everything as to not ruin the joy of discovering shit on other playthroughs
>second character i created an hour ago is a chaotic evil Blackguard ready to frick shit up >maxed out relevant stats >filled out a notepad file in my good blind playthrough detailing armor and weapons i found and where to find them for my evil playthrough
This is the first game I've played in a long time where I don't take a break between playthroughs.
I wanted to move onto 2 but I'm having so much fun with the 1st game
The "weirdness" in bg's game design can be understood from it's core design philosophy: it's an attempt to create a ttrpg-experience simulation. Many things in modern game design go against that current but while it does have its flaws I think it also greatly adds to the lasting magic feel the title managed to capture.
>the unforgiving difficulty makes it less tedious
First playthrough thoughts here
I think that summarizes what I like about it.
Baldur's Gate's unforgiving, but it's not tedious or "hard" in the traditional sense of hard. If you play it incorrectly everything's going to frick your shit up and you're going to die right away. In most other games if you play it incorrectly you'll just be inefficient and you'll gradually learn rather than instantly dying over and over again.
It's when you learn the mechanics of the game that it stops being "hard". It's still unforgiving, but it's not a "hard" game. You actually die 90% of the time by springing some lightning trap or getting snared in a web or mass-feared, until you learn how to circumvent these things. Most games would slap you on the wrist but not outright insta-gib you.
I prefer the lvl9 dual, but kensage breaks the game anyways.
Dual classing at 9 was so tedious. I'd never do it again. That last level felt like it took forever, and I can't imagine people doing it even later. They must be solo.
Bg is not a very hard game to break if you know what you're doing, but the amount of cheese that is bersage or kensage is an artery clogging amount. But they're fun to play for a couple of times.
I find F/M/T the funnest class to play since it's essentially a turbothief that allows for almost unrivaled amounts of dickery while being slightly lighter on the cheese.
I don't usually like duals precisely because the dualing process is a drag and multis are a smoother experience, but when dualing from fighter I see lvl9 as such a stacked sweet spot I usually don't want to miss it. 13 gives too little for the pain in the ass it is (or cheesing amount) and the xp difference from 7-9 is ultimately so small it's pretty much the same bother for me.
For me i never thought any CRPG could surpass BG2 until i tried BG3, its now my favorite CRPG, it dethroned BG2 which was the best for me.
BG1 was a good start but its too barebones for that spot, i'd take Icewind Dale, Tyranny and PoE over it.
Though i have yet to play the new Pathfinder game, i played Kingmaker and while the story was good i found the mechanics to be quite messy.
I'm playing BG1 right now, about 2 hours in, is a thief with maxed DEX, CON, and CHA who goes all in on sling and dart and traps good enough to finish the game with?
You can finish the game with any class and even with completely fricked builds. It will obviously be slightly harder with a complete shit build, but your build sounds like one that shouldn't have any major problems as long as you get a couple of frontliners and an arcane caster. Almost all the companions have ways to make then strong/brokenly strong too. Bounty hunter is capable of strong cheese with the traps as well and thieves are somewhat underrated too (and also kinda rare in bg2) so bounty hunter is a good choice for party composition.
The most important thing is that you like to play with the character.
Even the shittiest class (monk) can be very fun to play and be useful.
Remember to use the consumables you get in tougher fights, you do not need to hoard them.
yeah and traps get insanely strong in bg2, to the point of being op. you just need a couple frontliners to be in front of you cause thiefs are pretty squish
Darts are shit in BG2, you only have 1 unique item that gives you magic darts and there are no +2 dart weapons which means you can't attack conventionally after a certain point. You'll be relying on stealth, traps, and dialogues. IIRC there's a few decent magic slings but your spellcasters might want that more.
darts are cool because they interrupt enemy animations and spellcasting
also there's a +3 returning dart on first level of WK which is not hard to get early.
They're not a powerhouse weapon class but I think they have their place just for the APR. Good for getting rid of stoneskin/mirror image too. A situational weapon but a fun one.
No, and that's quite the moronic thing to even ask. They're classics, but there's a gap of a roughly billion lightyears between "classic" and "every dev should aspire to this".
I quite enjoy exploring in bg1 lads.. playing bg2 right now.
I'm playing on normal difficulty as I felt I was cheering too much on core rules. My understanding is growing slowly and I'm using mage/cleric spells more and more but I still play on normal for this run
Understanding the spell mechanics (especially the magic defenses / defense stripping spells later on) is the "hardest" thing about the game. The wiki is your friend, the original games came with a manual too.
The engine is kinda simple, but the rule interactions make the game "deeper" than one understands at first.
the wiki is dogshit and is full of lies but in concept yeah there's a lot of interactions and things that it's nice to know about so using online help is a good idda. shit i've been playing for almost 25 years now since they came out and i still use online maps/guides for some areas like watchers keep maze, durlags
I think the wiki has gotten more accurate in recent years. It usually has version differences listed and often the comments point out the usual points of confusion/errors.
Yeah thanks lad. I'm watching videos on it and referring to wiki.
In bg2 I did the Nalia quest straight after coronet in intro and I really struggled with the final battle in there. Had to cheese them 1 by 1 and even that took a long time to kill. Party was level 7/8. I think I was too low level but it's also forced me to learn more so I don't mind it that way.
The most popular "spell tier lists / rankings" on youtube are pretty good in general to get a grip on all the spells. And if you find a use for a spell you like that is not ranked high: keep using what works for you and what's fun for you.
I've noticed I've found some lower ranked spells quite useful since they've fit my party/playstyle well, even with difficulty mods maxxed. There's great variety and situationality regarding spell use.
Yeah the keep has some pretty nasty creatures you gotta deal with or get gibbed. The "secret fight" is also something I have only come back to finish after leveling up elsewhere first.
>first character was a chaotic good halfling thief with a good party and generally doing the right thing (without being goodie-twoshoes about it since we're still robbing houses and killing bad guys/standing up for ourselves) >had mediocre stats since I was playing blind and didn't want to minmax or metagame >explored as much as I felt like exploring but didn't want to 100% or explore everything as to not ruin the joy of discovering shit on other playthroughs
>second character i created an hour ago is a chaotic evil Blackguard ready to frick shit up >maxed out relevant stats >filled out a notepad file in my good blind playthrough detailing armor and weapons i found and where to find them for my evil playthrough
This is the first game I've played in a long time where I don't take a break between playthroughs.
I wanted to move onto 2 but I'm having so much fun with the 1st game
Sure, if they give you an indicator of your level in relation to the world in some way. I replayed BG2 very recently and it got real tiresome finding out some area you're next to, or 'should be' going to (per the main quest line) is actually "far too high level for you!" like what. How can you tell outside of getting raped? Common issue over and over as people kept asking on forums over the years and I was getting into the exact same spots, enemies etc with the same "levels" as them over and over.
It's from a different school and era of game design. Modern games are much more user-friendly but some feel this also results in this lowering the dramatic tension and feeling of challenge. It's a tightrope walk between being too handholdy or being too unfair. In the current era devs usually choose to err more on the handholdy side.
Also in the case of a crpg bgs1&2 follow thinking in the line of "the world should at least appear to exist independent from the player". But even this is not really set in stone as even bgs do slight hidden level scaling of some encounters.
>the unforgiving difficulty makes it less tedious
First playthrough thoughts here
I think that summarizes what I like about it.
Baldur's Gate's unforgiving, but it's not tedious or "hard" in the traditional sense of hard. If you play it incorrectly everything's going to frick your shit up and you're going to die right away. In most other games if you play it incorrectly you'll just be inefficient and you'll gradually learn rather than instantly dying over and over again.
It's when you learn the mechanics of the game that it stops being "hard". It's still unforgiving, but it's not a "hard" game. You actually die 90% of the time by springing some lightning trap or getting snared in a web or mass-feared, until you learn how to circumvent these things. Most games would slap you on the wrist but not outright insta-gib you.
That's a good way of explaining it. This approach is closer to ad&d ttrpg and less "themeparky" like modern games would usually do it (you can enter all rides at your leisure).
I like turn-based more because it makes it easier for me to control my characters. I always feel like I'm fighting with the AI to get it to do what I want in BG 1&2.
RTwP is better if you have someone on board who is decent at active enemy AI design, TB is ultimately easier to achieve on multiple different levels. TB is better for the industry from a developer perspective because creating and executing a specific design philosophy is infinitely easier when you are essentially curating every moment of gameplay.
Honestly, I think I might only have an issue with RTwP in Baldur's Gate, since it's built off a turn based tabletop game.
The game is, in a sense, technically still turn-based except that it's running the turns past you so quickly they become difficult to keep up with (to me at least).
Check the auto-pause options, I sometimes played with the "pause at end of round" to get a grip on the rounds.
Also round=6s, turn=10 rounds=60s. And the daytime has a multiplier of 12 to realtime so: ingame hour = 5 real life minutes.
Another basic tip: turn off cosmetic attacks from options, it makes combat more readable for melee.
1 week ago
Anonymous
>lvl 7 berserker Duel katana >Duel class >lvl 13 mage
1 week ago
Anonymous
I prefer the lvl9 dual, but kensage breaks the game anyways.
1 week ago
Anonymous
you spend too much points on shit
1 week ago
Anonymous
you just want that extra attack. you can still get it with lvl 7 Duel wield
I actually do it more for the hp/survivability as you get the juicy fighter hp+con bonus up to lvl9 and survivability. With difficulty mods it makes a difference.
1 week ago
Anonymous
>celestial fury >dak'kon's zerth Blade
paired with robes you're invincible. I don't think you've ever played bg2
1 week ago
Anonymous
[...] >robes of vecna
On no-reload that extra ~20hp is quite literally a life-saver. Also the cf fight can be a b***h if you try to do it early in SCS, but I don't see what that has to do with the dualing level.
Also bersage>kensage.
1 week ago
Anonymous
you're a weakling
1 week ago
Anonymous
I will crush you to goo.
1 week ago
Anonymous
I'm going to frick your ass and you'll be shitting cum, and blood
1 week ago
Anonymous
I din't remember that line, is that a beamdog addition?
1 week ago
Anonymous
shut up moron
1 week ago
Anonymous
>updated my thread
1 week ago
Anonymous
>journal
1 week ago
Anonymous
I instantly read this in keldorn's voice
1 week ago
Anonymous
I'm going to frick your ass and you'll be shitting cum, and blood
you seriously want to take on a berserker mage?
1 week ago
Anonymous
[...] >robes of vecna
[...]
On no-reload that extra ~20hp is quite literally a life-saver. Also the cf fight can be a b***h if you try to do it early in SCS, but I don't see what that has to do with the dualing level.
Also bersage>kensage.
Any items purchased from Deidre is cheating. Those were originally only available to people who bought the Collectors Edition of BG2 and were intended to be OP toys.
1 week ago
Anonymous
you can't purchase celestial fury. it's an ultimate weapon. you have to fight for it. fricking tourist moron.
1 week ago
Anonymous
I didn't mention celestial fury you raging autist.
1 week ago
Anonymous
why are you even here if you don't know anything about baldur's gate?
1 week ago
Anonymous
I'd love for you to come up with an argument on how I'm wrong.
1 week ago
Anonymous
I soloed the game with lvl 7 berserker lvl 13 mage
1 week ago
Anonymous
And what would that have to do with anything I said
1 week ago
Anonymous
that you're a b***h Black person
1 week ago
Anonymous
I soloed the game with lvl 7 berserker lvl 13 mage
any more questions? you can ask my Simulacrum. homosexual
1 week ago
Anonymous
I don't remember asking anything about you. I don't give a frick about you.
1 week ago
Anonymous
not my problem
1 week ago
Anonymous
let me guess... you're a fricking kotaku moron
1 week ago
Anonymous
Do you even know what you're even saying or replying to or did you just forget to take your meds.
1 week ago
Anonymous
you obviously are too stupid to understand bg2 god builds
1 week ago
Anonymous
Nowhere at any time did I mention anything having to do with builds.
1 week ago
Anonymous
I was literally telling you morons how to solo the game with a berserker mage.
1 week ago
Anonymous
Thanks for the hot tip but I didn't ask. And I can assure you I've played the game more than you.
1 week ago
Anonymous
I highly doubt it
1 week ago
Anonymous
let me guess. you're a homosexual druid
1 week ago
Anonymous
I would love to see you make a game play to rush from celestial fury.
1 week ago
Anonymous
I would love to see you make a game play to rush from celestial fury.
get it as fast as you can. fricking moron
1 week ago
Anonymous
This post really triggered some kind of Celestial Fury autist LMAO
1 week ago
Anonymous
>celestial fury >dak'kon's zerth Blade
paired with robes you're invincible. I don't think you've ever played bg2
>robes of vecna
1 week ago
Anonymous
you just want that extra attack. you can still get it with lvl 7 Duel wield
1 week ago
Anonymous
I hate dualing from level 7 because you're basically leveling up your char a second time, plus you need to reorganize your party around your new class.
>Honestly, I think I might only have an issue with RTwP in Baldur's Gate
Probably, it's a pretty meh implementation. I think my favorite RTwP system is probably IZJS FFXII, which is probably heretical because it's a Japanese game but it works pretty much flawlessly
Why, are you a wall street stock broker earning millions, or a construction working trying to make a living and putting 3 kids through college and supporting a wife?
Biotech wagie making 160k/yr
If you have the time to shitpost on Ganker, you have the time to play Baldur's Gate.
Baldur's Gate 2 is a 100+ hour investment. 100/16 = 6.25 days of nonstop Baldur's (8 hours of sleep/food/shitting). That's an entire week off.
Why, are you a wall street stock broker earning millions, or a construction working trying to make a living and putting 3 kids through college and supporting a wife?
>Or then just get the 100% internet discount on the originals.
What I'm saying is no one hosts the originals outside of sketchy Slavic websites, it's all troonymaxxed
I think Kingmaker is a more accomplished attempt at translating the experience of a full tabletop campaign than bg1.
BG2, BG3, and pretty much every other crpg are not really a campaign experience, but more like an adventure. The sense of exploration, freedom, and time passing is absent from them, you go from vignette location to location, time is completely abstracted, the world doesn't change.
If you mean dragonspear: no, it's an akward fan fiction that has no place in the franchise. It was also the final nail in the coffin of beamdog having any chance of getting their grubby hands on a shot at doing bg3, it was that bad.
nice then, and is there any mod i should use in bg2EE or should i go vanilla? (i dont really care about the new characters that got introduced that i see a lot of people complain about)
For a first time run I don't think you need any mods. It's also a minor hassle to set them up and since you won't understand what half of the components in the big mods do anyways I wouldn't bother.
EEs are basically integrated mods as is. And the EE companions and their content are either mediocre (rasaad, neera), downright silly (dorn the evil evilman) or dogshit (hexxat) so feel free to ignore them.
EE is like downloading a big Skyrim mod pack where there might be a couple of things in it you want, but there's also a bunch of other shit you don't want and you can't tweak the options for any of it like you could if you just modded the game yourself and because it's a big tangled mess you spend more time trying to fix issues than you would have spent if you just modded the game yourself.
I'm not a beamdog enjoyer, but what is truly wrong with EE's, apart from the companions (content) beamshit added?
1 week ago
Anonymous
I don't remember every single thing from my playthrough since it was usually a series of "wait that's not right" moments while playing. Off the top of my head though and ignoring the obvious Beamdog OCs, the first big thing is the UI. I would class the EE UI as completely non-functional. And it has a bunch of absolutely bizarre choices like the custom portrait menu in character creation. In the original picking a custom portrait opens up a menu that lists the file names of all the stuff in your portraits folder so it's really quick and easy to pick the one you want and has the bonus that you can set the small image to just be like a headshot/portrait like the base portraits and have the large image being a larger full body image. The EE version doesn't let you do this and just adds the portrait image to the end of the queue so you have to click through ALL portraits one by one to find the one you want on top of not letting you have different small/large images. The next big thing is the removal of the original movies, which have to be modded back in. There are also options in the menu that EE removes that need to be modded back in. A bunch of items have their icons changed, some NPCs have their sprites changed and even occasionally their stats/loot changed. Some stores have their inventories changed. These kind of changes aren't massively world-changing but if you're familiar with the original they're annoying and in a lot of cases feel like "we know better" arrogance from Beamdog. At best it's like someone downloaded a bunch of tweakpacks and just said "frick it, yes to everything" on install without thought. I don't even have a problem with tweaks and use some in my playthroughs, but when I download and install them myself I have full control, whereas EE has no such customisation available.
I don't think anyone should play EE unless you're playing on a 1440p or 4k monitor. But if you have to play EE, a UI mod is essential. EE's UI is a fricking abomination.
At least dragonspear gave better closure to BG1.
In 1 after the ending cutscene, there wasn't even a title saying "you ended the threat to Baldur's Gate!"
WotR homosexual is moronic, that game is definition of quantity over quality, every character has books worth of dogshit irrelevant dialogue, prebuffing turbo autism to the point game is unplayable without auto buff mod and it uses Unity so you have to endure loading screen every fricking 5 seconds. Oh and towns for soem reason dont have ambience so they all feel dead compared to bg2
>quickly
First of all, the thread is over 5 hours old, gramps. you're the equivalent of a group of old ladies in a retirement home talking to eachother.
Second of all, that's not even what I meant by 'abandoned'. For a bunch of people who exclusively inhale their farts and claim superiority, you subhumans have less reading comprehension than an autist with dyslexia, less literacy than a third world pajeet and less short term memory than a senile dotard. Probably because you're all of those, lmao.
BG 1 is cute. The NPC barks are memorable. Wandering around in the wilderness is quaint.
But holy cow is the game ass at being an "RPG". The D&D ruleset is made as cumbersome as possible (THAC0) and it doesn't provide an interesting combat or diplomatic experience. NPC's will vomit multi-paragraph dialogs on you with a quest that is auto-accepted but barely indicate what you are supposed to do. Combat is just people whiffing hits until someone gets one-shot or flooding every fight with summons. The story only makes sense in hindsight of BG2 and you can miss huge amounts of why your character matters in Candlekeep if you don't open one specific out of the way chest.
The IE games are the only really replayable WRPGs because they're the only ones that let you create a full custom party (with custom portraits and voice sets), which combined with the class system and combat system gives you near infinite ways to replay the game.
That's the worst thing about all the nuWRPGs. Very limited companion options and most of them are insufferable combined with either limited or no ability to make a custom party. Limited meaning you can't do it at the start of the game and it usually costs resources to buy generics once you unlock the ability at some point through the game. There's no excuse for this shit. Also one of the great things about BG is that on top of the ability to have a full custom party, most classes has multiple companion options for you to choose from.
You don't have to look at the Infinity Engine games as the pinnacle of RPGs. We can imagine a hypothetical game engine that can express the D&D ruleset and a vibrant fantasy world that can adapt all campaign settings, such as Greyhawk, Dragonlance, Ravenloft, Dark Sun, Spelljammer, Planescape, Mystara, Birthright, Eberron, Blackmoor, Dawn War, Ghostwalk, Jakandor, Kara-Tur, Maztica, Pelinore, Al-Qadim, Nentir Vale, Thunder Rift, Hollow World, Masque of the Red Death, Kingdoms of Kalamar, Lankhmar, Oriental Adventures, Rokugan, Scarred Lands, Odyssey of the Dragonlords, Exandria, Theros, Ravnica, Strixhaven, Wildemount, Nerath,
Pelinore, Radiant Citadel, Zakhara, and Council of Wyrms.
Do you think one day we could get something like BG1 and 2 worked into a BG3 system? While the story and characters aren't that interesting to me in 3, the overall presentation is fantastic.
I would love to see that come to life as well. I know that official modding tools will be released this September. Sadly, these tools won't enable the use of building custom maps, quests, etc. from the assets available. Swen claims that it would be too much work to release a proper DM mode. I believe there's more going on behind the scenes. Mainly politics concerning WotC and Larians falling out with them. Which sucks considering there is a lot more that could've been done with BG3, but now Larian is moving on.
Realms Unbound - A revolutionary RPG series that brings the rich tapestry of D&D worlds to life like never before. Using our cutting-edge Rikki Tikki Tavi Engine, each entry in the series will fully immerse players in a unique campaign setting, each highlighting unique aspects of their respective worlds.
Each game will feature:
Fully realized 3D environments unique to each setting
Adaptive gameplay mechanics reflecting each world's distinct flavor
Rich storytelling drawing from decades of lore
Character customization options true to each setting's races and classes
The Rikki Tikki Tavi Engine allows developers to create vastly different worlds and gameplay experiences while maintaining a cohesive series identity. From the steampunk intrigue of Eberron to the cosmic adventures of Spelljammer, Realms Unbound offers a fresh RPG experience with every release.
Aebrynis: "Blood and Regency" - A domain management RPG where players rule kingdoms and harness bloodline magic.
Al-Qadim: "Tales of the Caliphate" - An Arabian Nights-inspired RPG featuring genies, flying carpets, and desert adventures.
Echoes of the Dawn War: "Embers of Eternity" - A high-powered RPG set during the ancient conflict between dragonborn and tiefling empires.
Athas: "Survival of the Fittest" - A brutal survival RPG on Dark Sun's dying world, where players must conserve resources.
Birthright: "Blood of Kings" - A grand strategy RPG where you rule a domain, manage resources, and vie for the Iron Throne of Anuire.
Blackmoor: "Arcane Technomancy" - A dungeon-crawling RPG blending magic and technology in Dave Arneson's original campaign world.
Cerilia: "Heirs of the Ancients" - A grand strategy RPG where players manage domains and vie for control of divine bloodlines.
Council of Wyrms: "Clutch of the Dragon Isles" - An RPG where you play as dragons, managing your hoards and engaging in draconic politics.
Dark Sun: "Tyrants of Tyr" - A resource management RPG where you liberate city-states from sorcerer-kings in a harsh desert world.
Dragonlance: "Dragons of the Fifth Age" - An epic adventure RPG set during the War of Souls, featuring dragon mounts and world-altering magic.
Eberron: "Last War Legacy" - A noir-themed RPG set in Sharn, solving mysteries tied to the aftermath of the Last War.
Exandria: "Tides of Wildemount" - A narrative-driven RPG based on the Critical Role campaign, featuring complex political landscapes.
Ghostwalk: "Veil of Souls" - An action RPG where you play as a ghost, solving your own murder in the city where the living and dead coexist.
Greyhawk: "Echoes of Iuz" - A tactical RPG where you lead a band of heroes against the demigod Iuz's expanding empire.
Hollow World: "Journey to the Center" - An exploration RPG discovering preserved ancient cultures inside Mystara.
Io's Blood Isles: "Clutch Politics" - An RPG where players are dragons, managing their hoards and engaging in draconic intrigue.
Jakandor: "Isle of War" - A strategy RPG focusing on the conflict between the magical Knorr and the techno-barbarian Charonti.
Kara-Tur: "Shadows of the Celestial Empire" - An open-world RPG inspired by East Asian mythology and martial arts.
Kingdoms of Kalamar: "Legends of the Young Kingdoms" - A political intrigue RPG set in a low-magic world of competing human realms.
Krynn: "Tides of the Cataclysm" - Set on Krynn during the tumultuous years following the Cataclysm, this narrative-driven RPG puts players in the role of a fledgling mage discovering their powers in a world that has turned against magic.
Lankhmar: "Thieves of Nehwon" - A stealth-based RPG inspired by Fritz Leiber's Fafhrd and the Gray Mouser stories.
Masque of the Red Death: "Gothic Earth" - A horror RPG set in a 1890s Earth where supernatural evil lurks in the shadows.
Maztica: "Heart of the New World" - An exploration and conquest RPG set in a fantasy version of pre-Columbian Americas.
Mystara: "Secrets of the Hollow World" - An exploration RPG set inside a hollow planet, discovering lost civilizations and ancient magic.
Nentir Vale: "Heroes of the Fallen Star" - A classic dungeon-crawling RPG set in the default 4th edition D&D world.
Nerath: "Ashes of Empire" - A post-apocalyptic fantasy RPG set in the ruins of a fallen human empire.
Odyssey of the Dragonlords: "Heroes of Thylea" - An epic RPG inspired by Greek mythology, featuring heroic quests and divine intervention.
Oerth: "Legends of the Flanaess" - A classic high fantasy RPG set on Greyhawk's planet, featuring iconic dungeons and artifacts.
Oriental Adventures: "Way of the Samurai" - A honor-driven RPG set in a fantasy feudal Japan, blending martial arts and magic.
Pelinore: "Domains of the Cerilian Sea" - A sandbox RPG featuring exploration of a partially mapped fantasy world.
Planescape: "Factions of Sigil" - A narrative-driven RPG where your choices and beliefs shape reality in the multifaceted City of Doors.
Radiant Citadel: "Cultures of Light" - An anthology-style RPG exploring diverse fantasy cultures linked by a magical city.
Ravenloft: "Curse of Strahd" - A survival horror RPG where you navigate the mist-shrouded realm of Barovia, facing gothic terrors.
Ravnica: "Guild Wars" - A faction-based RPG set in a world-spanning city, where players navigate complex inter-guild politics.
Rokugan: "Emerald Empire" - A clan-based strategy RPG inspired by Japanese history and legend.
Scarred Lands: "Titan's Legacy" - An action RPG set in a world recovering from a war between gods and titans.
Spelljammer: "Void Corsairs" - A space exploration RPG where you captain a magical ship through crystal spheres, trading and battling.
Strixhaven: "Mages of the Five Colleges" - A magic school RPG where players attend classes and uncover arcane mysteries.
Theros: "Champions of the Pantheon" - A mythology-based RPG where players ascend to godhood through epic deeds.
Thunder Rift: "Secrets of the Valley" - A beginner-friendly RPG set in a valley surrounded by impassable mountains.
Toril: "Realms Beyond Faerûn" - An exploration RPG set on lesser-known continents of the Forgotten Realms planet.
Zakhara: "Fate of the Enlightened Lands" - An Arabian Nights-inspired RPG featuring genies, magic carpets, and desert adventures.
I tried to play the original but I think you can't zoom out if I remember correctly and that was really really hard to get used to after playing the EE, though I still haven't played through EE and probably never will because of all the pozzing.
Lvl4: bretty gud, might consider if someone else could cast malison or imp.invis, maybe try to squeak minor sequencer in, but it's really what you wanna do here
Lvl5: k
Lvl6: i'd wanna get mislead, protection from magical weapons and magical energy, maybe true sight, hard choices here
Lvl7-9: sweet and hard choices, nothing wrong with those picks at first glance
Ultimately it boils down to party composition (what other casters have), preference and playstyle. Overall the spell list looks solid and you wouldn't need to change a thing to have a good selection.
As drsgon disc you get fire res and the scaling fire breath which can be worth multiple lower level spells too.
Lvl4: bretty gud, might consider if someone else could cast malison or imp.invis, maybe try to squeak minor sequencer in, but it's really what you wanna do here
Lvl3: -fireball (already have skulltrap), take slow and haste/vampiric touch
Lvl2: -melf's +blur
Lvl1: I'd swap chromatic orb to magic missile and identify to friends
Thanks for the advice, anons. I really appreciate it.
If you're ok with cheese get summon hakeashar. A lot of enemies will blow all their spell slots on it if you just sit outside their vision and send it in.
How do people like bg 3 at all. I promise you that I'm not a boomer but 3 is the most pozzed undercooked and moronic shit imaginable. I almost dropped it halfway through act 3
I haven't played it because it just looks like Dragon Age, which I hate, both aesthetically and because the focus seems to be on gay sex rather than actually being an adventure. The reported digging up of BG characters just to shit on them also assures I will never ever play it.
>seems to be on gay sex rather than actually being an adventure
It's true and it's the worst thing about it. Digging up old characters was not that bad and it's cool to see them in 3d
every time I see praise it's just graphics and presentation and voice acting. Literally one of the arguments for why bg3 was good was "the best VA character ever"
I mean ok, sure. I guess im old because having voice acting is not something I care about. It's kinda like RTX, it's okay but I dont fricking need it.
as someone who recently replayed bg1 its not a good rpg sadly, its more a preamble and trend setting that set the standard which paved the way for better performances like irenicus VO and awesome setting of BG2. BG1 was like ultra generic and terrible plot
How many rangers can you stuff into a fully-custom party before it becomes a liability? I like the idea of a heavy-micro playthrough where I just bore down on enemies one at a time with a death ray of projectiles
Two archers (crossbow and shortbow for lategame bg2/tob viability) would absolutely destroy everything in bg1, a stalker could backstab everyone in the ass with a weeaboo sword and a cleric/ranger could act as a good frontliner/divine caster. Add an arcane caster and a thief to round out the party and you are set. Easiest trash mob clears ever.
As someone who has played the unmodded originals, TuTu versions and EEs: it's really a matter of taste.
I already used mods that made my original games very much like the EEs (beamshit content aside). You wouldn't extract that much value out of the originals over EE if you never played them.
I would recommend sometime checking out the original bg1 in it's original form maybe, it's a very distinct vibe if you're not put off by dated visuals (the original models).
And the zoom function is honestly pretty cool to have in the EEs.
Edwin >wizard >thinks he is genius >hates Neera >quest in 1 is killing Dynaheir (a black woman) >looks down on everyone else >almost everyone else hates him >quest in 2 is him getting gender swapped >halfling thief girl is the only companion he likes >from Thay (third world desert country in Faerun)
Edwin >wizard >thinks he is genius >hates Neera >quest in 1 is killing Dynaheir (a black woman) >looks down on everyone else >almost everyone else hates him >quest in 2 is him getting gender swapped >halfling thief girl is the only companion he likes >from Thay (third world desert country in Faerun)
>annoying and avoided when possible
I kept her for most runs though >cleric/mage = lots of spells, especially for healing >easy xp from quest, which is the first one you get coming out of chapter 1 dungeon
although you forgot >doesn't like the drow
Bg1 feels like playing a crpg based on the cool dnd rulebooks I read as a kid.
Bg2 feels like playing a game based on a novel someone wrote based on them.
Bg3 feels like playing a campaign using them.
I always preferred the idea that videogames are their own thing, so need not strictly adhere to the tabletop mechanics, hence I liked bg1&2 more than ToEE. But bg3 made the mistake of thinking dnd game on a computer needs to be dnd on a computer.
It fails to be a representation of what those tabletop games were an abstraction of, and instead acts as a representation of the act of playing the tabletop.
Meanwhile, the best dnd game of all time is actually the arcade duology!
The only CRPG I've played is BG3. I can't bring myself to play BG 1 or 2, they're just too dated. And yet I do still have some desire to play another CRPG. I need to look more into what the other recent games in the genre are all about.
Now that you say it, Bioware did have AD&D to make a computer adaptation of and they squandered it chasing after Diablo's combat. BG3 was stuck with 5th.
played bg1 and was ok but didnt give me that much excitement to play bg2, should i? how much better is it?
What did you get out of BG1 that didn't give you much excitement?
i think its good, ok story, comfy quests and map exploring, gameplay outdated of course but not too bad. Just not as good as people hype it
Were you expecting anything coming in that you didn't get out of it at the end? I'm asking about what you mean by "good" so that I can give you a better answer to your original question.
i didnt play it expecting something, i think my main problem is that i only played dos2 and bg3 so my zoomer brain feels the gameplay is less rewarding in older games
i just want to know if there are improvements in bg2 regarding the first game or if it is more of the same
Bg2 did make some larger overhauls that I felt were a big improvement from bg1, yes. The companions in bg2 have a lot more banter between one another, and many of them have their own personal quests that you can help them out with. Exploring the wilderness by and large isn't a thing in bg2, but you do get beads on quests that will update your map.
A big part of the bg series is being able to import your character from 1 to 2, so the gameplay is still largely similar (mages will come with a lot more spell protections).
I guess to me the biggest thing is a story that affects you more directly. BG1 is a story of self-discovery and your place in the Sword Coast, while BG2 deals more directly with your birthright.
The BG2 expansion Throne of Bhaal is what I felt BG3 should have been, but WotC wanted it to be D&D 3.X instead of AD&D, and the two systems aren't directly compatible so that they had to make do with an expansion that gives it a conclusion. It's a boss-rush in the end, but it wasn't all bad (Yaga-Shura and his buildup was pretty fun imho).
Not sure that answers your question, but it's the answer I have so far.
thx for the info
the combat is actually shit dont worry. RTWP is garbage and im glad its getting phased out
I don't get it, just hit pause when you feel like it?
>phased out
It never was super prevalent but keeps popping up in different forms all the time. One popular type has been the VATS-type time slowing "soft pause" or menu pause.
RTWP was them wanting to copy Diablo while having to remain faithful to the D&D licence. It collapsing to whatever Veilguard is was inevitable.
It plays absolutely nothing like diablo though.
Fun fact: diablo was originally meant to be turn-based and the animations were made with that in mind.
Storytelling is better but functionally it’s pretty similar. More spell choices though.
I mean the original is 26 years old. Go back another 26 years from that and you’re two years before the first videogame ever made.
The game was “more than half the entire history of videogames existing” ago.
BG2 is still a masterpiece, but Wrath of the Righteous has edged it out as the greatest CRPG of all time.
BG2 is an enormous step up. Most people don't finish 1 these days, it's very antiquated.
>Wrath of the Righteous has edged it out as the greatest CRPG of all time
I'm not even a boomer, but no, not even close.
BG2 is worse IMO
That's not Fallout 1 and Planescape Torment
It's a title that has had perhaps more impact on the genre than any other game, so many things have since been lifted from it to later titles (for better and for worse). If you like crpgs you should by all reason like bg2, unless the UI/look of the game is just too antiquated for you, which seems unlikely if one already completed bg1. It's deservedly a classic, but just how much you like it is a matter of taste.
BG2 is where all the meat is. 1 is just a leadup to the events in 2. The gameplay changes due to access to higher tiered spells and you'll experience much more nasty d&d shit like level drain or invincible enemies until you know how to counter the mechanics. I also really dig the 90s grimdark aesthetics. People love to shit on the first dungeon but I quite enjoyed the feel and atmosphere. Quests also go into a much darker direction, more alike to durlags tower I'd say.
I think people hate Irenicus's Dungeon on later playthroughs rather than the first time, because you just want freedom to explore and build your party.
For me it's that going from BG1 to BG2 feels really abrupt, especially because I used some companions in 1 that weren't in 2.
BG1 is like the old-school dungeoncrawl/hex campaign where 90% of your time is spent gaming out stats and gear choices to optimize your room clear rate.
BG2 adds a ton of story and roleplaying on top of this, improves your selection of abilities and skills, and gives you better/more gear to take advantage of the higher level cap.
OG BG2 is way better
Lessons should be learned from BG2 in regards to loot.
Perfect frequency of unique loot so you were always equiping at least one of your party with a unique item after a quest.
I never thought about that, but you're right.
>makes every single crpg with romance options shoehorn an evil girl you can fix
Viconia is literally the only WRPG romance in any game that's actually good.
rip she's my girl
>Viconia is literally the only WRPG romance in any game that's actually good.
Wrong. Morrigan (Dragon Age), Tali (Mass Effect), Panam (Cyberpunk), Cassandra (Dragon Age), and Yennefer (Witcher) are all great romances.
>Sequel three decades later decides to frick her over and make her dark path canon
Hurts, my girl deserved better.
vicona was my girl too. they fricked her up at the end of bg2, and in bg3
Hell no. They feature an awful worst-of-all-worlds system (incredibly inelegant even in /tg/ context but neither takes advantage of possibilities opened up by computerized systems while at the same time implementing all the things calling for DM judgement in the context where human judgement isn't present, offers basically nonexistent tactical depth, offers minimal character-building depth, gets in the way of rather than supports roleplaying), all the misguided genre conventions, they're "dated" (in the poor-UX-and-all-that sort of sense, which isn't justified by some more recent games with consolitis or mobile game UIs being no better, or even worse), Forgotten Realms setting is pretty much by design unremarkable which isn't necessarily a con but isn't an argument for the best possible experience either, they don't look particularly great (even within their own reference class of Infinity Engine games, there are much better-looking games), etc.
Basically, looking up to Baldur's Gate is pretty much an admission you aren't familiar with the genre or you're arguing something else ("b-but they're influential"), and I personally would go further than that, and claim that not only are they not great, but they are in fact worthless, and that the only Infinity Engine RPG even worth playing is Planescape: Torment, on account of being combat-light (the system is still there, in form of skill checks), and having the most interesting setting and atmosphere.
>But what are the good games
Well, here's the difficulty, because the games that people would most universally agree are CRPGs tend to be bad in mostly the same ways because there was an insistence of using well-known /tg/ rules, and "AA" games are kinda sorta dead nowadays so contemporary games tend to be bad in the sort of ways that the classics were not. But I mentioned PS:T, Pathfinder games for instance are better in that they do at least ONE thing (build autism) well, etc.
eh , no , I don't see it.
The combat syystem is fine , better than most in fact.
Having a problem with 2nd edition DnD Forgotten Realms is a "you" problem.
The sound design alone is top tier , even by today's standard , and the content is double what everything else has.
Jesus fricking Christ dude, how many fedoras do you own?
This was a magical level of autism, thank you. You’re wrong, but it still pretty magic.
I don't even need to point out how wrong and stupid this post is, since I can pretty much just summarize every single thing you said as being "wrong".
Also, the Planescape setting is fricking putrid liquid rancid dogshit, and Planescape was interesting in spite of its setting, not because of it. It's just a big fricking mish-mashed moron pot of everything thrown together at the same time and doesn't actually work at all, because it idealizes a hyper-egalitarian society in a fantasy world with the most extremes, which makes zero fricking sense. Baldur's Gate 2 is objectively a better RPG than it because Baldur's Gate allows you to actually roleplay within the world, and offers you genuine choices that matter, and has a far more realistically realized world for it to take place in.
Pathfinder games are all almost all shit as well, since they're monotonous directionless garbage that aims for sandbox gameplay when a million other games do that better, and the strength of an RPG, as every single person who actually plays them knows, the strength of an RPG is in its hook for the player in regards to interesting them in the game's story and world. If there is no hook (IE a main quest), it's fricking god awful trash. The walls-of-text in Planescape is also another criticism many have with it, since it is extremely inelegant and very exhausting. I would say that if you look up to Planescape Torment, you don't actually like RPG's and would be more suited to playing Point and Click adventure games, which is fine and there's nothing wrong with those, but it is decidedly NOT an RPG game, and saying it's better than Baldur's Gate 2, the best RPG ever made, is cutting off your own balls to pretend how hip you are while everyone sits and looks at you confused like you're a fricking idiot who needs to be thrown in a mental asylum.
They hated him because he told them the truth.
hey man I think you need to use more parentheses
Hell no, RTwP is shit and there are games that have surpassed BG1&2 in different areas since. Also the forgotten realms are just kinda lame.
Been playing BG 1 after playing BG3 and I'm having a blast, it's genuinely way better than the third game (which I initially thought was great until I went back and started playing the first game)
Everything really just kicks into overdrive once you actually reach Baldur's Gate but the rest of the Sword Coast is fun to explore regardless, the unforgiving difficulty makes it less tedious.
Adding onto it, the only "real" problem I'm having with BG 1 really is returning to Baldur's Gate after fighting through the Candle Keep crypts is that the limitations of the game's storytelling in relation to exploration is really starting to show.
From going to to the Undercellar to freeing the Duke in the Flaming Fist barracks, to barging into the Iron Throne's tower (these three things is where I left off/where my playthrough is currently at), it just feels like the game expects you to tackle these things in a specific order because you do one thing and the game tells you "Maybe you should go to the Undercellar and kill those two assassins" or "Hey, the duke's sick and his cleric's evil" even though I've already done these things
I could credit it to the npcs not knowing you've done these things but then you get journal entries saying "I should go do this shit I literally just did"
It's the only time in the game so far my immersion's broken/the story's fricked up. And I really don't like the angle that the game feels like it's starting to push on me with a few NPCs pushing "If you kill the big bad, you're just like him" or "Heh, you really ARE just like the big bad"
I played BG 1 and 2 after 3 as well. Incredible games that still hold up IMO, some maddening design choices aside. That said, I can't imagine preferring them over 3. To each his own, I suppose.
The "weirdness" in bg's game design can be understood from it's core design philosophy: it's an attempt to create a ttrpg-experience simulation. Many things in modern game design go against that current but while it does have its flaws I think it also greatly adds to the lasting magic feel the title managed to capture.
>the unforgiving difficulty makes it less tedious
First playthrough thoughts here
I think that summarizes what I like about it.
Baldur's Gate's unforgiving, but it's not tedious or "hard" in the traditional sense of hard. If you play it incorrectly everything's going to frick your shit up and you're going to die right away. In most other games if you play it incorrectly you'll just be inefficient and you'll gradually learn rather than instantly dying over and over again.
It's when you learn the mechanics of the game that it stops being "hard". It's still unforgiving, but it's not a "hard" game. You actually die 90% of the time by springing some lightning trap or getting snared in a web or mass-feared, until you learn how to circumvent these things. Most games would slap you on the wrist but not outright insta-gib you.
>lightning trap
Dual classing at 9 was so tedious. I'd never do it again. That last level felt like it took forever, and I can't imagine people doing it even later. They must be solo.
Stockpile scrolls. Remove everyone from group. Read them all to get instant level 1-7.
The party size is six. There is literally no reason to dual class unless you want to min-max a character for some lols.
If you play Legacy of Bhaal mode + Sword Coast Strategems you essentially need to power game.
Bg is not a very hard game to break if you know what you're doing, but the amount of cheese that is bersage or kensage is an artery clogging amount. But they're fun to play for a couple of times.
I find F/M/T the funnest class to play since it's essentially a turbothief that allows for almost unrivaled amounts of dickery while being slightly lighter on the cheese.
I don't usually like duals precisely because the dualing process is a drag and multis are a smoother experience, but when dualing from fighter I see lvl9 as such a stacked sweet spot I usually don't want to miss it. 13 gives too little for the pain in the ass it is (or cheesing amount) and the xp difference from 7-9 is ultimately so small it's pretty much the same bother for me.
I thought about trying 1 and 2 but after seeing Zaric play it I got turned off by the combat.
For me i never thought any CRPG could surpass BG2 until i tried BG3, its now my favorite CRPG, it dethroned BG2 which was the best for me.
BG1 was a good start but its too barebones for that spot, i'd take Icewind Dale, Tyranny and PoE over it.
Though i have yet to play the new Pathfinder game, i played Kingmaker and while the story was good i found the mechanics to be quite messy.
you can't get super powered in bg3. I'm surprised they cut out penalties
>can
For me, it's Icewind Dale 1 and 2.
I'm playing BG1 right now, about 2 hours in, is a thief with maxed DEX, CON, and CHA who goes all in on sling and dart and traps good enough to finish the game with?
Bounty Hunter by the way
You can finish the game with any class and even with completely fricked builds. It will obviously be slightly harder with a complete shit build, but your build sounds like one that shouldn't have any major problems as long as you get a couple of frontliners and an arcane caster. Almost all the companions have ways to make then strong/brokenly strong too. Bounty hunter is capable of strong cheese with the traps as well and thieves are somewhat underrated too (and also kinda rare in bg2) so bounty hunter is a good choice for party composition.
Nice, thanks looks like Usoppmaxxing was a good idea
The most important thing is that you like to play with the character.
Even the shittiest class (monk) can be very fun to play and be useful.
Remember to use the consumables you get in tougher fights, you do not need to hoard them.
yeah and traps get insanely strong in bg2, to the point of being op. you just need a couple frontliners to be in front of you cause thiefs are pretty squish
Darts are shit in BG2, you only have 1 unique item that gives you magic darts and there are no +2 dart weapons which means you can't attack conventionally after a certain point. You'll be relying on stealth, traps, and dialogues. IIRC there's a few decent magic slings but your spellcasters might want that more.
darts are cool because they interrupt enemy animations and spellcasting
also there's a +3 returning dart on first level of WK which is not hard to get early.
They're not a powerhouse weapon class but I think they have their place just for the APR. Good for getting rid of stoneskin/mirror image too. A situational weapon but a fun one.
No, and that's quite the moronic thing to even ask. They're classics, but there's a gap of a roughly billion lightyears between "classic" and "every dev should aspire to this".
I quite enjoy exploring in bg1 lads.. playing bg2 right now.
I'm playing on normal difficulty as I felt I was cheering too much on core rules. My understanding is growing slowly and I'm using mage/cleric spells more and more but I still play on normal for this run
Understanding the spell mechanics (especially the magic defenses / defense stripping spells later on) is the "hardest" thing about the game. The wiki is your friend, the original games came with a manual too.
The engine is kinda simple, but the rule interactions make the game "deeper" than one understands at first.
the wiki is dogshit and is full of lies but in concept yeah there's a lot of interactions and things that it's nice to know about so using online help is a good idda. shit i've been playing for almost 25 years now since they came out and i still use online maps/guides for some areas like watchers keep maze, durlags
I think the wiki has gotten more accurate in recent years. It usually has version differences listed and often the comments point out the usual points of confusion/errors.
Yeah thanks lad. I'm watching videos on it and referring to wiki.
In bg2 I did the Nalia quest straight after coronet in intro and I really struggled with the final battle in there. Had to cheese them 1 by 1 and even that took a long time to kill. Party was level 7/8. I think I was too low level but it's also forced me to learn more so I don't mind it that way.
The most popular "spell tier lists / rankings" on youtube are pretty good in general to get a grip on all the spells. And if you find a use for a spell you like that is not ranked high: keep using what works for you and what's fun for you.
I've noticed I've found some lower ranked spells quite useful since they've fit my party/playstyle well, even with difficulty mods maxxed. There's great variety and situationality regarding spell use.
Yeah the keep has some pretty nasty creatures you gotta deal with or get gibbed. The "secret fight" is also something I have only come back to finish after leveling up elsewhere first.
i prefered the baldurs gate dark alliance series. more my style of gameplay
I didn't enjoy BG1 too much, low level campaigns in old D&D are a slog.
>first character was a chaotic good halfling thief with a good party and generally doing the right thing (without being goodie-twoshoes about it since we're still robbing houses and killing bad guys/standing up for ourselves)
>had mediocre stats since I was playing blind and didn't want to minmax or metagame
>explored as much as I felt like exploring but didn't want to 100% or explore everything as to not ruin the joy of discovering shit on other playthroughs
>second character i created an hour ago is a chaotic evil Blackguard ready to frick shit up
>maxed out relevant stats
>filled out a notepad file in my good blind playthrough detailing armor and weapons i found and where to find them for my evil playthrough
This is the first game I've played in a long time where I don't take a break between playthroughs.
I wanted to move onto 2 but I'm having so much fun with the 1st game
I played a thief/fighter halfling. I maxed out the stealth skills and went around backstabbing everyone I could.
Sure, if they give you an indicator of your level in relation to the world in some way. I replayed BG2 very recently and it got real tiresome finding out some area you're next to, or 'should be' going to (per the main quest line) is actually "far too high level for you!" like what. How can you tell outside of getting raped? Common issue over and over as people kept asking on forums over the years and I was getting into the exact same spots, enemies etc with the same "levels" as them over and over.
It's from a different school and era of game design. Modern games are much more user-friendly but some feel this also results in this lowering the dramatic tension and feeling of challenge. It's a tightrope walk between being too handholdy or being too unfair. In the current era devs usually choose to err more on the handholdy side.
Also in the case of a crpg bgs1&2 follow thinking in the line of "the world should at least appear to exist independent from the player". But even this is not really set in stone as even bgs do slight hidden level scaling of some encounters.
That's a good way of explaining it. This approach is closer to ad&d ttrpg and less "themeparky" like modern games would usually do it (you can enter all rides at your leisure).
it was made by people that cared for the story and the setting
unlike modern games
Anyone want to argue about turn-based vs RTwP?
But I like both if they're done well :/
We can't have fence-sitters. We're at war!
I like turn-based more because it makes it easier for me to control my characters. I always feel like I'm fighting with the AI to get it to do what I want in BG 1&2.
BG1 and 2 has a pause feature you know.
RTwP is better if you have someone on board who is decent at active enemy AI design, TB is ultimately easier to achieve on multiple different levels. TB is better for the industry from a developer perspective because creating and executing a specific design philosophy is infinitely easier when you are essentially curating every moment of gameplay.
Honestly, I think I might only have an issue with RTwP in Baldur's Gate, since it's built off a turn based tabletop game.
The game is, in a sense, technically still turn-based except that it's running the turns past you so quickly they become difficult to keep up with (to me at least).
Check the auto-pause options, I sometimes played with the "pause at end of round" to get a grip on the rounds.
Also round=6s, turn=10 rounds=60s. And the daytime has a multiplier of 12 to realtime so: ingame hour = 5 real life minutes.
Thanks for the breakdown chieftain. I'll give the game another shot
Another basic tip: turn off cosmetic attacks from options, it makes combat more readable for melee.
>lvl 7 berserker Duel katana
>Duel class
>lvl 13 mage
I prefer the lvl9 dual, but kensage breaks the game anyways.
you spend too much points on shit
I actually do it more for the hp/survivability as you get the juicy fighter hp+con bonus up to lvl9 and survivability. With difficulty mods it makes a difference.
>celestial fury
>dak'kon's zerth Blade
paired with robes you're invincible. I don't think you've ever played bg2
On no-reload that extra ~20hp is quite literally a life-saver. Also the cf fight can be a b***h if you try to do it early in SCS, but I don't see what that has to do with the dualing level.
Also bersage>kensage.
you're a weakling
I will crush you to goo.
I'm going to frick your ass and you'll be shitting cum, and blood
I din't remember that line, is that a beamdog addition?
shut up moron
>updated my thread
>journal
I instantly read this in keldorn's voice
you seriously want to take on a berserker mage?
Any items purchased from Deidre is cheating. Those were originally only available to people who bought the Collectors Edition of BG2 and were intended to be OP toys.
you can't purchase celestial fury. it's an ultimate weapon. you have to fight for it. fricking tourist moron.
I didn't mention celestial fury you raging autist.
why are you even here if you don't know anything about baldur's gate?
I'd love for you to come up with an argument on how I'm wrong.
I soloed the game with lvl 7 berserker lvl 13 mage
And what would that have to do with anything I said
that you're a b***h Black person
any more questions? you can ask my Simulacrum. homosexual
I don't remember asking anything about you. I don't give a frick about you.
not my problem
let me guess... you're a fricking kotaku moron
Do you even know what you're even saying or replying to or did you just forget to take your meds.
you obviously are too stupid to understand bg2 god builds
Nowhere at any time did I mention anything having to do with builds.
I was literally telling you morons how to solo the game with a berserker mage.
Thanks for the hot tip but I didn't ask. And I can assure you I've played the game more than you.
I highly doubt it
let me guess. you're a homosexual druid
I would love to see you make a game play to rush from celestial fury.
get it as fast as you can. fricking moron
This post really triggered some kind of Celestial Fury autist LMAO
>robes of vecna
you just want that extra attack. you can still get it with lvl 7 Duel wield
I hate dualing from level 7 because you're basically leveling up your char a second time, plus you need to reorganize your party around your new class.
>lvl 7 berserker
>lvl 13 mage
OK
do you know what skull trap, and Simulacrum is?
you're a idiot
>Honestly, I think I might only have an issue with RTwP in Baldur's Gate
Probably, it's a pretty meh implementation. I think my favorite RTwP system is probably IZJS FFXII, which is probably heretical because it's a Japanese game but it works pretty much flawlessly
Is there a RTWP game where the enemy is NOT just trying to mob you?
I preffer Turn-Based, RTwP is just too hard to control.
Whoever designed it, probably didn't even playtested it enough.
This is probably the stupidest complaint I've ever heard. Not surprising to see from an ESL.
Pretty much all CRPGs are complete butthole
I haven't had the time to play Baldur's Gate since high school, almost 20 years ago. Wish I could.
what kind of homosexual makes excuses like this.
Me
Biotech wagie making 160k/yr
Baldur's Gate 2 is a 100+ hour investment. 100/16 = 6.25 days of nonstop Baldur's (8 hours of sleep/food/shitting). That's an entire week off.
Why, are you a wall street stock broker earning millions, or a construction working trying to make a living and putting 3 kids through college and supporting a wife?
If you have the time to shitpost on Ganker, you have the time to play Baldur's Gate.
is there any difference in-game if i use a new character instead of the one i used in bg1? i want to do a different character
Depends. Did you find a particular pair of pantaloons in your BG1 playthrough?
i dont know i played it 2 years ago
Then just create a new character
BG2 new chars start at lvl 6, so if you leveled your char above that you should import, regardless of whether you have pants or not.
I want to replay BG2 but I'm missing disc 4 and all the online versions are pozzed
You get the original versions with the new versions on purchase. Or then just get the 100% internet discount on the originals.
>Or then just get the 100% internet discount on the originals.
What I'm saying is no one hosts the originals outside of sketchy Slavic websites, it's all troonymaxxed
Just avoid dragonspear and add the mod that removes beamdog content. Then it plays pretty much like TuTu with a zoom.
I think Kingmaker is a more accomplished attempt at translating the experience of a full tabletop campaign than bg1.
BG2, BG3, and pretty much every other crpg are not really a campaign experience, but more like an adventure. The sense of exploration, freedom, and time passing is absent from them, you go from vignette location to location, time is completely abstracted, the world doesn't change.
i didnt play the dlc for bg1 am i missing something?
If you mean dragonspear: no, it's an akward fan fiction that has no place in the franchise. It was also the final nail in the coffin of beamdog having any chance of getting their grubby hands on a shot at doing bg3, it was that bad.
nice then, and is there any mod i should use in bg2EE or should i go vanilla? (i dont really care about the new characters that got introduced that i see a lot of people complain about)
For a first time run I don't think you need any mods. It's also a minor hassle to set them up and since you won't understand what half of the components in the big mods do anyways I wouldn't bother.
EEs are basically integrated mods as is. And the EE companions and their content are either mediocre (rasaad, neera), downright silly (dorn the evil evilman) or dogshit (hexxat) so feel free to ignore them.
EE is like downloading a big Skyrim mod pack where there might be a couple of things in it you want, but there's also a bunch of other shit you don't want and you can't tweak the options for any of it like you could if you just modded the game yourself and because it's a big tangled mess you spend more time trying to fix issues than you would have spent if you just modded the game yourself.
I'm not a beamdog enjoyer, but what is truly wrong with EE's, apart from the companions (content) beamshit added?
I don't remember every single thing from my playthrough since it was usually a series of "wait that's not right" moments while playing. Off the top of my head though and ignoring the obvious Beamdog OCs, the first big thing is the UI. I would class the EE UI as completely non-functional. And it has a bunch of absolutely bizarre choices like the custom portrait menu in character creation. In the original picking a custom portrait opens up a menu that lists the file names of all the stuff in your portraits folder so it's really quick and easy to pick the one you want and has the bonus that you can set the small image to just be like a headshot/portrait like the base portraits and have the large image being a larger full body image. The EE version doesn't let you do this and just adds the portrait image to the end of the queue so you have to click through ALL portraits one by one to find the one you want on top of not letting you have different small/large images. The next big thing is the removal of the original movies, which have to be modded back in. There are also options in the menu that EE removes that need to be modded back in. A bunch of items have their icons changed, some NPCs have their sprites changed and even occasionally their stats/loot changed. Some stores have their inventories changed. These kind of changes aren't massively world-changing but if you're familiar with the original they're annoying and in a lot of cases feel like "we know better" arrogance from Beamdog. At best it's like someone downloaded a bunch of tweakpacks and just said "frick it, yes to everything" on install without thought. I don't even have a problem with tweaks and use some in my playthroughs, but when I download and install them myself I have full control, whereas EE has no such customisation available.
I don't think anyone should play EE unless you're playing on a 1440p or 4k monitor. But if you have to play EE, a UI mod is essential. EE's UI is a fricking abomination.
correct. as a long time fan. Just play the originals
At least dragonspear gave better closure to BG1.
In 1 after the ending cutscene, there wasn't even a title saying "you ended the threat to Baldur's Gate!"
non
I really want a game that's BG but has skill checks for INT, WIS, and CHA like Planescape Torment.
bad rep. the original is better
im literally too moronic to play and like bg 1 and 2. is there a not-annoying playthrough, or better, story summary?
Just play it on story mode (lowest difficulty below easy), moron. Damn.
no that's rete
WotR homosexual is moronic, that game is definition of quantity over quality, every character has books worth of dogshit irrelevant dialogue, prebuffing turbo autism to the point game is unplayable without auto buff mod and it uses Unity so you have to endure loading screen every fricking 5 seconds. Oh and towns for soem reason dont have ambience so they all feel dead compared to bg2
you can easily solo bg2
no, they're chores. abandoned for good reason.
you can solo the game, get xp for completing companion quests l, and then kill your companions for extras XP
>abandoned
they are finished games you stupid zoomer
>a quarter of a century old game
>thread quickly north of 100 replies
>abandoned
lol u trol m3
>quickly
First of all, the thread is over 5 hours old, gramps. you're the equivalent of a group of old ladies in a retirement home talking to eachother.
Second of all, that's not even what I meant by 'abandoned'. For a bunch of people who exclusively inhale their farts and claim superiority, you subhumans have less reading comprehension than an autist with dyslexia, less literacy than a third world pajeet and less short term memory than a senile dotard. Probably because you're all of those, lmao.
>a bunch of people who claim superiority
why would you build such a strawman in your head over a video game?
>Why does this game suck so much when I play solo instead of with a group like the devs intended???
>one of the first intentionally challenging bosses in the game
>playing solo
>still only takes 1 minute to kill
Shows how CRPGs absolutely mog JRPGs
BG 1 is cute. The NPC barks are memorable. Wandering around in the wilderness is quaint.
But holy cow is the game ass at being an "RPG". The D&D ruleset is made as cumbersome as possible (THAC0) and it doesn't provide an interesting combat or diplomatic experience. NPC's will vomit multi-paragraph dialogs on you with a quest that is auto-accepted but barely indicate what you are supposed to do. Combat is just people whiffing hits until someone gets one-shot or flooding every fight with summons. The story only makes sense in hindsight of BG2 and you can miss huge amounts of why your character matters in Candlekeep if you don't open one specific out of the way chest.
Still, you get to find Drizzt. So that's cool.
BG1 is a great game but there's a short list of essential mods to use to get the best experience:
BG1 NPC Project
BGEE Unfinished Business
BGEE Quests and Encounters
Portraits Everywhere
Sword Coast Strategems
BG2 doesn't really need mods since it's pretty complete as it is.
>before beam dog
bg2 was awesome
bg2 is much more fun than Dragon age origins, here i said it
>the best wrpg of all time and one of the best overall games of all time is more fun than a dogshit toilet water game
You don't say.
The IE games are the only really replayable WRPGs because they're the only ones that let you create a full custom party (with custom portraits and voice sets), which combined with the class system and combat system gives you near infinite ways to replay the game.
icewind Dale is more like that, and a little bit of nwn
Jaheira has the best romance in BG2
>4000xp
>thanks for the help
>murder her for an extra 2000xp
fricking pleb
shes a great companion, thats another thing pathfinder WoTR lacks, i hated everyone in that owlkek slop
she's the worst
That's the worst thing about all the nuWRPGs. Very limited companion options and most of them are insufferable combined with either limited or no ability to make a custom party. Limited meaning you can't do it at the start of the game and it usually costs resources to buy generics once you unlock the ability at some point through the game. There's no excuse for this shit. Also one of the great things about BG is that on top of the ability to have a full custom party, most classes has multiple companion options for you to choose from.
She literally only has 2 competitors. I'm not counting EE companions.
All the romances are gay and I never play with NPCs because that would be gay
You don't have to look at the Infinity Engine games as the pinnacle of RPGs. We can imagine a hypothetical game engine that can express the D&D ruleset and a vibrant fantasy world that can adapt all campaign settings, such as Greyhawk, Dragonlance, Ravenloft, Dark Sun, Spelljammer, Planescape, Mystara, Birthright, Eberron, Blackmoor, Dawn War, Ghostwalk, Jakandor, Kara-Tur, Maztica, Pelinore, Al-Qadim, Nentir Vale, Thunder Rift, Hollow World, Masque of the Red Death, Kingdoms of Kalamar, Lankhmar, Oriental Adventures, Rokugan, Scarred Lands, Odyssey of the Dragonlords, Exandria, Theros, Ravnica, Strixhaven, Wildemount, Nerath,
Pelinore, Radiant Citadel, Zakhara, and Council of Wyrms.
you're all frick pathetic
That's a human male if I ever saw one.
that jon iranicus
And a human male name if I ever heard one.
keep your homosexual opinions to your self, meat.
100% exiled elf
Do you think one day we could get something like BG1 and 2 worked into a BG3 system? While the story and characters aren't that interesting to me in 3, the overall presentation is fantastic.
I would love to see that come to life as well. I know that official modding tools will be released this September. Sadly, these tools won't enable the use of building custom maps, quests, etc. from the assets available. Swen claims that it would be too much work to release a proper DM mode. I believe there's more going on behind the scenes. Mainly politics concerning WotC and Larians falling out with them. Which sucks considering there is a lot more that could've been done with BG3, but now Larian is moving on.
I never finished bg2, i remember getting to firkraag couldnt kill him so i fricking quit
You're not expected to be able to beat him when you first get to him and this is explained to you.
you can easily beat the original. it's the bream dog bullshit homosexualry that fricks everything up
I remember having to come back later both for firekragger and the shadow hedgehog as a kid.
the red dragon is original. they fricked his storyline up in bg2ee. fricking pissed me off
What did Beamdog do to Firkraag?
nothing I'm pretty sure
they fricked his story up, and the fairies nut story
just don't play the EE
the actual hard part is beating the lesbian expansion
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Each game will feature:
Fully realized 3D environments unique to each setting
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Aebrynis: "Blood and Regency" - A domain management RPG where players rule kingdoms and harness bloodline magic.
Al-Qadim: "Tales of the Caliphate" - An Arabian Nights-inspired RPG featuring genies, flying carpets, and desert adventures.
Echoes of the Dawn War: "Embers of Eternity" - A high-powered RPG set during the ancient conflict between dragonborn and tiefling empires.
Athas: "Survival of the Fittest" - A brutal survival RPG on Dark Sun's dying world, where players must conserve resources.
Birthright: "Blood of Kings" - A grand strategy RPG where you rule a domain, manage resources, and vie for the Iron Throne of Anuire.
Blackmoor: "Arcane Technomancy" - A dungeon-crawling RPG blending magic and technology in Dave Arneson's original campaign world.
Cerilia: "Heirs of the Ancients" - A grand strategy RPG where players manage domains and vie for control of divine bloodlines.
Council of Wyrms: "Clutch of the Dragon Isles" - An RPG where you play as dragons, managing your hoards and engaging in draconic politics.
can I get tl:r?
Dark Sun: "Tyrants of Tyr" - A resource management RPG where you liberate city-states from sorcerer-kings in a harsh desert world.
Dragonlance: "Dragons of the Fifth Age" - An epic adventure RPG set during the War of Souls, featuring dragon mounts and world-altering magic.
Eberron: "Last War Legacy" - A noir-themed RPG set in Sharn, solving mysteries tied to the aftermath of the Last War.
Exandria: "Tides of Wildemount" - A narrative-driven RPG based on the Critical Role campaign, featuring complex political landscapes.
Ghostwalk: "Veil of Souls" - An action RPG where you play as a ghost, solving your own murder in the city where the living and dead coexist.
Greyhawk: "Echoes of Iuz" - A tactical RPG where you lead a band of heroes against the demigod Iuz's expanding empire.
Hollow World: "Journey to the Center" - An exploration RPG discovering preserved ancient cultures inside Mystara.
Io's Blood Isles: "Clutch Politics" - An RPG where players are dragons, managing their hoards and engaging in draconic intrigue.
Jakandor: "Isle of War" - A strategy RPG focusing on the conflict between the magical Knorr and the techno-barbarian Charonti.
Kara-Tur: "Shadows of the Celestial Empire" - An open-world RPG inspired by East Asian mythology and martial arts.
Kingdoms of Kalamar: "Legends of the Young Kingdoms" - A political intrigue RPG set in a low-magic world of competing human realms.
Krynn: "Tides of the Cataclysm" - Set on Krynn during the tumultuous years following the Cataclysm, this narrative-driven RPG puts players in the role of a fledgling mage discovering their powers in a world that has turned against magic.
Lankhmar: "Thieves of Nehwon" - A stealth-based RPG inspired by Fritz Leiber's Fafhrd and the Gray Mouser stories.
Masque of the Red Death: "Gothic Earth" - A horror RPG set in a 1890s Earth where supernatural evil lurks in the shadows.
Maztica: "Heart of the New World" - An exploration and conquest RPG set in a fantasy version of pre-Columbian Americas.
Mystara: "Secrets of the Hollow World" - An exploration RPG set inside a hollow planet, discovering lost civilizations and ancient magic.
Nentir Vale: "Heroes of the Fallen Star" - A classic dungeon-crawling RPG set in the default 4th edition D&D world.
Nerath: "Ashes of Empire" - A post-apocalyptic fantasy RPG set in the ruins of a fallen human empire.
Odyssey of the Dragonlords: "Heroes of Thylea" - An epic RPG inspired by Greek mythology, featuring heroic quests and divine intervention.
Oerth: "Legends of the Flanaess" - A classic high fantasy RPG set on Greyhawk's planet, featuring iconic dungeons and artifacts.
Oriental Adventures: "Way of the Samurai" - A honor-driven RPG set in a fantasy feudal Japan, blending martial arts and magic.
Pelinore: "Domains of the Cerilian Sea" - A sandbox RPG featuring exploration of a partially mapped fantasy world.
Planescape: "Factions of Sigil" - A narrative-driven RPG where your choices and beliefs shape reality in the multifaceted City of Doors.
Radiant Citadel: "Cultures of Light" - An anthology-style RPG exploring diverse fantasy cultures linked by a magical city.
Ravenloft: "Curse of Strahd" - A survival horror RPG where you navigate the mist-shrouded realm of Barovia, facing gothic terrors.
Ravnica: "Guild Wars" - A faction-based RPG set in a world-spanning city, where players navigate complex inter-guild politics.
Rokugan: "Emerald Empire" - A clan-based strategy RPG inspired by Japanese history and legend.
Scarred Lands: "Titan's Legacy" - An action RPG set in a world recovering from a war between gods and titans.
Bg1 main theme mogs bg2 main theme
Spelljammer: "Void Corsairs" - A space exploration RPG where you captain a magical ship through crystal spheres, trading and battling.
Strixhaven: "Mages of the Five Colleges" - A magic school RPG where players attend classes and uncover arcane mysteries.
Theros: "Champions of the Pantheon" - A mythology-based RPG where players ascend to godhood through epic deeds.
Thunder Rift: "Secrets of the Valley" - A beginner-friendly RPG set in a valley surrounded by impassable mountains.
Toril: "Realms Beyond Faerûn" - An exploration RPG set on lesser-known continents of the Forgotten Realms planet.
Zakhara: "Fate of the Enlightened Lands" - An Arabian Nights-inspired RPG featuring genies, magic carpets, and desert adventures.
the only enhanced edition I'd recommend is ice wind Dale 2
I tried to play the original but I think you can't zoom out if I remember correctly and that was really really hard to get used to after playing the EE, though I still haven't played through EE and probably never will because of all the pozzing.
what do you mean by
>I tried to play the original
how far did you get?
I honestly think the icewind Dale 1 & 2 ee are decent. the only ones
I just mean 1.
so frustrating they pozzed this.
Tempted to do a Dragon Disciple Sorcerer run. How does this spell selection look?
Level 1:
Chromatic Orb
Blindness
Spook
Shield
Identify
Level 2:
Vocalize
Web
Mirror Image
Invisibility
Melf Acid Arrow
Level 3:
Remove Magic
Slow or Haste (can't decide which one)
Skull Trap
Melf's Meteors
Fireball
Level 4:
Stoneskin
Spirit Armor
Improved Invisibility
Greater Malison
Level 5
Breach
Spell Immunity
Lower Resistance
Spell Shield
Level 6:
Improved Haste
Chain Lighting
Contingency
Power Word: Silence
Death Fog
Level 7:
Spell Sequencer
Limited Wish
Project Image
Spell Turning
Level 8
Spell Trigger
Horrid Wilting
Power Word: Blind
Level 9
Wish
Chain Contingency
Time Stop
Lvl1: I'd swap chromatic orb to magic missile and identify to friends
Lvl2: -melf's +blur
Lvl3: -fireball (already have skulltrap), take slow and haste/vampiric touch
Lvl4: bretty gud, might consider if someone else could cast malison or imp.invis, maybe try to squeak minor sequencer in, but it's really what you wanna do here
Lvl5: k
Lvl6: i'd wanna get mislead, protection from magical weapons and magical energy, maybe true sight, hard choices here
Lvl7-9: sweet and hard choices, nothing wrong with those picks at first glance
Ultimately it boils down to party composition (what other casters have), preference and playstyle. Overall the spell list looks solid and you wouldn't need to change a thing to have a good selection.
As drsgon disc you get fire res and the scaling fire breath which can be worth multiple lower level spells too.
Thanks for the advice, anons. I really appreciate it.
chain lighting is kinda iffy, it looks much better on paper but doesn't work well in practice
If you're ok with cheese get summon hakeashar. A lot of enemies will blow all their spell slots on it if you just sit outside their vision and send it in.
How do people like bg 3 at all. I promise you that I'm not a boomer but 3 is the most pozzed undercooked and moronic shit imaginable. I almost dropped it halfway through act 3
I haven't played it because it just looks like Dragon Age, which I hate, both aesthetically and because the focus seems to be on gay sex rather than actually being an adventure. The reported digging up of BG characters just to shit on them also assures I will never ever play it.
>seems to be on gay sex rather than actually being an adventure
It's true and it's the worst thing about it. Digging up old characters was not that bad and it's cool to see them in 3d
every time I see praise it's just graphics and presentation and voice acting. Literally one of the arguments for why bg3 was good was "the best VA character ever"
I mean ok, sure. I guess im old because having voice acting is not something I care about. It's kinda like RTX, it's okay but I dont fricking need it.
I unironically like Neera
as someone who recently replayed bg1 its not a good rpg sadly, its more a preamble and trend setting that set the standard which paved the way for better performances like irenicus VO and awesome setting of BG2. BG1 was like ultra generic and terrible plot
How many rangers can you stuff into a fully-custom party before it becomes a liability? I like the idea of a heavy-micro playthrough where I just bore down on enemies one at a time with a death ray of projectiles
Two archers (crossbow and shortbow for lategame bg2/tob viability) would absolutely destroy everything in bg1, a stalker could backstab everyone in the ass with a weeaboo sword and a cleric/ranger could act as a good frontliner/divine caster. Add an arcane caster and a thief to round out the party and you are set. Easiest trash mob clears ever.
>Tfw I beat BG1 EE and am almost done with BG2 EE only to come into this thread and discover the originals are apparently better.
Don't listen to them anon ee is better if you ignore OC characters nobody gives a frick about. Some of them dare I say it even fun
As someone who has played the unmodded originals, TuTu versions and EEs: it's really a matter of taste.
I already used mods that made my original games very much like the EEs (beamshit content aside). You wouldn't extract that much value out of the originals over EE if you never played them.
I would recommend sometime checking out the original bg1 in it's original form maybe, it's a very distinct vibe if you're not put off by dated visuals (the original models).
And the zoom function is honestly pretty cool to have in the EEs.
Minsc is Reddit.
And who's four-chan? Twixtter?
Montaron and Xzar
>hate each other but can't be separated
>easy to access (literally first party you can get after Imoen)
>buttholes to everyone
Based
Edwin is more reddit than Minsc
Edwin
>wizard
>thinks he is genius
>hates Neera
>quest in 1 is killing Dynaheir (a black woman)
>looks down on everyone else
>almost everyone else hates him
>quest in 2 is him getting gender swapped
>halfling thief girl is the only companion he likes
>from Thay (third world desert country in Faerun)
>overbearing victim complex
>cries about the potential they had but lost during puberty
>annoying and avoided when possible
>is the little girl
>fat bald ogre that claims it's supposed to be a cute girl but was cursed
Accurate
>>fat bald ogre that claims it's supposed to be a cute girl but was cursed
Wait really?
Do you not remember how you meet Aerie?
No, completely forgot, but looking it up I realized I interpreted your post backwards
>annoying and avoided when possible
I kept her for most runs though
>cleric/mage = lots of spells, especially for healing
>easy xp from quest, which is the first one you get coming out of chapter 1 dungeon
although you forgot
>doesn't like the drow
Bg1 feels like playing a crpg based on the cool dnd rulebooks I read as a kid.
Bg2 feels like playing a game based on a novel someone wrote based on them.
Bg3 feels like playing a campaign using them.
I always preferred the idea that videogames are their own thing, so need not strictly adhere to the tabletop mechanics, hence I liked bg1&2 more than ToEE. But bg3 made the mistake of thinking dnd game on a computer needs to be dnd on a computer.
It fails to be a representation of what those tabletop games were an abstraction of, and instead acts as a representation of the act of playing the tabletop.
Meanwhile, the best dnd game of all time is actually the arcade duology!
*bg3 feels like a magical world of kinks campaign
So, it's settled then. BG3 is the best adaptation of the Forgotten Realms.
Turn based is more relaxed. Real time is too hectic.
Lmao. You cheeky shit. It absolutely is on par with the modern setting's level of thatguyness
>BG3 is the best adaptation of the Forgotten Realms.
But that's not a good thing, chuddie...
The only CRPG I've played is BG3. I can't bring myself to play BG 1 or 2, they're just too dated. And yet I do still have some desire to play another CRPG. I need to look more into what the other recent games in the genre are all about.
>kite enemies in circles and spam spells/arrows at them
>win 99% of battles
Yawn
No, butchered AD&D with bioware writing is not " the best crpg experience that all devs should aspire to", thanks for axing.
Now that you say it, Bioware did have AD&D to make a computer adaptation of and they squandered it chasing after Diablo's combat. BG3 was stuck with 5th.