IncendiaryDevice
Self-Ejected
- Joined
- Nov 3, 2014
- Messages
- 7,407
Whelp, finally finished BG2.
I think my final play time was around the 150 hour mark, possibly a bit less and including any breaks, which probably add up to quite a lot. The final stats were:
172 days and 10 hours of in-game-world time.
Valygar: Exp value 30%, 491 kills
Jahira: Exp value 29%, 433 kills
Me: Exp value 5%, 126 kills
Jan: Exp value 4%, 85 kills
Aeire: Exp value 5%, 70 kills
Mazzy: Exp value 24%, 361 kills
Everyone reached their level cap before the start of act 7.
Favourite items for a character: Valygar with: Celestial Fury (best weapon in the game?), Fortress Shield, or Crom Faeyr for Golems. Before the end of act 3? Probably Jahira's Scimitar +2 of zero speed named Belm, Shield of Harmony +2, Amulet of Power.
Treasures accumulated and saved:
Emeralds: 22
Diamonds: 14
Rogue Stones: 11
King's Tears: 9
Star Sapphires: 9
Water Opals: 5
Laeral's Tear necklaces: 5
Beljuril: 1
All in all it was a fun RPG. During act 3 I was really loving it with only the occasional glimmer of distaste. Most of the areas felt unique and interesting and it was very enjoyable getting to know all the characters and never knowing what the next NPC encounter was going to deliver. Finishing off act 3 by going around and killing loads of lichs and Dragons felt very rewarding and provided a satisfying conclusion to the endless chapter. I started to lose interest as the remaining acts played out as the more traditional Bioware traits started rearing their ugly heads, with loads of copy-paste and more monotonous and repetitive content. It was no surprise that the end of the game wasn't the end of the game and it required me to kill Irenicus twice in order to finish the game. I resented that it made me resent wasting my time on repeats so much.
[*shudder*]
Another reason I started to lose interest was because I discovered that I'm not particularly bothered by the much vaunted high-level mage spell-casting that the game gradually turns into. I saw no great value in pre-preparing any contingencies, triggers or time stops and when the enemy did it it just made combats boring and frustrating as I sat there looking at a dead screen for up to a full minute while the AI went through it's spell-casting motions with nothing to do but twiddle my thumbs. Also, while using magic was invaluable for killing the Chapter 3 dragons, the two later dragons, the silver and black dragon, the game just presented you with unique abilities that you'd never guess what their counter was anyway. I looked up the counter to Wing Buffet and found it was Spell Shield, duly shielded my two mages with the spell and then cast loads of anti-resistance magic and followed it up with magic missiles, but the missiles did nothing, They registered in the battle-log as having been fired, but no further info was provided, neither any hits nor any resisteds. I just moved on. Likewise, no idea what Black Dragon Breath is or how to counter it, looked up some hints and just used summons, something I had completely forgotten about after summons had been completely useless against all previous dragons. I didn't even bother trying the green dragon. Likewise, I defeated Irenicus at the tree by just running around the tree until all his shit wore off, at which point he appeared to have unlimited Magic Missiles, fired off at a machine gun pace. Luckily Jahira was immune to them and by the time she killed him he'd fired off 51 (!) Magic Missiles at her. Sure... that's, like, playing the game right there game... and throughout I noticed an awful lot of enemies which weren't necessarily 'playing by the rules', which reminded me of the prison mage in the original Baldur's Gate who seemed to have unlimited spells casting.
And killing the Slayer? By the time I realised something screwy was going on I had already dealt 369 damage to it and it still said just 'Barely Injured'. Considering it was killing my warriors in two or three hits if I let it, I decided to cheese it, and it still took Mazzy nearly 80 arrows of biting to kill him, with each one doing double figure damage. Either it was regenerating at a phenomenal rate or it had some kind of unique hp level well beyond the remits of the expected D&D rules.
Upon completion I set about loading up Throne of Bhaal. It installed fine, but when I clicked "play throne of Bhaal' in the main menu it asked me to insert the expansion disc: "No disc in drive. Place expansion CD in drive", which it already was, duh, but it refused to read it any further. I have two copies of this disc from different BG disc sets and so tried the other one, same shit. OMG, I had a bug nightmare getting the original BG's expansion to install and play, why would I expect BG2 to be any different! Combined with the continual "NPC appears busy" bug throughout the main campaign, the game lost a lot of points from me in various ways. However, people seem to say that the expansion is just loads of high level mage shenanigans, so maybe its just giving me an opportunity to skip it anyway...?
To be honest, there wasn't much, visually, that I particularly liked about the game. Aside from some unique areas, most backgrounds were fairly generic and unmemorable and the ones that weren't didn't have anything interactive about them, such as most main temples. I noticed in the credits they thanked the Icewind Dale team for all their assistance and assets, and most of the visually interesting content, such as a lot of the varied monsters, were mostly taken from IWD.
I can certainly see the appeal of the game and the areas where it excels are and were, and kind of still are, completely unique to Bioware, such as the companion dynamics and solid mix of NPCs, simple puzzles and healthy combat within a grand plot of self-discovery, but the nuts and bolts, the things I'm mostly interested in, still felt all rather tired and uninspiring.
All in all a great game, but it's still obvious that it's a flawed Bioware game at heart and it's easy to see even here how things never got that good with them as a developer beyond the companion shtick. It's amazing how someone's reputation can live off a single chapter of a single game for decades...
Not sure I'll ever play it again, but well worth the initial run. Having now played all the notorious IE games, except Throne of Bhaal, of course, my ranking would be:
1. Icewind Dale - 95% and very replayable
2. Planescape: Torment - 95% but loses the unique factor upon replay
3. Baldur's Gate 2/Icewind Dale 2/Baldur's Gate Tales of the Sword Coast - 85% loads of good but quite a bit of bad
4. Baldur's Gate/Heart of Winter/Trials of the Luremaster - 70% mostly mediocre but better than most crap on the market
I think my final play time was around the 150 hour mark, possibly a bit less and including any breaks, which probably add up to quite a lot. The final stats were:
172 days and 10 hours of in-game-world time.
Valygar: Exp value 30%, 491 kills
Jahira: Exp value 29%, 433 kills
Me: Exp value 5%, 126 kills
Jan: Exp value 4%, 85 kills
Aeire: Exp value 5%, 70 kills
Mazzy: Exp value 24%, 361 kills
Everyone reached their level cap before the start of act 7.
Favourite items for a character: Valygar with: Celestial Fury (best weapon in the game?), Fortress Shield, or Crom Faeyr for Golems. Before the end of act 3? Probably Jahira's Scimitar +2 of zero speed named Belm, Shield of Harmony +2, Amulet of Power.
Treasures accumulated and saved:
Emeralds: 22
Diamonds: 14
Rogue Stones: 11
King's Tears: 9
Star Sapphires: 9
Water Opals: 5
Laeral's Tear necklaces: 5
Beljuril: 1
All in all it was a fun RPG. During act 3 I was really loving it with only the occasional glimmer of distaste. Most of the areas felt unique and interesting and it was very enjoyable getting to know all the characters and never knowing what the next NPC encounter was going to deliver. Finishing off act 3 by going around and killing loads of lichs and Dragons felt very rewarding and provided a satisfying conclusion to the endless chapter. I started to lose interest as the remaining acts played out as the more traditional Bioware traits started rearing their ugly heads, with loads of copy-paste and more monotonous and repetitive content. It was no surprise that the end of the game wasn't the end of the game and it required me to kill Irenicus twice in order to finish the game. I resented that it made me resent wasting my time on repeats so much.
Another reason I started to lose interest was because I discovered that I'm not particularly bothered by the much vaunted high-level mage spell-casting that the game gradually turns into. I saw no great value in pre-preparing any contingencies, triggers or time stops and when the enemy did it it just made combats boring and frustrating as I sat there looking at a dead screen for up to a full minute while the AI went through it's spell-casting motions with nothing to do but twiddle my thumbs. Also, while using magic was invaluable for killing the Chapter 3 dragons, the two later dragons, the silver and black dragon, the game just presented you with unique abilities that you'd never guess what their counter was anyway. I looked up the counter to Wing Buffet and found it was Spell Shield, duly shielded my two mages with the spell and then cast loads of anti-resistance magic and followed it up with magic missiles, but the missiles did nothing, They registered in the battle-log as having been fired, but no further info was provided, neither any hits nor any resisteds. I just moved on. Likewise, no idea what Black Dragon Breath is or how to counter it, looked up some hints and just used summons, something I had completely forgotten about after summons had been completely useless against all previous dragons. I didn't even bother trying the green dragon. Likewise, I defeated Irenicus at the tree by just running around the tree until all his shit wore off, at which point he appeared to have unlimited Magic Missiles, fired off at a machine gun pace. Luckily Jahira was immune to them and by the time she killed him he'd fired off 51 (!) Magic Missiles at her. Sure... that's, like, playing the game right there game... and throughout I noticed an awful lot of enemies which weren't necessarily 'playing by the rules', which reminded me of the prison mage in the original Baldur's Gate who seemed to have unlimited spells casting.
And killing the Slayer? By the time I realised something screwy was going on I had already dealt 369 damage to it and it still said just 'Barely Injured'. Considering it was killing my warriors in two or three hits if I let it, I decided to cheese it, and it still took Mazzy nearly 80 arrows of biting to kill him, with each one doing double figure damage. Either it was regenerating at a phenomenal rate or it had some kind of unique hp level well beyond the remits of the expected D&D rules.
Upon completion I set about loading up Throne of Bhaal. It installed fine, but when I clicked "play throne of Bhaal' in the main menu it asked me to insert the expansion disc: "No disc in drive. Place expansion CD in drive", which it already was, duh, but it refused to read it any further. I have two copies of this disc from different BG disc sets and so tried the other one, same shit. OMG, I had a bug nightmare getting the original BG's expansion to install and play, why would I expect BG2 to be any different! Combined with the continual "NPC appears busy" bug throughout the main campaign, the game lost a lot of points from me in various ways. However, people seem to say that the expansion is just loads of high level mage shenanigans, so maybe its just giving me an opportunity to skip it anyway...?
To be honest, there wasn't much, visually, that I particularly liked about the game. Aside from some unique areas, most backgrounds were fairly generic and unmemorable and the ones that weren't didn't have anything interactive about them, such as most main temples. I noticed in the credits they thanked the Icewind Dale team for all their assistance and assets, and most of the visually interesting content, such as a lot of the varied monsters, were mostly taken from IWD.
I can certainly see the appeal of the game and the areas where it excels are and were, and kind of still are, completely unique to Bioware, such as the companion dynamics and solid mix of NPCs, simple puzzles and healthy combat within a grand plot of self-discovery, but the nuts and bolts, the things I'm mostly interested in, still felt all rather tired and uninspiring.
All in all a great game, but it's still obvious that it's a flawed Bioware game at heart and it's easy to see even here how things never got that good with them as a developer beyond the companion shtick. It's amazing how someone's reputation can live off a single chapter of a single game for decades...
Not sure I'll ever play it again, but well worth the initial run. Having now played all the notorious IE games, except Throne of Bhaal, of course, my ranking would be:
1. Icewind Dale - 95% and very replayable
2. Planescape: Torment - 95% but loses the unique factor upon replay
3. Baldur's Gate 2/Icewind Dale 2/Baldur's Gate Tales of the Sword Coast - 85% loads of good but quite a bit of bad
4. Baldur's Gate/Heart of Winter/Trials of the Luremaster - 70% mostly mediocre but better than most crap on the market
), comes from the attempt to milk a more than 15 years old game.
