BG2 should be played without ToB

[Barbarian]

Well, without ToB you don't really complete the saga.

That said, HLAs really sucked and there is a point where you are overpowered and wrecking everything... unless you install Gaider's Ascention. Then it becomes hard even in normal difficulty setting. I really reccomend that mod. It had some real nice touches too, such as giving the Sword of Chaos back to Sarevok actually repowering it complete with dialogues and everything.

 

[anvi]

the ez tweak is to install the original BG2 and not ToB.

Does gog/steam give that option?

No. Which is why his response was retarded. But at least he gave himself an icon.

 

[Dux]

Just play SoA until its A New Hope ending and stop there. The story's complete. Chalk up ToB as being the hallucinations from an accidental LSD overdose during the after party. It makes sense.

 

[Incantatar]

-> Tab highlighting makes all those secret locations completely redundant

Waving your cursor all over the screen all the time is not exploration.

In the Infinity engine it is though. You have the clear fog of war exploration and the search containers, etc. exploration. The hidden stuff in BG1 and BG2 SoA is not meant to be easily found.

Hidden stuff in IE is badly designed because it can only be found through luck or extreme patience (plus willingness to risk carpal tunnel syndrome) rather than perception, curiosity and intelligence.
Hidden stuff with no indication that it's there is not found neither easily nor hardly - it's found randomly.

Therefore IE has no exploration and anything reducing pointless busywork that's required by the optimal gameplay strategy is welcome.

- Nothing of the hidden stuff is mandatory. Actually the opposite - they can break the game if you look at BG1. There is around 12k gp worth of hidden shit just on the way to the FAI.
- Playing without tab highlighting makes you miss some of the containers etc. which can be a good thing in that it makes replaying the game more interesting. (In PnP you won't find everything too)
- You won't get carpal tunnel syndrome by hovering over a few containers every 10 minutes.
- It is not mandatory to loot everything.
- There are additional forms of looking around and interaction: the question mark and the circle. Do you think they should be highlighted too with tab? It's basically the same thing.

It's not a big deal either way imo, but it does give the game a different feel.

 

[Roguey]

grognards.txt

Without ToB you also miss out on

- Non-pausing world map is an option so players can watch their characters travel in the map screen
- All mages now have the option of erasing spells from their spellbook
- Contingencies & Spell Triggers Screen has been added

 

[hell bovine]

Tl:dr
BG2 without ToB is more difficult, more balanced and has less badly designed shit. Play it instead if you want to know what the original devs made out of the game before you install your My Little Pony mods.

Not worth it, considering that SCS (even without the more difficult options installed) >>> "what the original devs made".

 

[Incantatar]

Tl:dr
BG2 without ToB is more difficult, more balanced and has less badly designed shit. Play it instead if you want to know what the original devs made out of the game before you install your My Little Pony mods.

Not worth it, considering that SCS (even without the more difficult options installed) >>> "what the original devs made".

I agree with you that SCS makes the game a lot better. But how can you even have an opinion here if you never play unmodded?

 

[hell bovine]

Tl:dr
BG2 without ToB is more difficult, more balanced and has less badly designed shit. Play it instead if you want to know what the original devs made out of the game before you install your My Little Pony mods.

Not worth it, considering that SCS (even without the more difficult options installed) >>> "what the original devs made".

I agree with you that SCS makes the game a lot better. But how can you even have an opinion here if you never play unmodded?

I have played SoA unmodded.

 

[Incantatar]

My point was to let everyone make the judgment for themselves. How should someone even be able to decide what options to use in the installer if they haven't played the game before?

 

[DraQ]

Hidden stuff in IE is badly designed because it can only be found through luck or extreme patience (plus willingness to risk carpal tunnel syndrome) rather than perception, curiosity and intelligence.
Hidden stuff with no indication that it's there is not found neither easily nor hardly - it's found randomly.

Therefore IE has no exploration and anything reducing pointless busywork that's required by the optimal gameplay strategy is welcome.

- Nothing of the hidden stuff is mandatory. Actually the opposite - they can break the game if you look at BG1. There is around 12k gp worth of hidden shit just on the way to the FAI.

What part of "optimally" did you not understand?

- Playing without tab highlighting makes you miss some of the containers etc. which can be a good thing in that it makes replaying the game more interesting. (In PnP you won't find everything too)

You can only miss containers because identical looking containers may or may not be interactive - which are which is completely arbitrary, so it's another case of BGs shit design.
In PnP you can querry GM for extra information to zero-in on any hidden stuff he might intend to allow you to find - "anything special about those trees? -> ... -> I put my hand in the hollow and feel around" - while in BG you can have copypasted tree #456 that looks pixel-for-pixel identical to copypasted trees #535 and #68 but actually has a hotspot in the middle that contains a powerful ring or a valuable gem, without any way to infer the presence of this hotspot and its contents other than manually scanning the entire screen with your cursor - BW didn't invent shitty scanning minigames with ME saga, they've had them all along.

- It is not mandatory to loot everything.

See #1.

- There are additional forms of looking around and interaction: the question mark and the circle. Do you think they should be highlighted too with tab? It's basically the same thing.

Tab is merely a workaround for shitty design, but it's better than nothing.

Ideally, the "highlighting" shouldn't be done by GUI or any other metagame source of information, but be handled by actual in-game information - visual or otherwise - things that are points of interest should either look like points of interest or there should be some source pointing to them.

It's not a big deal either way imo, but it does give the game a different feel.

Yes, this kind of feel is typically referred to as bullshit.

 

[Incantatar]

Hidden stuff in IE is badly designed because it can only be found through luck or extreme patience (plus willingness to risk carpal tunnel syndrome) rather than perception, curiosity and intelligence.
Hidden stuff with no indication that it's there is not found neither easily nor hardly - it's found randomly.

Therefore IE has no exploration and anything reducing pointless busywork that's required by the optimal gameplay strategy is welcome.

- Nothing of the hidden stuff is mandatory. Actually the opposite - they can break the game if you look at BG1. There is around 12k gp worth of hidden shit just on the way to the FAI.

What part of "optimally" did you not understand?

Yes I did misunderstand you because I thought you tried to add something valid here. I'm explicitly talking about new BG-Players here and the thought to judge first time playing with some form of autistic "optimal" play didn't cross my mind, since its just full blown idiotic.

 

[ilitarist]

Is this how you people gradually come to realization Baldur's Gate in general doesn't look that good today?

 

[Theldaran]

Half of ToB's problems stem from high level D&D being cheesy shit.

The other half is caused by a lack of will from Bioware put into the expansion. Everything is lifeless, reused or just lazy and unimaginative.

 

[octavius]

I quit when I faced Irenicus for the third time.
I've completed Shadows of Amn, but ToB is just too much.
First time I played I quit at the Underdark. Playing unmodded, and using Cheese of Balduran it felt so unsatisfactory to just send in Lilura and cheese the whole Beholder lair.

 

[DraQ]

Hidden stuff in IE is badly designed because it can only be found through luck or extreme patience (plus willingness to risk carpal tunnel syndrome) rather than perception, curiosity and intelligence.
Hidden stuff with no indication that it's there is not found neither easily nor hardly - it's found randomly.

Therefore IE has no exploration and anything reducing pointless busywork that's required by the optimal gameplay strategy is welcome.

- Nothing of the hidden stuff is mandatory. Actually the opposite - they can break the game if you look at BG1. There is around 12k gp worth of hidden shit just on the way to the FAI.

What part of "optimally" did you not understand?

Yes I did misunderstand you because I thought you tried to add something valid here. I'm explicitly talking about new BG-Players here and the thought to judge first time playing with some form of autistic "optimal" play didn't cross my mind, since its just full blown idiotic.

Well designed games may challenge the notion of optimality, but only shittily designed ones challenge its purpose.

Spoiler

And no, TES definitely doesn't count as well designed here, but powerful and valuable loot that player is (supposedly) not supposed to find just lying around the maps unguarded, with nothing beyond tedium guarding it is a whole new level of not even trying.

 

[boot]

Hidden stuff in IE is badly designed because it can only be found through luck or extreme patience

just like irl

And no, TES definitely doesn't count as well designed here, but powerful and valuable loot that player is (supposedly) not supposed to find just lying around the maps unguarded, with nothing beyond tedium guarding it is a whole new level of not even trying.

what is the sword of white woe?

 

[Filthy Sauce]

just like irl



what is the sword of white woe?

Its a sword sitting on top of a dresser. One can definitely debate if that's good design.

 

[Theldaran]

People plz, we're talking Throne of Bad here, and I don't think there's anything hidden there. And if there was it would have to be some serious shit to compete with the rest of the equipment.

 

[Kayerts]

The unmodded game is easy and can be handled easily if you bother to read rules and spell descriptions, much less the dozens of engine abuses and unforeseen-by-devs spell interactions that nerds have compiled over the years. The modded game can be made pretty hard even with ToB in SoA, and since mod difficulty is balanced with the assumption of ToB, you've got a pretty flexible ability to make the game harder up to your skill, patience, and tolerance for exploits. Winning the Tactics Irenicus fight solo is hard even for a 8m XP god with +6 weapons. Ironmanning a Tactics+SCS+Ascension+WheelsOfProphecy solo is hard; HLAs in SOA don't make it easy. Beating Improved Ilyich solo is hard even if you play with as much engine abuse as possible. The Improved Twisted Rune isn't too bad if you wait until Chapter 6 to do it, but if you aren't going to be a greedy fucker, why are you even playing this game? It's hard in Chapter 2.

 

[pippin]

Well, without ToB you don't really complete the saga.

Who cares? SoA's ending was satisfactory imo.

 

[Theldaran]

What does completing the saga mean? Pushing through boring, breakable combat? You can take a look at the ending descriptions for the companions at GameBanshee. No need to clear the game with each and every companion. The companion shouts before the Irenicus battle were cheesy enough (it seemed like a JRPG), but in ToB I think there isn't even that.

 

[pippin]

The fight against Irenicus was as disappointing as the battle against the dragons

 

[MicoSelva]

Having recently finished a solo playthrough of BG2+ToB for my Let's Play (my previous solo game was BG2 vanilla), I would agree, if it were not for Watcher's Keep. Throne of Bhaal (chapters 8-10) is pretty bad and neither its content nor the story is not on par with the vanilla (Abazigal's Fortress is probably the highlight, and even that is pretty boring), but Watcher's Keep is great, and a solid addition to the base game.

 

[Theldaran]

Also, having enough level you can steamroll through the Twisted Rune. Which is important (or not) because they drop a game-breaking item.

 

[octavius]

Also, having enough level you can steamroll through the Twisted Rune. Which is important (or not) because they drop a game-breaking item.

What? Game breaking items in BG2?