This is going to ba a long post, so be warned. I have already stated my opinion about both games several times, but I like this thread, so I will try my best to tell my story with Baldur's Gate saga and the reasons, why I love the first game so much.
My road with the game was really bumpy, colorful and I think I made a full circle with it. I do not think I have spend as much time on any game to this day.
It all begun in 1998 when I was a 10 years old kid, who was really fascinated with video games. My journey with computer games so far was not as explored as I would like at that time. I did not own a computer back then, I only had a NES console, which I treated as a cool toy to play with friends and family. I also had Amiga with some good games, like Mortal Kombat II, but still gaming was not such a major part of my life.
My cousin started buying a computer magazine at that time, since he owned a computer. He would let me play some games that he had there e.g. Doom which I really liked and Supaplex, a really hard game, I have never finished it. In this magazine I read some of the software and hardware stuff, but I was mostly interested in the video games section, which was just a few pages per issue.
One of my best friends to this day, had a PC at that time, his older brother was mostly showing us games that he liked. The three games that I was fascinated with at that time were WarCraft II, Transport Tycoon and Anvil of Dawn. This was the point I started to treat games more seriously, I was hooked.
Another thing was that since I did not own a PC back then I was spending most of my time outside. Either with friends walking around and playing in woods, or alone exploring since I always liked the area where I am living (not a very large town lots of woods, lakes, small hills and rivers).
Finally back on the topic of Baldur's Gate. The newest issue of the computer magazine back then featured a new game that was coming out soon. The screenshots looked really promising, adventurers fighting in a forest (I always wanted to be such an adventurer as a kid) and the encounter with a strange, yellow lizard, with one of the characters having their portrait almost all covered in red. The last page was an ad with some armored guy's head and the big title: Baldur's Gate. I was amazed.
I wanted to know more about this game, when walking through the forests I imagined myself as the adventurer of that game. Some time has passed and during the Spring of 1999, my friend told me that his brother has got a brand new and awesome game. He told me it was similar to Diablo, but I did not know much about Diablo at that time (saw some screenshots here and there). He wanted me to come to his house to watch with him as his brother was playing this new game.
I could not believe what I saw, it was that great game from the magazine. It looked even better on the computer screen. I was totally blown away by it, I have never seen such a game before. The graphics of the environment, the music, the portraits, the character's voices (Polish voiceover is better than English imo) it was all just perfect. My friend's brother was inside the Nashkel Mines near the lava river, changing his party. I believe he was switching Jaheira for Branwen. I remember seeing the outside of Nashkel temple as well.
My hunger to play this game was even bigger and some time later my friend was playing the game himself, then he let me play it. I created my character (did not know what I was doing really) and walked around Candlekeep, learning the basics of the gameplay. I saw some NPCs while he was playing, he really liked Xan with his moonblade and so did I. Apart from him he had Imoen, Jaheira, Khalid and Kivan in his party. Later on he was using Gatekeeper when the enemies were too strong. I remember seeing parts of Cloakwood, Ankhegs and the areas of the first 2 chapters: from Candlekeep to Nashkel mines.
Year 2000 arrived and I finally got my first PC. I was suddenly ovewhelmed by the thought that I could play by myself the games I loved. At first I played some other games (WarCraft II and Crmageddon II mostly), since I did not have my copy of Baldur's Gate. I wanted to play it so bad and finally the day had come that I got my own copy of the game. I played it so much that most of the CDs had so many scratches, the game was crashing. My first character was a human chaotic evil (sounded awesome by the time, even though i was not playing as evil actually) cleric. I asked my friend many questions about the game and he said to me that cleric was basically fighter + mage and I thought it sounded awesome.
That char was of course terrible and I used the same party as my friend and found about other NPCs later as I was discovering the game. I remember going north from the Friendly Arm Inn and getting smashed by the Ankhegs, I was afraid of those guys for a long time. I stayed close to the main plot for the most part and in the Bandit Camp I permanently lost a party member and saved anyway, since I tried so many times to win the fight inside Tazok's tent. I asked my friend if there are some other NPCs to join and he recommended a paladin in the area with Ankhegs. I was scared to go there, but I got Ajantis and immediately liked him. My first playthrough ended on the second level of the Cloakwood Mines, where I was unable to beat Harieshan and her lightning bolt. After many tries I gave up.
This is how my journey with Baldur's Gate begun. I loved the outside calm areas, ther reminded me of my own journeys through the woods. The stone interface was simple and clear and fit the atmosphere, I really like the stuff lying in the menu screen (gold, weapons, helmet etc.). The game just looked simple and clear and reminded me of the first Lord of the Rings movie. Slow pace with great atmosphere. Later on I beat the game with my elven Fighter/Thief and more playthroughs came after that. Some months after that I got my copy of Tales of the Sword Coast and really liked the expansion pack overall, even though after finishing it for the first time I only liked the Isle of Balduran, since the rest was just a dungeon crawling.
Then I discovered Dark Side of the Sword Coast mod and the journey got a lot more colorful and bumpy. Some mods were really unstable and buggy, but I wanted more and more stuff put into the game. Finishing it whole would last for months, but it was fun nonetheless.
I do not remember the exact date (around 2004?) when my sister told me that her friend has Baldur's Gate II and I was shocked, beacuse I did not know that there was a sequel. I could not wait to play it and wanted to know more about it. She only told me that he did not like it as much as the first one, but I thought that it is impossible, a sequel to such a game cannot be bad. Later I got my own copy of BG2 and was really nervous when launching it for the first time, I wanted it to be such a great game as the first one, if not better.
The menu itself caught me by surprise, it had a very different feel to it. It was not a medieval fantasy of the frist game that I loved so much. It was weird and together with the music had a creepy atmoshpere. The art style was not my thing, but I had to give the game a chance, the menu cannot destroy the game for me. I created the character and I have found that I did not like how the weapons categories were split up to individual weapons. The cutscene with Irenicus played out and my thought was "Oh, in the first game the bad guy was a fighter, now it's time for a mage, I do not like mages.".
It actually was not the fact that Irenicus was a mage that took me back, but the fact that I already knew who the villain was. the magic of discovery suddenly disappeared. Then Imoen joined me and I thought that her portrait was terrible and ugly as the rest of those from BG2, why so many piercings and stuff in their hair? Even Keldorn's armor looked like a metal frisbee got stuck in his neck. I was getting more and move convinced that the artstyle was just ugly for me. It did not have the simplicity and clarity of the first game. The plate mail icon from BG2 will always be a turtle shell in my eyes and those silly paperdolls, just plain awful.
Anyhow I did not give up I was exploring the Irenicus's dungeon and I thought that it was not what I exactly imagined sequel to Baldur's Gate look like. I felt that I was playing a mix between a medieval fantasy with sci-fi with weird tubes and clones. The character animations were laughable as well, especially the streching and 2-handed sword knees-to-the-ground swing. I was in denial at first, I could not believe that this was how Baldur's Gate II looked. After many annoying parts I finally was able to exit the dungeon and got what I thought was just a middle finger from the game. Not the fact tha Irenicus took Imoen, or that I could not cast spells in the city, not even annoynig constant screaming from Minsc. It was the city itself. It was just plain ugly and illogical. I thought that the promenade is the worst looking location I have ever seen in a video game. Am I somewhere in Saudi Arabia? Where is the medieval city of Baldur's Gate?
I still gave the game a chance thinking it should get better later on, it is still a Baldur's Gate game. I do not like the games that start you off inside the big city, immediately I get lost and discouraged (Neverwinter Nights still not finished to this day). One thing that I really disliked about Athkatla is that how fake it feels. Almost every building is connect to some kind of quest. This is not a city, it is a quest-web and I felt like people were almost running at me and slaming their quests into my face. Talk about freedom. My first playthrough ended on the Graveyard District, where I saw a giant mural of a Pharaoh on the floor. This was too much for me, the scenery and atmosphere of the game was just not my thing and I did not care for Irenicus and Imoen, so I had no reason to continue.
To me this was not a game worthy of name Baldur's Gate, but some years later I forced myself to finish it with the hack'n'slash expansion, just so I can say my full opinion about it. So, other things I did not like about the game: They killed off my favourite characters from the first game - Montaron, Xzar and Ajantis. NPCs may be batter developed, but did not like most of them, especially constantly screaming Minsc, captain "I wanna be cool brute" obvious Korgan and walking cominc relief Jan Jansen. This left me with not so many NPCs to choose. Another point is magic items, in BG2 they do not feel magical as in "unique", they just have bigger + number. My favourite weapon is flail and I use it quite often even though there is only +1 in BG1.
When playing Baldur's Gate I felt like at home, but BG2 did not felt this way at all. There were almost no calm and beautiful woods to wander, just dungeon after dungeon. I did not like the bias towards magic especially with liches and dragons. The spell chess game got boring pretty fast. I did not feel that the spells were more powerful than the first game, they just had bigger numbers and so did the defensive spells. In the first game one spell could turn the situation around. I do not like dragons in fantasy, I think it just screams "lazy", there are more interesting creatures.
I never liked Irenicus as a villain and even more after I have discovered his motives. He is not a troubled soul, he is an emo kid with ego as big as 20 dragons. The whole game is just not my thing I guess, it was one of the biggest disappointments I had. After finishing it I do not want to play it again, Inifnity Animations gives me hope as it can restore BG1 character animations, this is also the reason why I stopped playing BG:EE and returned to the classic BG.
Now after so many years I still play Baldur's Gate from time to time, not as often as then I was a teenager, but I like going back to it a bit differently. Currently I have installed vanilla Baldur's Gate without TotSC with Baldurdash fixes and a little tweaks - max hp per level and no wear limitations (I could not go back to the restriction after playing pen and paper D&D) and that is all. Playing just like in the old days and having no problem with 64bit windows 7 and black bars to the sides on my monitor. I use normal dice to roll my character, with no overpowered stats and roll for random race/class/alignment/skills/NPCs. This keeps the game fresh after playing so much.
So, this is my story with Baldur's Gate and where my dislike for the sequel came from. This is quite an enormous post, but I have posted several times about my opinion about both games and did not want to repeat myself, now I can just post a link to this post. I think I might have omitted some of the points about both games, my memory may have failed me. I will not try to defend BG1 over BG2, each of us has different story with both games and likes both, just one, or none of them. Anyway, grab a drink, or something to eat and enjoy this long post and have a nice day.
