Baldur's Gate I was better than Baldur's Gate II

[Sacred82]

3. I may simply delete the blog entirely (because, at the end of the day, who cares!)

 

[lukaszek]

deterministic system > RNG

 

[Micormic]

3. I may simply delete the blog entirely (because, at the end of the day, who cares!)

If you, lilura decide to delete lilura's blog after I have just become a lilura's blog reader and commentator then I will literally kill myself because I don't be able to read lilura's blog anymore...

or... you can create a blog about your experience

I'm not sure you'd want to read my blog

 

[Bladeract]

Let's hope The Man does not shut down Lilura's blog. Keep the internet neutral!

 

[Kyl Von Kull]

Let's hope The Man does not shut down Lilura's blog. Keep the internet neutral!

Her blog will be fine as long as she doesn’t start publishing aggressive critiques of Xi Jinping Thought on Socialism with Chinese Characteristics for a New Era (tm).

 

[Lonely Vazdru]

Her blog ? What are you talking about ? Lilura IS a blog.

 

[Theldaran]

Indeed, I may have created that "only these readers" option... back in 2005, some Tolkienite boys whom I was hanging out with cried me a river over me reading their private blogs. Of course, "private" my ass, they contained precious information, but they had no security means whatsoever. They embraced this option later.

Mad world, it is.

 

[Sacred82]

Lilura IS a bot.

 

[The Avatar]

I can't believe that people seriously think that BG1 is better than BG2. I can see how it's more accessible given that you're tossed right in a mostly open world at level 1. Maybe you prefer the simple click-to-win combat that becomes less ideal with the advent of high level spells. Or perhaps you just prefer the simpler and often senseless text to the masterful prose of BG2. Did I mention that the follower NPCs barely have any story at all and only talk to you to complain about you not doing their personal quest.

Just look at Jon Irenicus, voiced by David Warner.


Compare that to the "I'm a bad guy in evil bad guy armor" Sarevok of BG1.

If you those are your preferences, it still doesn't make BG1 better than BG2, in the same way that your preference for Mcdonald's makes it better than a fancy restaurant. BG1 isn't better- you just have poor taste.

 

[FeelTheRads]

BG2 masterful prose.

Get fucked. Yes, BG2 has a better story and better writing over all, but that's not really a masterful anything. Irenicus is the best part about it and one of the few characters that are not annoying.

 

[hell bovine]

Compare that to the "I'm a bad guy in evil bad guy armor" Sarevok of BG1.

If you those are your preferences, it still doesn't make BG1 better than BG2, in the same way that your preference for Mcdonald's makes it better than a fancy restaurant. BG1 isn't better- you just have poor taste.

I'll take the evil bad guy armor over an elf in fetish gear, tbh. (speaking of tastes)

 

[Bladeract]

I can't believe that people seriously think that BG1 is better than BG2. I can see how it's more accessible given that you're tossed right in a mostly open world at level 1. Maybe you prefer the simple click-to-win combat that becomes less ideal with the advent of high level spells. Or perhaps you just prefer the simpler and often senseless text to the masterful prose of BG2. Did I mention that the follower NPCs barely have any story at all and only talk to you to complain about you not doing their personal quest.

Just look at Jon Irenicus, voiced by David Warner.


Compare that to the "I'm a bad guy in evil bad guy armor" Sarevok of BG1.

If you those are your preferences, it still doesn't make BG1 better than BG2, in the same way that your preference for Mcdonald's makes it better than a fancy restaurant. BG1 isn't better- you just have poor taste.

BG 1 opening is terrible and nonsensical. You get unnecessarily introduced to Sarevok but no real info on him, you are in Big Trouble, so of course the logical thing is to hang around in the keep killing rats in the basement. They did it that way just to work some crappy cutscenes in.

This is basically the opening of Prophecy of The Shadow if they had done everything absolutely wrong. You should have just found your master dead and a note from him saying to go to blah blah and get the blah. Done! Then slowly reveal what's going on.

Then you wander around the sword coast for 4 years and completely lose the main storyline until the end of the game, where you suddenly confront sarevok after completely forgetting about his existence and never really understanding much wtf is going on. Then the game is over and you go OK.

BG 2 is convoluted and confused but it conveys the main points of wtf is going on and why, and develops them over time into something interesting. BG 1 is a giant failure in the story department.

 

[Great Deceiver]

ITT some newfag states that BG2 is somehow akin to fine dining and has 'masterful prose'. Close it down, fam.

 

[IncendiaryDevice]

Yes, a great post ruined by the insertion of two words that all the try-hards can latch onto like glue... shame the dude couldn't just write "vastly superior prose" so the thread didn't have to devolve into the predictable 10 posts of "masterful! LOL".

 

[Lonely Vazdru]

Cespenar > Irenicus > Sarevok

 

[Malpercio]

For no reason at all, because who gives a fuck about her, but apparently you do because reasons.

If only the game provided other reason to follow him in dialogs! Oh wait, it does.

3) Apparently BGII was the beginning of turning Bioware games into bad romance simulators.

Make your own party members or avoid romancing them.

4) Enough with the crappy writting, lets talk gameplay, the worst part of BGII. In BGI, loot felt special. Magical weapons were rare and really helped you against enemies. And since you were low-leveled, every level you got counted. You could really feel the advancement in power. But while you became better, you were never overpowered. With BGII, and seeing the success of Diablo and the competition from Diablo II, Bioware devs decided that they needed to have tons of loot in their game. So they filled the whole area of AMN with +1 and +2 weapons like they were candies, and you could easily acquire +3 +4 and +5 weapons.

That's a good thing, it was what made itemization so good. You are not low level and most items came from high level quests/merchants.

 

[Bonzai]

I've recently started my first full playthrough of the BG saga. I've been trying to get into it for the last 15 or so years but I always seem to quit at some point. This time around however I finally managed to finish the first game. The main problem with this game imo is pacing both in terms of story progression and in terms of itemization. Although you spend the majority of the game wandering through wilderness and fighting trashmobs in hopes of finding anything meaningful to interact with, the Durlag's tower made this torment totally worth it. The final chapters were fine too. Itemization was crap since roughly by the milddle of the game you already have the majority of the best items and the rest of your money is spent on potions and scrolls, which you seldom use anyway. Dungeons are boring clusterfuck filled with kobolds and shit and Durlag's tower again is a pleasant (and only) exception. But the thing is it's not in the original game! Without the Tales of the Sword Coast this game is actually even worse!
Now i'm playing BG2 and while the previous game felt bland this one feels overwhelming. Quests are long and epic, magic items are strong and plentiful, tons of gold, everything is unique and special. Pretty much everything is cranked up to eleven. But it kind of makes sense when you moved on to the next game. I've just killed Sarevok, I felt kick-ass, my blood was pumping and i wanted more! It is a power fantasy after all. Overall I would rather prefer a middle ground between these two games. They both seem to have their strenghts and weaknesses.
Lilura, what would YOU change in BG2 to make it better?

 

[Micormic]

I can't believe that people seriously think that BG1 is better than BG2. I can see how it's more accessible given that you're tossed right in a mostly open world at level 1. Maybe you prefer the simple click-to-win combat that becomes less ideal with the advent of high level spells. Or perhaps you just prefer the simpler and often senseless text to the masterful prose of BG2. Did I mention that the follower NPCs barely have any story at all and only talk to you to complain about you not doing their personal quest.

Just look at Jon Irenicus, voiced by David Warner.


Compare that to the "I'm a bad guy in evil bad guy armor" Sarevok of BG1.

If you those are your preferences, it still doesn't make BG1 better than BG2, in the same way that your preference for Mcdonald's makes it better than a fancy restaurant. BG1 isn't better- you just have poor taste.

BG 1 opening is terrible and nonsensical. You get unnecessarily introduced to Sarevok but no real info on him, you are in Big Trouble, so of course the logical thing is to hang around in the keep killing rats in the basement. They did it that way just to work some crappy cutscenes in.

This is basically the opening of Prophecy of The Shadow if they had done everything absolutely wrong. You should have just found your master dead and a note from him saying to go to blah blah and get the blah. Done! Then slowly reveal what's going on.

Then you wander around the sword coast for 4 years and completely lose the main storyline until the end of the game, where you suddenly confront sarevok after completely forgetting about his existence and never really understanding much wtf is going on. Then the game is over and you go OK.

BG 2 is convoluted and confused but it conveys the main points of wtf is going on and why, and develops them over time into something interesting. BG 1 is a giant failure in the story department.

Sign of an extremely good quality poster.
Joined:
Saturday

 

[Ramnozack]

My overview of BG2 companions, inspired by a generic giant spider.




Yoshimo - No opinion on the zipperhead one way or the other, pretty neutral and didn't say much. Didn't last long but thanks to him being a turncloak I had to use imoen, thanks for that bioware...

nice spoiler you ass

Is there anyone who hasn't played BG2 here already? lol

I haven't finished it, but am currently playing through it now. I just arrived at spellhold, playing with a decent amount of mods, no new NPCs or anything, but a lot of NPC expansion type stuff, lot of the better quest mods, a good amount of tweaks to balance things out. And SCS with the hardest settings.

Holy shit is SCS crazy. The first real mage battle I ever had was in BG2 in the Temple Ruins when I encountered a Lich. 2 greater basilisks, 2 greater mummies, and 2 skeleton warriors. The mummies summon shit, the Lich summons planetars and pit fiends, the lich time stops and comets the whole party and has 3 different layers of spell protections and invisibility I had to get to before I could breach (one of the mods I use causes breach to not bypass spell protections). I was only a level 12 F/M at the time and holy shit it took me like 15 tries to beat that shit. But it taught me so much about the mage battles in BG2 and why people praise them so much. Shit was legit challenging, something I haven't experienced in a game for a long, long time.

 

[Theldaran]

Maybe I was smarter when I was 17, but I kinda understood BG1's story, even if a lot of it is conveyed through freaking documents. Maybe a few details weren't clear, but even if it was done in an inelegant way, it worked.

 

[Micormic]

I was about 11 or 12 years old when I beat BG1 for the first time and I had no problem understanding the story.



Then again there's posters on this thread who I'd assume have trouble reading the instructions to their TV dinners so I shouldn't be surprised.

 

[Loostreaks]

Nope. BG II is one of few sequels that improves on nearly everything. Only downside is being a poor continuation of previous story, with Irenicus taking spotlight. I did like what they were going for more open approach/exploration in the first, but it was terribly executed with some of worst encounter design in any rpg( throwing a ton of trash mobs at the player and hope no one rolls a 20).

 

[Theldaran]

They did roll 20s. Kobolds were lethal in BG1, they could easily take out Sarevok if you incapacitated him (that or hobgoblin archers).

 

[Kyl Von Kull]

Aside from low level D&D combat being more fun than high level combat (although shouldn’t SCS make this somewhat less of a problem?), I agree that SOA is superior in most other respects and am a bit puzzled at the overwhelming support for BG here versus its sequel.

IMO SOA’s chapter two does an excellent job of giving you a lot of freedom without ruining your sense of purpose; the great failing of many RPGs, especially open world, is that while you can go anywhere and do anything, you don’t have any in-game reason to go to most places or do most things. Making the main quest about raising a metric fuckton of money to save Imoen was a really smart move—it made at least some of the side quests essential—and it’s something we don’t see often enough.

I think codexians would have more appreciation for this if we weren’t all such rabid completionists.

How about the linear nature of the rest of the game? It’s a fair criticism. That said, I vastly prefer the Underdark to the Cloakwood.

Dungeons? Durlag’s Tower may be the best dungeon in the series; however, outside of ToTSC, BG is pretty low on dungeon crawling. Off the top of my head you’ve got the Nashkel Mines, which are totally uninspired, and the Cloakwood mines—also disappointing. There’s the smallish dungeon near the Firewine Bridge, which is better than the mines but not by much. Tazok’s camp? Just trash mobs with a couple decent fights.

The Candlekeep Catacombs are pretty small. The underground area leading up to Sarevok is also small and that endless hallway of traps is tedious. Am I missing something? Maybe the Gnoll citadel? Trash mob central. I’d argue these last three areas are too small to count as true dungeons.

Compare that to SOA, where you have a bunch of competent dungeons. The defiled temple leading up to the shadow dragon is pretty good, and Firkraag’s lair is not bad. The Beholder area in the sewers is solid, especially if you don’t bring the shield. The Planar Sphere, Planar Prison and D’Arnise keep are decent sized dungeons with good twists, especially the Sphere. The Vampire lair may be small, but needing to stake the vampires makes it mildly more complicated. And all of these are just in chapter 2! IMO, they’re each better than any dungeon in BG aside from Durlag’s Tower. Even Chateau Irenicus is good the first time around, although it admittedly becomes awful on repeat playthroughs.

Spellhold was underwhelming. I liked the Kua-Toa dungeon in the underdark (Jaheira died down there my first playthrough and I didn’t resurrect her until we hit the surface so she spent the rest of the game looking like a Drow). I only just finished chapter five in my latest run and my memories of the rest of the game are hazy, but if you like dungeon crawling, it seems to me that SOA’s many okay dungeons would be more appealing than BG’s combination of a few lousy dungeons and one great one. Even if you think Durlag’s Tower more than offsets the low quality of the mines, SOA still has its predecessor beat in terms of quantity, especially when it comes to optional dungeons.

How about romances? I know they’re super cringey, but they’re also optional. Just shut down your amorous companions and they’ll leave you alone. Hardly seems like enough to cancel out all of the other improvements.

 

[IncendiaryDevice]

In my run of bg2 I didn't even get any options to romance anyone & I wasn't trying to. No idea why "LOL ROMANCES" even figures so strongly in most of the edgelords replies pointing out flaws in bg2. Oh, wait, edgelords.