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

[lukaszek]

deterministic system > RNG

 

[Theldaran]

But you know, BG isn't really the game you go to for dungeon crawling. You have IWD.

 

[IncendiaryDevice]

The dungeons in BG2 were mostly ok. It was the bits that weren't dungeons that tended to suck, the bits that resembled the non-dungeons of BG1, such as the shark-people copy-paste area of trash mobs. As for BG1 having Durlag's Tower, BG1 didn't have it, Tales of the Sword Coast had it and praising BG1 for it is somewhat retarded IMO. You don't see people praising IWD1 for Icasaracht, when people praise Icasaracht they usually refer to Heart of Winter specifically.

 

[The Avatar]

The starting dungeon in BG2 was great. The glass tanks of dead and nearly dead creatures, the imprisoned dryads, and the mistress's room really give you a sense of how creepy Irenicus is.

 

[Theldaran]

The starting dungeon in BG2 was great. The glass tanks of dead and nearly dead creatures, the imprisoned dryads, and the mistress's room really give you a sense of how creepy Irenicus is.

Great in atmosphere, but when you've started the game dozens of times, it's just a chore. Dungeon be Gone is sooooo welcome.

 

[IncendiaryDevice]

but when you've started the game dozens of times...

you're kinda on a different discussion sphere to 99.1% of everyone else who's ever played it.

 

[Bonzai]

I honestly don't understand all the hype around these games. The reason why I'm currently playing it is that I keep hearing how good these games are but there seems that there's something I'm not getting here. Playing Fallout or Arcanum for dozens of times is understandable since there is not much micromanagement in them and once you know the meta and most of the quest solutions you can quickly rush through them and concentrate your attention on things you haven't tried yet. But BG is sooo much more time demanding from the inventory management to constant prebuffing and spell memorization. Some say that the option to autoheal party on on rest is degenerate, but think of the time wasted by chugging healing potions and spamming cure light wounds (and that is an 8 hp heal per round. now multiply that by 4 for every injured party member and then again multiply it by an average of 4 potions required to heal a party member). What purpose does this serve? Resourse management? Don't make me laugh. To me it's even more degenerate. That said in 3rd edition where you can acually empty all of the rest of your spellbook on casting healing spells befoe resting is fine, but with this abysmal amount of healing per round it's just retarded.

 

[lukaszek]

deterministic system > RNG

 

[Bonzai]

Well you will get hit eventually no matter the AC, and the danage builds up with time. and then you rest. Usually I try to beat smaller dungeons without resting at all, resorting to potions and scrolls. I wish the game had some sort of long term penalty for resting. The only things that come to mind is aging in wizardry and limited camp supplies in other games.

 

[IncendiaryDevice]

I don't recall spam resting much at all in either game, most of the times I tried I ended up in reload grinds to avoid the inevitable monster spawn that usually resulted so I stopped bothering to try. I dunno, I guess I'd recommend just playing more cautiously. IIRC, in BG1 you could rest as soon as you entered a map without any hassle & I think something similar for BG2, but most of them had official rest sites not too far away & the spells and potions were usually enough to keep you for the length of a screen.

 

[Bonzai]

Maybe you've misunderstood what I meant. Resting is not a problem and taking damage is fine too. The game is super easy anyway. What i don't get is that some think that turning on 'heal party on rest' option is somehow adds strategic depth or makes a game more challenging. It only increases the amount of clicks you have to do. In BG1 the only healing options are cure light wound and healing potions. Both of them heal an abysmal amount of hp so you have to drink A LOT of them. Now that I think about it it does make healing during fights more challenging and that is good. Healing during fights is lame and cheesy. But healing party on rest is OK IMO.

 

[Micormic]

The dungeons in BG2 were mostly ok. It was the bits that weren't dungeons that tended to suck, the bits that resembled the non-dungeons of BG1, such as the shark-people copy-paste area of trash mobs. As for BG1 having Durlag's Tower, BG1 didn't have it, Tales of the Sword Coast had it and praising BG1 for it is somewhat retarded IMO. You don't see people praising IWD1 for Icasaracht, when people praise Icasaracht they usually refer to Heart of Winter specifically.

What a moronic opinion.

 

[Micormic]

Great in atmosphere, but when you've started the game dozens of times, it's just a chore. Dungeon be Gone is sooooo welcome.

The starting dungeon is BG2 takes about 10-15 minutes if you aren't 'slow'

 

[Great Deceiver]

The dungeons in BG2 were mostly ok. It was the bits that weren't dungeons that tended to suck, the bits that resembled the non-dungeons of BG1, such as the shark-people copy-paste area of trash mobs. As for BG1 having Durlag's Tower, BG1 didn't have it, Tales of the Sword Coast had it and praising BG1 for it is somewhat retarded IMO. You don't see people praising IWD1 for Icasaracht, when people praise Icasaracht they usually refer to Heart of Winter specifically.

Smart people won't praise IWD1 for Icasaracht because Heart of Winter is vastly inferior to the base game. TotSC made BG1 complete, greatly enhancing the entire game and providing one of the most memorable locations of all RPGs. HoW was nothing but a series of corridors with filler combat with weak enemies, culminating in an underwhelming boss fight. People remember the base IWD for its varied enemies, atmospheric locations and cool encounters. How does one compare Lower Dorn's Deep to Icasaracht's caverns and that shitty Yuan Ti temple? You're full of shit.

 

[IncendiaryDevice]

Somewhat misleading reply. I wasn't inviting a discussion about the quality of HoW, merely providing a factual point of reference with regards to the bullshit people pull to try and force their point. To which, in doing so, you have just freely admitted that bg1 is a bit of a turd without its expansion. You might envision yourself as a great deciever, but you're laughably obvious.

 

[Lyric Suite]

Maybe you've misunderstood what I meant. Resting is not a problem and taking damage is fine too. The game is super easy anyway. What i don't get is that some think that turning on 'heal party on rest' option is somehow adds strategic depth or makes a game more challenging. It only increases the amount of clicks you have to do. In BG1 the only healing options are cure light wound and healing potions. Both of them heal an abysmal amount of hp so you have to drink A LOT of them. Now that I think about it it does make healing during fights more challenging and that is good. Healing during fights is lame and cheesy. But healing party on rest is OK IMO.

All IE games require you to make house rules in order to for them to be challenging, with limiting resting as much as possible being the most important one.

Just how it is.

 

[Micormic]

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.

Good post overall even if I disagree with some of it, only quoting the top to avoid a big wall that people gave already read.

For the most people here do prefer SOA, and despite me railing on it I still don't dislike SOA. I just find it overrated, especially here and I do prefer the original. The first part you said about open worlds ect, how many games actually give you a valid reason to go out of the way? Did anyone seriously think they'd find the GECK stopping in Modoc? Or the water chip in shady sands? Or Gilbert bates in Dernholm? You went to these places to explore, find loot, get levels, whatever. Not every location needs to have a specific reason, I sure as hell wasn't expecting to find Imoen in trademeet or umar hills.




The next part is literally my biggest problem with BG2, once you leave Athkatla the game drops from being like an 8.5-9/10 rpg to like a 5/10 rpg. I wasn't the biggest fan of cloakwood but it was fairly open with a decent variety of stuff to do, mostly killing trashmobs but whatever it didn't take that long. The whole sequence from the pirate island ->spellhold-> the underwater city(which I'm aware is optional) -> underdark -> more underdark and then you get back to athkatla and fight vampires then run off to more linear dungeons on your way too and during hell. The game just became such a slog I think I only finished it like 2 times completely, every time after that I would quit when I got to spellhold.

No idea about dungeons, I'm not a fan of excessive dungeon crawling so BG1 with what it had was more then enough for me. I actually liked the design of cloakwood mines, nashkel mines sucked though haha. Again BG2 had some dungeons I enjoyed, some (spellhold, the entire underdark) that I thought were completely tedious and never ended. Planar sphere was neat, D’Arnise keep was completely retarded in both design and in premise(dumb girl gives her ancestral home away to a person she's known for a couple weeks). "they’re each better than any dungeon in BG aside from Durlag’s Tower." That's just a lie and you know it. Since when is a shitty keep where you go room to room killing fucking trolls better then Durlag's tower lol.




My main issue with the BG2 companions is that they're literally all annoying or irritating except maybe 2 of them. Not only that, they managed to make characters I previously didn't mind (Viconia, Imoen, Jaheria) Substantially more annoying. I don't want to sound edgy here, but the only way to say this is to say it edgy-like. I felt like the companions in BG2, with the exception of Edwin and Keldorn(not sure if I spelled that right, the paladin in the sewers) and Korgan, I felt like the rest were a complete idiots. There's a few I never really used so I don't have an opinion on like the halfling paladin or the druid(who's class sucked IMO).


In BG2, looking at a wikia list.
Imoen
Jaheira
Minsc(didn't like him in Bg1 either)
Viconia
Aerie
Anomen
Cernd
Haer'dalis
Jan
Nalia
Valgyar


I didn't like a single one of those, I'd say I wish they would of brought Coran or Kivan into BG2 but I'm sure they would of found a way to ruin them.

 

[Micormic]

Somewhat misleading reply. I wasn't inviting a discussion about the quality of HoW, merely providing a factual point of reference with regards to the bullshit people pull to try and force their point. To which, in doing so, you have just freely admitted that bg1 is a bit of a turd without its expansion. You might envision yourself as a great deciever, but you're laughably obvious.

I think the biggest difference is HoW, SoU, HotU, ToB, Motb, Soz, ect is they're all stand alone games and separate campaigns.



TOTSC adds directly onto the BG1 main campaign so is usually included in discussions with it. Another examply is NOTR -> gothic 2.

 

[Malpercio]

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).

Worst encounter design? In BG2?

 

[Shadenuat]

The way BG1 made locations seamlessly translate one into another was p. good

The feeling of band of young retard teenage adventurers going into the world fighting kobolds, AD&D baby steps also was good

Some dungeons were good like expansions. The destribution of magical items was generally tamer and game still had the "whata fuck i kill this werewold with, i only has 1 shitty dagger"

lots of companions so lots of party combinations

ability to throw yourself against mobs way above your level and even win due to how strange d&d is

flaming fist actively hunting you if you killed everything. whole groups of party members belonging to some lore factions (2 harpers, 2 zentarim, hating each other). it made more sense when you had whole mini party like duo of harpers/zents join you instead of picking on lonely adventurers.

But, BG2 improved on many things. many things. Bg1 is like open world IWD1 but without cool things IWD also improved on.

but hey you can has almost everything by just playing BG1 with SCS, Spell revisions, BG2 kits and Enhanced companions

 

[Great Deceiver]

Somewhat misleading reply. I wasn't inviting a discussion about the quality of HoW, merely providing a factual point of reference with regards to the bullshit people pull to try and force their point. To which, in doing so, you have just freely admitted that bg1 is a bit of a turd without its expansion. You might envision yourself as a great deciever, but you're laughably obvious.

Your lack of reading comprehension is astounding. I never implied BG1 is a 'bit of a turd' without TotSC. I played it on release and liked it just fine. I just said the expansion greatly enhances the base game, which Heart of Winter does not do to Icewind Dale at all.

What I did was point out your bullshit strawman that no one praises IWD for Icasaracht but rather the expansion because she's part of the expansion content (somehow trying to make the disingenuous point that no one should praise BG1 because of Durlag's Tower) - of course they don't, no one in their right mind would praise a great game for something that isn't its high point; most people who have actually played IWD will probably tell you the high point of the game was Yxunomei or Lower Dorn's Deep, both of which are part of the base game. I'm sure that if HoW had anything on the level of Durlag's Tower and if the content were better integrated into the base game (which it isn't at all, it's an entirely separate campaign), people would remember it fondly and not draw a distinction between base game and expansion.

 

[Micormic]

This thread has inspired me to play BG1 for the first time in around 8 or 9 years, might even play BG2 after :D

 

[hell bovine]

people were picking wrong companions

Like clerics. All available healbots - except for the guy with the worst druid class - are romances. Quite sneaky, if you think about it.

 

[lukaszek]

deterministic system > RNG

 

[BING XI LAO]

BG1 has a tasteful and reasonably intelligent storyline. BG2 has a horribly garish and cliched main storyline. Instead of BG1's political intrigue, doppelganger infiltration and Sarevok's attempts to whip an unnecessary war, you are dealing with a super-powered Wizard, a bizarrely contrived imprisonment, escape, and plot hook to Spellhold. There are dragons, beholders, illithids, liches and whattnot sprouting up everywhere for you to chunk, which is great fun, but also silly. Irenicus' final dialogue in that tree was very cool, but initially he was such a pantomime villain it was nauseating.

BG1's areas have high coherence as a region, only a couple places - Ulgoth's beard and Durlag's Tower - were added later and stick out a little. BG2 feels a lot less natural and more contrived.
In BG2's Act 2, you have four sub-regions that are almost entirely self-enclosed, they have nothing particular to do with each other or the general setting, one is even a spaceship. This is a stark contrast to BG1 with it's very beautiful wilderness areas, and its quite detailed portrayal of an entire region suffering a common economic issue in the iron shortage. In BG2 you would never have something like an iron shortage, instead you have a beholder cult hiding in the sewers.

In BG1 you know that a wilderness area you walk into will have some strange gimmick somewhere, but it's still first and foremost a wilderness area. In BG2, you don't have wilderness areas that exist for their own sake, they have to be part of some preconceived gimmick like a Druid Grove or somesuch, not fleshing out the countryside.

In the city of Baldur's Gate, while there are some recognisable areas like the Docks or the nobles' district, mostly it's a jumbled mashup of areas and places, just like a mediaeval city should be, and beneath the whole thing is one network of sewers. The whole city is shown.
In the city of Athkatla, you have gimmick-focused, contrived districts. Temple district, Government district, Graveyard, Market, Slums, etc. It's not a cohesive, naturally developed whole. Instead of sensible sewers infested with carrion crawlers and kobolds that underrun a whole city, it's Beholders, Liches, vampires out the wazoo.

The artstyle degraded very seriously between the two games as you can see most easily by comparing the portraits. But my biggest pet peeve is the stupid spikes sticking out everywhere one the shields and armour of BG2. They look so awfully crass compared to BG1's civilised oblong tower shields.