"Dead is Dead" CRPGS

[Daemongar]

The original Wasteland had pretty much one save and no recovery from death. Any map transition or area load would do an autosave, so unless you shut down your system immediately following a death, one of the characters died. While there were a few Wasteland imitators, the single life party based rpg seems to be thrown to the wayside.

Also, I don't get the appeal of ironmanning a game when you already know your enemies weaknesses and such, but I suppose it's related to speed runs: just something to do as an homage to a game you really like.

 

[Dzupakazul]

Also, I don't get the appeal of ironmanning a game when you already know your enemies weaknesses and such, but I suppose it's related to speed runs: just something to do as an homage to a game you really like.

As someone who just did The Plutonia Experiment on UV with no saving during any level: It's the thrill.

In your typical RPG from the 90s and beyond, nothing stops you from powering through a tough encounter by rerolling it until your backstab hits for maximum damage or your bullet cripples and debilitates the Mother Deathclaw. Lots of people end up brute forcing encounters while saving all the potions, consumables and charges "for later" - which only comes up in the final boss fight for many. You can also just quicksave/load in case your companion dies, his entire equipment ends up littered over the floor of a remote location (bonus points if said location is a random encounter, which usually don't offer you to come back), and you don't have to carry all that stuff on a tedious trip to the temple. That ends up promoting carelessness and downplays mechanics like sneaking for scouting purposes.

Another example: Most people (okay, myself at least) play roguelikes like ADOM by spoiling themselves silly to cut the learning process and try to put it into practice. Even with all the Guidebooks, it still takes years for most people to pop their ADOM cherry. It just never ends up being the same game, really. Even with top preparation, your early game character might lose his life to a pissed off fire vortex, or a random trap might incinerate your means to cure corruption. Similar stuff can happen in any other game - you need a contingency against enemy saving throws.

And if, say, you know Baldur's Gate 2 well enough to know there's only two green (universal; a fighter can also use those) scrolls of protection against magic (basically god mode), the question still remains where you will use them. It's about planning ahead, I suppose.

The Ironman run of IWD I read on the Codex a while ago was one of the most entertaining reads I've had over here.

Also: I suppose I play Civilization games in Ironman mode, in the sense that I never reload outcomes and accept them as they are. AI beats me to a lucrative city spot? Prized Great General dies at 3% odds? I miss a wonder by one turn? Not rerolling that; gotta play the hand you are dealt.

 

[Doctor Sbaitso]

What Nightgoat Said.

I need three things to consider iron man mode:

- Procedurally generated content /loot placement
- pick up and put down ability
- threat if imminent death

If a game isn't built with these in mind they are probably going to be boring as fuck after the first failed run.

P.S. This is the only way to play KoDP.

 

[baturinsky]

How do you do those Spirit World Quests (or whatever they are called) on Ironman?

 

[Average Manatee]

How do you do those Spirit World Quests (or whatever they are called) on Ironman?

Don't heroquest more than once every 2-3 years. Have a trickster on the ring if possible so you can put 3 magic into quests. Choose someone with good stats.

If you want to make an ubermensch leader then choose to heroquest to increase their stats. Ultimately super-heroic stats can overcome anything and you can quest yearly with almost perfect success rate.

 

[Doctor Sbaitso]

Putting points into mysteries focussed on the diety of the quest you will make is important. Also helps to send someone who is a follower of the diety who's quest you are sending them on.

 

[Awor Szurkrarz]

Fallout I / II

I only have experience with II, as I've somehow never been able to get into I. Fallout II is a great game, but only an OK ironman game. The crit system, particularly with burst weapons, risks the PC being killed in one shot from full health (because crits can ignore armor and maximum damage on a burst is enormous). Ironman play in practice pushes the player to avoid combat and be very careful even when roided up late game because a bad crit will end your run.

Iron man is great for Fallout because it makes the player concerned about survival. And thus sometimes non-intervention becomes the best policy.

Though I haven't played Fallout with low damage weapons for a long time. One problem is that there's no reliable way of killing enemies so the crit danger is constant.

 

[Jabber]

Iron man is great for Fallout because it makes the player concerned about survival. And thus sometimes non-intervention becomes the best policy.

Though I haven't played Fallout with low damage weapons for a long time. One problem is that there's no reliable way of killing enemies so the crit danger is constant.

It's very good but I have more mixed feelings about it honestly. I'm doing an ironman run of FO2 now (having recently finished a VTMB) and its great in emphasizing the survival focus.... but in practice in other ways it makes the game less fun (at least how I wind up playing it). I tend to carefully avoid combat until late game at which point there aren't that many fights left that are interesting. So ironman play kind of hurts the early and mid game because the fights just don't make sense risk / reward wise. E.g., fighting metzger is a pretty fun early fight, but it's not in the player's interest in ironman so I at least personally don't do it. Basically anyone will a burst weapon is not really worth fighting until you can kill them in one turn or two turns at long range...

I'm still having fun but it doesn't work as well as Baldur's Gate e.g.

 

[Awor Szurkrarz]

It's very good but I have more mixed feelings about it honestly. I'm doing an ironman run of FO2 now (having recently finished a VTMB) and its great in emphasizing the survival focus.... but in practice in other ways it makes the game less fun (at least how I wind up playing it). I tend to carefully avoid combat until late game at which point there aren't that many fights left that are interesting. So ironman play kind of hurts the early and mid game because the fights just don't make sense risk / reward wise. E.g., fighting metzger is a pretty fun early fight, but it's not in the player's interest in ironman so I at least personally don't do it. Basically anyone will a burst weapon is not really worth fighting until you can kill them in one turn or two turns at long range...

Well, it's interesting from storyfag and setting perspective. Seeing all the injustice and just ignoring it because ending it would mean almost certain death. I think realistic risk is very important for "exploring the ethics of the post-nuclear world".

 

[Jabber]

Well finished ironman run of FO2 (hard, rough; if it matters). It was good but I really wish I could tweak the crit mechanics. Roll critical for each bullet in a burst would be a good start. In lieu of that, I basically hopped in and out of doorways to avoid letting hardly anyone shoot at me. I also avoided combat as much as possible early on and murdered aliens out in the desert from about level 18 to level 24 when sniper unlocks.

I screwed up talking to Chris in Navarro (apparently you're supposed to ask about the Enclave, not Navarro itself). He got upset and we had to go in guns blazing (hence the alien grinding). Wasn't too bad, except for one ugly moment when I didn't notice a corner turret and took a round of fire. Lost about 200hps including one crit for 140 damage. I think that had a pretty high probability of killing me, so I'm thankful it didn't.

Marcus, cassidey, goris, and sulik died over the course of the game. Dogmeat was a companion for much of the alien grinding and survived some tough scrapes. I eventually returned him to the cafe to keep him from getting killed. Marcus died in the stables when I said something wrong to one of the scientists causing the map to go hostile. I couldn't get to him in time to heal or psycho him (he was 5 or more turns of running distant and he was killed by burst fire from some of the guards (after missing a shot that probably would have saved him). Cassidey and sulik died in a raider encounter (must have been 8 or 10 raiders - a totally runreasonable encounter). Fortunately the chosen had psycho so he survived... psycho really is the MVP of the early to mid game when nearly everyone does normal damage. Taking burst fire is still begging to get an armor piercing critical and die though (I probably took half a dozen bursts in that encounter but thankfully no burst criticals).

I was fortunate enough to not be attacked by any enclave patrols, which was my biggest fear. We encountered one but successfully avoided it, and only made two trips to Navarro (should have been one...) to reduce the number of potential enclave encounters.

I killed the the head hubologist, whose guards were fairly trivial compared to Navarro's.

On the oil rig, the only map that I made hostile was the president's map (I'm not sure whether the turrets are passive or aggressive if you don't turn them and felt this was the less risky strategy). There are many heavily armed and armored soldiers on his map, but sniper + vindicator minigun and reasonable line-of-site management got us through. I'm not sure anyone shot at me (maybe once?) during the entire map.

I had to make a test fork on the reactor map as I couldn't figure out where to put the explosives. I probably also could have just looked at a video online but chose this route instead. This was my only test fork during the run (which I try to avoid).

Horrigan was generally a complete chump because I had both the soldiers and turrets to assist in the fight against him. I mostly stayed in the corner semi-ineffectually lobbing rockets at him.

This was a restoration run, but I didn't really interact with any of the restoration content except getting marcus armor (which didn't save him anyway...) and clearing the thieving kids from the den. I mostly don't think the restoration content is very good so I generally avoided it.

This was my 17th attempt, but the vast majority of those other runs were very short while I figured out the early game, and 13 of them were a number of months ago leading up to my run that got killed in a restoration-only enouncter outside of San Francisco. The three failed runs in this attempt were all no more than an hour in to the game (and either one or two were just me restarting after failing the zeta scan roll).

I didn't use sneak because it seems too exploity, although that is another way to survive unreasonable encounters instead of outdoorsman, psycho and prayer (which I think is probably ~85% safe over the course of a run).

Will probably try to finish BG1 next.

 

[Jabber]

Instead of BG1 I tried ironman Knights of the Chalice and was pleasantly surprised, except for the one time I lost 5 hours of progress due to a crash (thanks dev for no autosaves...). Anyhow, I guess I'm now using this thread for my ironman play reports for the (handful? zero?) people that are reading them so here goes.

Ironman took me 5 tries, with only one other run aside from the winning run getting out of the early game (i.e. more than an hour or two in). I played without max HP rolls, but did a fair amount of dice rolling to get strong stats. These were blind runs, but fortunately the game did not punish me with "gotcha" encounters and was entirely playable blind with reasonable levels of caution.

My party was 2 wizards, 1 kinght and 1 cleric. I think 2 wizards / 2 clerics is clearly stronger, but one knight was OK and is probably stronger or at least similarly good early game, which is a reasonable reason to take a knight other than for the sake of diversity. Stats were 18 primary, 14-16 secondary.

Failed runs:

One run fell to the orc ambush in the begininng (which is a really well designed encounter by the way)

Another fell to the beginning water elemental fight

A third fell I think to maybe the first spider ambush, although I'm not sure

The one run I lost that got out of the early game fell to the black dragon in the tunnels that are en-route to the high council. I carelessly got my cleric killed by a minotaur in an earlier fight and therefore did not have any healing or way to raise him until I finished the rest of the fights in the tunnel, which was not ultimately not possible cleric-less (I also had no means of resting and I think not enough gold for more scroll crafting for the wizards).

The winning run had a few close moments:

Early fight with the spider queen. It's a tough fight early on because she has level three spells (i.e. fireball) and a bunch of spider goons with her and you don't have any level three spells and basically suck. I beat her in both runs by hunkering in a corner and trying to prevent the spiders from swarming me. Web is pretty cheesy at that point in the game and both runs everyone got killed except a final mage who hid behind a brazier vs. a final spider. Both times that spider then lost its last few hp by triggering the brazier. Not a great way to win, but I'll take what I can get. At least the fight comes early in the game if you lose (although I never actually did)

Gorgon ambush (can't remember where exactly but there were three gorgons at once). They got a surprise round and used it to petrify my cleric and one mage, while my second mage fortunately made his saving throw. Had he not made that throw, the party would have been defeated as it would have had no way to heal the petrified casters. I'm not sure how to do that fight safely other than avoid it because I don't think you can have 100% save against petrification breath at that point. That was probably the worst point in the run for "fake difficulty" where a bad roll just kills you without any means to protect yourself (other than protecting oneself by avoiding the fight, but a blind run doesn't know that yet).

Fight with the fire giant queen. She has a dialogue option that is basically "my husband is a jerk but I am fair and will treat you fairly if you do me the respect of kneeling before me." I chose that option just to see what would happen and what happens is it gives her a surprise round against you. Not good. By the time I could move, both my wizards were dead and my cleric and knight were about half dead. I thought that might be the end of the run, but fortunately a fleeing cleric spamming heal and raise is pretty cheesy so we got back on our feet and killed everyone

The final fight against the dragon got pretty dicey because he is very tanky and my tank (knight) needed a heal every round or maybe every other round and I only brought 10 mass heal scrolls. With 30 scrolls the fight would have been much more comfortable (and any party will easily have the resources to bring those scrolls by that point) but I had been used to more resource conservation and I only brought 10. I learned my lesson there and brought much larger stacks of important scrolls after that point.

The final final fight got dicey as well due to early bad luck and mistakes. Before I could move one balor vorpaled one of my wizards, which was bad luck (5% vorpal chance). I then didn't realize one of the vampires had life drain on hit and would get an attack of opportunity for every bow shot made next to him so foolishly got my knight massively level drained on his first turn. Fortunately, my cleric successfully fled, and my wizards had pretty good dominate rolls. I wasn't able to hold the front gate, tons of very high level monsters came pouring through the gate after my party. If the early dominate rolls hadn't landed either the turn they did or maybe the next 1-2 turns I probably would have lost (maybe a 10-15% chance of this happening). Anyhow, mass heal + resurrect + dominate monster is very cheesy and strong and quickly turned the tide of battle. None of my allies survived the fight (also unfortunately failed to protect the apprentice in the previous final elemental fight, mostly due to not thinking to use dominate monster). A good final battle, if a little hard to control reliably and vulnerable to very bad luck with dominate (although, see below, I think stone wall may actually trivialize this fight as most enemies are large)

One spell I didn't use the entire game (until the final final fight was already nearly over) was stone wall - I think this is actually a totally cheesey spell that allows you to block large monsters from being able to get to you while still having room to shoot / cast at them. I'm not sure though because I didn't get a chance to play with it much other than to test it against the last handful of enemies in the final final fight where it seemed to work for that purpose

Overall, the game was a good ironman experience and played very well as an ironman game vs. the base game. The mid-game is a little boring (particularly the endless hp-bloat giant fights) but otherwise good.

Some Ironman strategies:

Good dex and con on everyone for initiative, health and AC

Don't take more than one knight. Consider taking zero knights

Lots of scrolls so casters don't run out of ammo

Manage line of sight, particularly to your cleric. A hidden cleric with enough scrolls can fix anything except petrification

Many tough fights lock you in a room so you can't hide your cleric out of sight. In these instances, you can frequently get him in an alcove behind objects that prevent large enemies and multiple enemies from ganging up on him. Also, a knight in the middle of even a three hex hallway can block large units from getting past

Disabling enemies is frequently faster and more effective than killing them. Most enemies will have weaker fortitude or will saves; use a disable that targets their weakness

Death ward is a must once enemies start using slaying arrows. Your slaying arrows aren't as useful due to high enemy saves but bring them for each type once gold is plentiful as every now and then you'll run into a dangerous enemy with crappy fortitude saves and it gives your knight something better to do (enemy wizards are a good choice for targets here)

Skip enchanting armour with spell resistance, use elemental resistances instead. You can put two on the armour (mithril leather for wizards who want 0% cast fail) and get 2 more through rings, covering everything except sonic which doesn't matter much

Knights are mostly only good for tanking late game (which a second cleric would do much better), but can at least be somewhat more useful with slaying arrows + dual wielding kukris with holy and destruction enchantments. Even with such a gimmicky build, they still vastly lag in power to clerics and wizards late game

 

[Jabber]

I ironmanned Icewind Dale 1 and generally regret it. It took one try and about 30 hours to do the main campaign plus the two expansions. I was hoping for a better game having played IWD2 before and thought it was decent even if not up to BG1/2 standards.

Anyhow, too many of the maps are just trash fights over and over and over. Hardly any of the equipment is interesting or balanced and the plot is entirely throw-away. I tried to build a cheesily strong party (i.e. lots of fighter / caster multiclasses or dual classes) which succeeded in making the game pretty straightforward but in hindsight I wish I had gone with a more creative party of classes I've never played with before to make the game a little more interesting. As it was, I played carelessly and rarely felt challenged; most enemies are just sacks of hp with melee attacks.

The party had one material set back when I didn't notice protection from fire had worn off and my sorceress chunked Cheese, my beserker -> mage, with a sunfire. He was missed for the remainder of the game, but his absence didn't particularly make the game harder.

The final fights were all melee throwdowns, which is basically the easiest type of fight, and pretty disappointing.

Anyhow that's all I've got; hopefull next game will be more interesting.

 

[Jabber]

I also completed an ironman run of Telepath Tactics, which I enjoyed and wrote about here:

http://www.rpgcodex.net/forums/inde...red-by-fire-emblem.91650/page-17#post-4162729

 

[butchy]

ToEE, with 5 created party, is the only crpg I know of meant to be played and balanced around Ironman. The co8 patch makes the game much better but kind of throws off the way it used to play on ironman, or I am less stupid and more experienced than I was when I first played it. Either way, this is your Ironman game right here.

Edit: Also, MMX and WL2 would be pretty good ironman games.

 

[gunman]

My successfully completed ironman games:

ToEE - back in the day, without Co8 patch - pretty easy from what I remember, with a balanced party

BG1 vanilla/EE+SCS - also easy if you know what to expect and pre-buff before most problematic encounters

Arcanum - playing as a technologist with a full party, easy as long as you can afford to purchase restore life from herbologists and give at least one to each party member. Still haven't been able to complete it playing solo/ironman, because the criticals system is very unforgiving, on par with Fallout's. One stun and it's game over.

Knights of the Chalice - without the extra big battle in the end, quite difficult, I restarted many times until I figured out where it's safe to go without being trampled. I remember once you reach a certain level, it becomes significantly easier.

Pillars of Eternity - on normal. Not very difficult since I have completed it in ironman mode from my first run.

Lords of Xulima - on hardcore/ironman, real ironman mode (no reload if my party was wiped out). It was very close once, misstepping on lava killed eveybody except one. Biggest danger is in the beginning, where you can die to a trap. From unwinnable battles you can flee (beware the witches, you can't flee from those fights). After level 30 or so, it becomes a piece of cake.

Lionheart - (yeah, I am masochistic) - no details worth mentioning



Almost completed:

IWD1 - got killed somewhere in the hand I think, with the undead idol. I was overconfident and rushed head on those high level undead, instead focusing on the idol - big mistake.

IWD2 - got killed in the final battle, made the mistake of ignoring that summoner that kept flooding the map with new monsters. Pushed on to finish though.

FO1 - got killed in the military base, entered the front gate with the alarm on => one burst from point blank range from a super mutant.

Divine Divinity - with a melee weapon of frost is a guaranteed success. I negligently stepped on the water of that cursed lake that kills you instantly near the end of the game.

Inquisitor - (haha, another masochistic one). With a paladin I became almost invulnerable in battles, but the ending dungeons where you defeat the demons were excruciatingly boring and I was just clicking mechanically on the map. Died from negligently standing in a pool of something that kills you quickly.

Legend of Grimrock - made it to some level where you get teleported in the middle of a horde of poisonous mushrooms where you have no room of maneuver. It was too much for an unprepared party.



Other:

MM7 - there is no true death in this one, since when your entire party dies you get resurrected with no money and a week or something passes (the score is calculated in how fast in game days you complete it). Can't remember if I finished it without any total party kills.

Ultima 8 - it's easy to avoid being killed by creatures, 9/10 deaths occurs from running straight into a pool of water. Very hilarious when the Avatar reaches land's edge and jumps directly to his death into water - like a car with no breaks.

 

[Doctor Sbaitso]

I wish I had the time you have for games.

 

[<3sRichardSimmons]

Iron man is the only way to make Dead State any fun.

 

[treborSux]

Generally I prefer "soft ironman" to ironman - that is to say, a self-imposed ironman challenge, rather than having the game actually delete your save if you die. First, because it prevents you getting screwed over by bugs, CTDs, etc, and second because I personally find that I often enjoy a playthrough enough that if I fail the ironman challenge, I still want to keep playing the game. Self-imposed ironman lets you do that.

Self imposed iron man literally means nothing, as there are no repercussions for failures. You might as well just say, "I try to play a game and not die". Presumably the thrill of iron man is not having control of your fate and accepting it. But I'm not about to spend 100 hours on something and let myself die off just for a rush of adrenaline from a shitty game.

 

[Lilura]

Fallout I / II

I only have experience with II, as I've somehow never been able to get into I

 

[Jabber]

Ha yeah I know... I think it's because I've always tried picking it up after finishing a FO2 run and then it just feels underwhelming to be back at level 1 shooting rats or whatever.

Gunman / butchy, thanks for the advice. I'll put ToEE on my list.

 

[deuxhero]

Way of the Samurai series started with this as mandatory (which isn't great with how massively unreliable the blue CD based PS2 games were. One load fail and you lose everything) but dropped the mandatoryness with the second game.

The recently released on the PC 4th one can be played with it and includes a way to get a dead PC's stuff back by killing whoever looted his corpse. I think this would just make things a lot more tedious though given how much effort getting a good weapon takes and how that's all you really lose on death.

 

[Jabber]

I like the idea of this thread being a resource for players that enjoy ironman play style, so here are some comments / recommendations on games I've ironmanned in the last six months:


Wizardry 6: Rating 4/5
For a game with a reputation of extreme difficulty, Wizardry 6 was surprisingly easy to ironman and a lot of fun. One of my favorite things about ironman play is that it forces you to learn the actual game mechanics and how to be good at them, and I love that Wizardry 6 is actually easily beatable without any party wipes if one plays carefully. My strategy was two fast bards to get through the early game, and then later game lots of fast casters to disable or kill enemies before they could move. Toughest parts of the game were the dwarven mines, the river styx, and the temple of ramm. Took three tries.

I probably wouldn't recommend ironmanning it blind though.


Wizardry 7 (Import from Wiz 6): TBD
I haven't made much progress on this one. I'm basically too scared of losing my imported party, and I've noticed its much harder to reliably kill or disable enemies before they can move. Probably still doable with careful play, but I'm both a little tired of wizardry gameplay and too scared of losing my party so this one has been shelved. I am confident that it is much harder to ironman than wizardry 6 though.


X-Com 2 (Commander / Legend): Rating: 4.5/5
It's great, everyone knows it's great, enough said. I have no unique viewpoints here as tons of people have played X-com 2 ironman.

Pillars of Eternity (WM1 + WM2 | Tripple Crown): Rating 5/5
Superb ironman game. Also playable blind, which is a further credit to the developers. I did lose a run 40 hours in to the Alpine Dragon, in part because I did not realize he had rogue abilities (e.g. death blow) and he dropped a 300 damage crit on my PC, killing him. Ouch. My fault though for not playing more carefully; it was an entirely winnable encounter. I will probably try solo tripple crown at some point (which the "ultimate" achievement playthrough where you have to kill all the dragons and archmages).

Not much unique to say here though as there are tons of people playing ironman PoE.

Deus Ex (Realistic): Rating 4/5
Surprisingly good ironman game! I'm surprised that basically no one else has tried this (at least judging by internet searches). It's tough because a single pistol shot to the head or torso will kill JC on realistic when he has no armor. So basically, if anyone with a pistol shoots at you at any time and you are not armored, you might die even if they are very far away. But there is a ballistic armor aug not that far into the game (~5 hours of play) and it is entirely possible to reliably get to it without getting killed. The best mechanics of Deus Ex, i.e. the stealth, the careful play, smart augment use, etc. are all significantly heightened by playing ironman, so it's in my opinion a very good ironman game. My best run got to the Secret MJ12 facility and then I got killed because I left my augs on during the cut scene and therefore woke up drained (and then messed up the first encounter with the guard outside your cell; I didn't think he would come search your room). Anyhow, I'm pretty sure that if one gets through that MJ12 part, the game is pretty manageable as if you save all the aug upgrades, by that point in the game you level 4 balistic protection aug and can even survive a shot with a rifle.

Anyhow, I'll get back to this at some point. I actually dislike the plot to Deus Ex a lot (too much "teh corporations" crap) so I haven't put too much time into it but the gameplay is great.

BG1 (SCS Mod): Rating 4.5/5
Not much to say here that isn't said better in the Bioware forums' no-reload thread. Great game, made better by playing ironman. I used a PC berserker, which I think is easily the easiest ironman PC class in BG1, with a party of Jaheira, Khalid, Viconia, Edwin, Imoen. I actually ironmanned it twice in a row because the first party almost immediately died after escaping Jon's dungeon in BG2. The final fight is hard with SCS, and I both times wound up cheesing it with a lot of PC kiting (fucking hasted Sarevok is a real menace if your install doesn't have dispelling arrows). In the final fight on the second winning run, that fucker Khalid panicked while he had detonating arrows equipped and killed both himself and another party member when he panick-berserked. God what an asshole. Still a great archer up until that point.

I was too much of a wimp to do the TotSC content, which doesn't provide any value to a party that is going to import into BG2 and so I just skipped it.

BG2 SoA (SCS Mod, Imported Party): Rating: 5/5
As with BG1, just read the Bioware forums' no-reload thread if you are interested in information here. BG2 is one of if not the best CRPGs ever, SCS makes it even better, and ironmanning it makes it even better than that! Party was PC Berserker->Mage, Jaheira, Haerdalis, Imoen, Viccy, Edwin. I think that is the cheesiest and strongest party for ironman play, but I'm sure lots of combos work. I put far too many hours into BG2 because it was my first attempt at ironmanning an RPG and it's a pretty difficult one at that.

Some tough fights are: shade lord, planar prison, Irenicus in Hell, anything with beholders if you aren't extremely careful, that shitty nether scroll lich that you (I think) have to fight early for Edwin and seems to always summon a fucking balor before you have SI:A and is just generally a total asshole, both underdark liches depending on what they cast, that pack of vampires in Firkraag's dungeon, Irenicus in spellhold depending on what he casts and what the insane mages do, Bodhi with the lantern (holy fuck bloodsuck), trademeet rakshasas depending on when you fight them, planar sphere if not going it in chapter 6, maybe some others.

Kings Bounty the Legend: Rating 2/5
This worked OK as an ironman game, but didn't really improve much on the core game mechanics. I think it's definitely more interesting than the "no casualties" runs people do, but overall Kings Bounty the Legend is a game that gets progressively more boring as you get farther into it and ironman unfortunately didn't really help that. I quit somewhere on the dwarf island out of boredom. The hardest part is that certain fights do not show difficulty (as wandering stacks do), so if playing blind or semi-blind it is easy to get oneself in a totally, totally impossible battle that ends the run. That fucking kid in the evil swamp castle on one of the early islands did that for me.

Honestly ironmanning in some ways just makes KBtL worse, because you can't upgrade any of your items safely (easy to spawn a totally impossible gremlin battle) and you can't fight castles safely (similar problem), etc.

IWD2 (Insane): Rating 3.5/5
Plays well ironman, but the AI isn't smart enough to make it a really interesting challenge as with the baldur's gates with SCS. Playing on Insane makes it more interesting, but I would recommend to enable cheats to allow yourself to teleport while out of combat. Otherwise I would say 1/5 because fuck all that trecking back and forth to healers in the beginning. Insane mode gives pretty ludicrous accuracy and damage bonuses to enemies, so its very easy to get individual characters killed and need to go visit a cleric. I think too easy without insane mode though - building a strong party is just too effective. I played with a cheesy party of all drow (spell resistance is just too good). Two tanks (bard, AC-focused cleric) and a druid, wizard and two sorcerers. I don't think I had any party wipes, but maybe I'm forgetting.

 

[Luka-boy]

X-Com 2 (Commander / Legend): Rating: 4.5/5
It's great, everyone knows it's great, enough said. I have no unique viewpoints here as tons of people have played X-com 2 ironman.

Why do I get the feeling you're not talking about Terror From the Deep?

 

[gunman]

BG1 (SCS Mod): Rating 4.5/5
Not much to say here that isn't said better in the Bioware forums' no-reload thread. Great game, made better by playing ironman. I used a PC berserker, which I think is easily the easiest ironman PC class in BG1, with a party of Jaheira, Khalid, Viconia, Edwin, Imoen. I actually ironmanned it twice in a row because the first party almost immediately died after escaping Jon's dungeon in BG2. The final fight is hard with SCS, and I both times wound up cheesing it with a lot of PC kiting (fucking hasted Sarevok is a real menace if your install doesn't have dispelling arrows). In the final fight on the second winning run, that fucker Khalid panicked while he had detonating arrows equipped and killed both himself and another party member when he panick-berserked. God what an asshole. Still a great archer up until that point.

I was too much of a wimp to do the TotSC content, which doesn't provide any value to a party that is going to import into BG2 and so I just skipped it.

I suppose you are playing EE, because of the berserker kit. Ironmaning in EE is easier than in the original not only because overpowered kits, but also to engine changes that make it easier (free access to inventory in combat, enemies following you outside their areas etc). I played once the EE with SCS and the final fight was a breeze, probably because of a glitch, Sarevok charged but the others did not aggro, so alone he fell quickly.

Anyway, at least in the original, if you follow the classic route from Candlekeep to FAI, there is a 5% chance to end your ironman run being waylayed by bandits. No level 1 party can survive that encounter.

 

[octavius]

BG1 (SCS Mod): Rating 4.5/5
Not much to say here that isn't said better in the Bioware forums' no-reload thread. Great game, made better by playing ironman. I used a PC berserker, which I think is easily the easiest ironman PC class in BG1, with a party of Jaheira, Khalid, Viconia, Edwin, Imoen. I actually ironmanned it twice in a row because the first party almost immediately died after escaping Jon's dungeon in BG2. The final fight is hard with SCS, and I both times wound up cheesing it with a lot of PC kiting (fucking hasted Sarevok is a real menace if your install doesn't have dispelling arrows). In the final fight on the second winning run, that fucker Khalid panicked while he had detonating arrows equipped and killed both himself and another party member when he panick-berserked. God what an asshole. Still a great archer up until that point.

I was too much of a wimp to do the TotSC content, which doesn't provide any value to a party that is going to import into BG2 and so I just skipped it.

I suppose you are playing EE, because of the berserker kit.

Also works with TuTu and, I assume, BGT.