Editorial Eurogamer: Baldur's Gate 1 and 2 Retrospective

[Zboj Lamignat]

Seems like a lot of people may have missed it, but Icewind Dale had a surprisingly large amount of skill/class checks in the dialogs.

IWD II did have quite a few with social skills and additional options for some races/classes, but in IWD there were very few and mostly added in the expansion. Admittedly I believe that Heart of Winter is the best thing that came out of IWD series. BG II managed to make the poor rtwp combat system interesting due to the fact that you met lots of unique and powerful enemies with various resistances (especially to magic) that forced you to try different approaches. Even theoretically weak creatures like those shadows had a way to screw you up if you weren't careful (stat/level drain). IWD games don't really have that apart from few encounters. Fights look very samey and magic is uber-powerful. I really don't get why the release of HoW, done after BG II was already out and upgrading engine to its standards, did not include the different character kits. They were a pretty significant improvement that made some of the very boring classes (warrior, rogue) a bit more interesting.

But yes, the fact that in BG games intelligence had any use only for mages and the rest could happily dump it to 3 is disappointing.

 

[J_C]

I liked 3ed in IWD2 because it added some pretty neat skills. Like when you entered an area and if you had the proper skill, you could find information about the place if the animals, monsters left clues about their whereabouts (footprints, damaged plants etc). Small thing, but I liked it.

Actually I've never been a pro in D&D, so the balance issues and smaller problems weren't so obvious to me than to others who are more into D&D.