Because of all the drama around Roxor's review of Eternity, I decided to (re)play Baldur's Gate.
...Holy shit, the game is really that boring?
I remember playing it at the time of release and think something along the lines of "it's interesting but nothing much". Now, I think the movement of the characters is *really* clunky (almost infuriating at times), the fighting is all over the place, and dialogues/quests can be quite ridiculous. I mean, people complain about the plot of Divinity, but what the fuck, the level of silliness in the dialogues in Baldur's Gate seems even worse (and without being funny at all). I didn't remember this game being like this. The maps are beautiful and generally really open; which is refreshing, since the modern games love confine the player in enclosed and claustrophobic places - a forest in BG *really* looks and feels like a forest. The songs are also nice, if rather generic. And... That's it, I guess? Most of the time I'm just clearing the "fog of war" on the maps, killing a lot of trash mobs, fulfilling ridiculous quest asked by some random NPCs scattered around.
I think I have about 15+ hours of playtime (levels around 5-6 I think). The whole game is like that? I don't know how anyone can consider BG as part of the the apex of RPGs. It's not a horrible game too, it's just mediocre - I keep playing because of the exploration and the beautiful levels. The game seems really easy so far, I just steamroll most enemies. (Except what appears to be a random encounter in which I appeared in the middle of a group of archers who almost annihilated my party before I could do anything, this was the only time I had a problem.) From what I see, the consensus here is that BG2 is a far superior game... I hope it is, indeed.