So glad I imported my chars then. Happy grinding
I did notice a big jump in enemies when going level 2 to 3, and exponentially more going 3 to 4. Nothing can hit my fighters yet, but on level 4 breath and spells actually hit for damage now. It might've been different if I hadn't save-stated in BT1 and had done everything fairly, as all the extra fighting would've boosted everyone by a few levels. Speaking of saving, zomg BT2 has a normal, honest to god save feature! It even saves what you've changed in the current level! I'm impressed. No more save states for me! My PCs still end up saved at the AG once in a while, but I only use it now to quickly switch night to day. Anyway I think everyone was too high level because I didn't get an experience reward for saving the princess, despite the game claiming I did. And by "too high" I mean the fighters are only level 15, and the mages are wizard level 9, and they still need to go through their respective 4th class before I can turn them into archmages. I don't think I'm much better off than a fresh party that just finished the Dark Domain.
Dark Domain is great. First level is a bit boring, but it ramps it up quite a bit in level 2, including a cute corner with a bunch of parallel side corridors, each introducing one of the special dungeon squares. There are SP-leeching squares now, though with Mage Staves they're no biggie (yet). There is one corridor that did nothing I could detect (2nd from the West) - any idea what it's about? Level 3 is where things got really fun. There's an absolutely crazy room full of one-way doors, with the occasional trap and dark zone, which of course makes it impossible to see the doors... glad to have the bard, I can just "flash" #7 to briefly see what's what without wasting SP. I did the same to make mapping the dark maze easier. There are 2 passwords you need, one's a glorified copy protection, but the other actually requires mapping out the level fully and was quite fun. Level 4 was devious. I hated it, but in a Prince of Persia like fashion - I hate it but can't seem to stop playing. HALF of it was a goddamn dark zone, though there aren't many walls in it so it's not THAT hard to map. I already had the special NPC, thanks to a) knowing they're useful, b) figuring out from the clues which you need, and c) ok I lied, I just remembered exactly what it does when I met it. I admit I got stuck at the double doors for a bit, thumbing through clues and not quite figuring it out until I started thinking a bit more meta. Not a fan of that puzzle though. What I realized afterwards is that the clue you get REQUIRES PHDO on level 1 - how do you get the clue without a lot of grinding to get the spell, if you start a fresh level 1 party?
There are so many changes from BT1, despite the games clearly using the same engine. There are some new spells, though thankfully the old ones still seem to be all there. What annoyed me was their moving around the bard songs. Would it have hurt so much to keep the numbers the same? #5 is now #3, #4 is now #5, #2 is now #7... why not keep the same ones the same, and replace the ones that did change? I keep singing the wrong song. At least the names are now a bit more related to what they actually do. I do like the extra slot. Speaking of which,
octavius, your post above ("only characters in the last three of the seven slots are in the rear ranks and thus safe from physical attacks") is not quite accurate from what I can tell. The game doesn't seem to pick who's in range and who isn't based on slot numbers. It just picks up the first 4 and they're in melee, everyone else isn't. Even if you position your 6-man party such that slot #1 is empty, the person in slot #5 is still considered in melee. In my case it was the bard, so I didn't mind.
The one change I'm conflicated about is the enemy ranges. On paper it sounds great. Instead of "groups a-b are in range, c-d are not", each group is a certain distance from your party, and they either have to advance, or you have to, to engage in melee. All 4 can be in melee, or all 4 can be out of range. It sounds great and tactical, but in practice there are some... issues. The biggest is with spell ranges. If I have a group of casters at 90', I can't hit them with anything yet (my longest-range spell is a single-target 70'), and of course they can't either... but they can summon weak, useless enemies that appear at 10', preventing me from advancing. And since I have initiative, I kill the summons, then they summon more... over and over and over again. I just kept cycling for a dozen turns, hoping for the one turn where all 3 would do something other than summon, which allows me to advance to 80' and go through this circus all over again. And when I finally got to 70' I was faced with A Dilemma of Dicksmoker proportions: do I continue going through said circus for another 10 rounds, or do I spend the next 10 rounds having my magician (the only one who can reach) cast SPTO over and over and over? Getting Archmage will solve this problem, with spells like MAMA that can hit all 90', but until then some fights might be a bit of a slog. MAGM got disbelieved, which was a waste of SP (and it's not cheap).
Aside from this rather minor quibble, I think I've been wrong all these decades and BT2 is the better game. Pacing is better, dungeon design gets good much faster, puzzles are more interesting, and the combat mechanics are better I think. I might be a bit biased too because I didn't have to grind at all here, thanks to importing, but then I still rate MM1 higher than MM2 so that can't be a big factor. Encounter frequency is a LOT lower than BT1. Even walking into areas like the Monster Reformatory, where I expected a fight every other step, I didn't get that many (on that topic, is there anything in there? I got into the lone room at the end, but it was empty and nothing happened). If I recall BT1 triggers obligatory fights on the fight squares, whereas BT2-3 only have a
chance of a fight. If that's the case it'd explain it, and I think I like this model a lot more. I don't know why I remembered hordes of non-stop monster fights in BT2, when this is what I got at the end of BT1 instead. If the game doesn't nosedive it'll switch positions from worst to best of the trilogy.