Baldur's Gate 2

[one-armed dwarf]

Started this after I beat BG1 the other day, on 'core' difficulty which is like the default (no buffs or debuffs to damage or dice rolls, beyond which you naturally get). I've beaten the first dungeon and did two largeish quests in the first area of chapter 2, but have many others in the journal. There's a noticeable step up in detail, not necessarily visually but in that there's a lot more unique voice lines for each character over BG1. Characters tell you their backstories, they do this a lot actually and it's kind of annoying when you're trying to prepare spells and devise a strategy for a difficult room full of annoying snake mages and Minsc is yammering on about his hamster. But you can sort of see the start of modern Bioware here a bit, though it still feels a million miles away from something like Mass Effect 2 or 3 imo, which is where bioware got really good at this I think.

 

The first quest I did after the tutorial dungeon, which was incredible long, was this one where you had to defend a keep of a rich aristocrat's daughter that had been taken over by trolls that required ice and fire attacks to finish them off. So they're reminding you early on about the importance in DnD of preparing spells and equipping arrows, and the baptism of fire which was BG1 and some of its late game fights have made me a bit more smart about this now. These are RTFM games, you have to read what things mean before hitting your head against stuff, like I did at times. And then you have to read again in game when you get a magic scroll, which is full of all this lovely and lore-heavy flavour text about what actually happens when someone makes themselves invisible or throws a massive fireball at something

 

 

tbh, I struggled with the keep quest cause the game doesn't really tell you what level is appropriate for what quest, but I got over it when my Inquisitor Paladin found a +3 flail which applies Ice, Acid and Fire damage in the same dungeon, so sort of lucky that that is what I selected my +1 proficiency in. Then I devised a strategy which involved throwing Minsc into a room berserked to fight beetles that cast confuse, and spamming doom magic at the main boss in the next room so that my debuffs could hit it more easily, and his saving throws/THAC0 took a hit. 

 

THAC0 still sort of spins me sideways, as well as the way in which the UI will say something gives you +1 to your armour class, but actually make the number smaller, cause the way THAC0 works is it's the 20-sided dice roll you must get to hit someone with armour class 0, so if your THAC0 is 14, you must roll 14 to hit 0. If you're trying to hit armour class 6, then you must roll at least 8, if they're -6 then you gotta roll 20. Which you probably won't, so you need some buffs to even hit stuff. It actually took me playing an entire DnD game to even internalise these rules, which are simple but the way they are applied in reverse means they feel like they aren't. I never picked it up in PS:T cause you can skip so much fighting in that game. Not even going to get into what saving throws do.

 

BG3 did away with THAC0 of course

 

 

Right now, I'm playing two rival factions of the Shadow Thieves against each other, who are at war with some mages or something. I don't even know if I can complete this quest on my Paladin cause Paladin's lose abilities if they fall off the Lawful Good path, so if I can't then I might have to let Yoshimo go (and get shanked, maybe). There are also a million other quests in the capital city of Amn so I'm trying to avoid walking around too much cause they kind of bombard you a bit, compared with BG1. The chapter seems extremely open and I've had to deny some quests that would take me down an evil path, though they sounded interesting.

 

The other quest I did was to defeat an evil gnome in a circus tent who cast illusions on everything, which is where I got hit by this. Solve it and you win maf's new monitor

 

 

[Metroid66]

It's 6.

 

Monitor please.

[one-armed dwarf]

We'll let maf roll a -2 saving throw against this injunction first of all

 

https://g.co/kgs/RJ6LXBP

[Metroid66]

Dammit! There's always a catch.

[shinymcshine]

Loved BG2 - need to replay it sometimes, esp.as I bought the NS version (and played BG 1 last year - after I played them all on the PC years ago).

 

There's a huge cast of recruitable characters in BG2 (20+) - some of them clearly incompatible with others......

 

Spoiler

I know some of my party took exception when I recruited Virconia

 

[one-armed dwarf]

Yesterday didn't manage to complete any quests but progressed two

Spoiler

I stumbled into the temple district and this guy was yammering on about the cult, the Unseeing Eye. Dude took his own eyes out and was trying to gather followers. Normally I would be like hell yeah dude, fuck up your eyes lets go but as I'm playing a holy sword cop I have to be all pious about it and root out the heresy. Unfortunately that means a sewer level, fuck sake. I recruited a Paladin here but as I'm already playing one myself I'll just bring him around for this mission, steal his gear to give to myself and then dump him. Minsc hanging out at the bar for now

 

On the way though I found a hidden room with a mage who had enthralled this poet bard guy, I avoided killing the guy cause I knew by the fact that he had a portrait that he would be a party member, so a charm spell from Jaheira shut him up for a bit, though he also got beat up a bit by Yoshimo's AI when I wasn't looking. Turns out he's from Sigil, City of Doors

 

 

so I have to find some woman actor friend of his and give this portal stone to her. They made it very clear that this is a timed quest also, cause he was giving out to me for taking too much time in the sewers

 

He's chaotic neutral aligned, and got into a weird passive aggressive to and fro with the lawful good paladin I had just recruited which was sort of funny, but I don't know yet whether to take interactions like that as indications that these party members will eventually try to murder each other or if it's just natural friction.

 

I do wish the game would let me explore the city a bit more without constant NPCs interrupting and everyone in the party telling the main character their life story. This is something they definitely improved in their 3D games, where you can just talk to crew members on the Normandy when you want

[Metroid66]

2 hours ago, one-armed dwarf said:

I do wish the game would let me explore the city a bit more without constant NPCs interrupting and everyone in the party telling the main character their life story

 

Then join me in Londinium, young dwarfy-fella-me-lad. There the world is your glowing oyster.

[one-armed dwarf]

Fallout is probably close to next on the list but it's gonna be one of the oldies, in fact I'd made a start on F1 but then remembered I had unfinished business in Faerun

[one-armed dwarf]

As cool as this game is, there's not much of a structure to it is there. Sorta just feels like I'm collecting quests and checking them off, and there's little possibility for emergent role playing in any of them nor is the overarching story development that interesting to me (I think I prefer the iron crisis coup in part 1 more than this Irenicus guy nattering at me in my dreams)

 

The content is extremely high quality, I've enjoyed the story in this Unseeing Eye cult quest. But I don't think it would currently challenge my list of fave RPGs, certainly not Planescape or Morrowind. Would also say I prefer BG3 so far, cause that game has lots of fun tricks and immersive sim elements tho apparently the second half loses a lot of that. Here I'm picking dialogue options with little impact, then killing things with RTWP

 

As far as I know, BG2 is like the quintessential PC RPG/WRPG in the way that FFVII is for console RPGs, so maybe without the context of seeing it in the 2000s it misses a lot of impact, but I still liked these other older games a lot more. Maybe it's cause BG2 is a lot more influential tho so I'm seeing things in it I've seen in other games already (sans the DnD complexity of course)

 

I'm having a good time with the game but it's probably a consequence of massive expectations being raised for years and years

 

edit completed the cult quest, got a church quest to find some sculptor or artist to make icons or something, but parked that for now and am getting on with the Planar realm quests now. I think I know what my issue is tbh, this is just a fighting things game. So much openness in the quests you can pick up, but so narrow in the things you actually do in them.

[one-armed dwarf]

Man, these classic PC RPGs dont mess around. These battles will put hair on your chest

 

This planar prison fight fucked me up. Here was my strategy, Benedict, my main character and paladin, had him take point on the Warden, a spellcaster who buffed himself with spell-turning, which reflects magic. Benedict has -8 armour class so very good at just tanking attacks. True sight on the paladins to remove illusion/invisible effects as well. Had Naila cast a chaos spell on the west corner, which is a spell that causes confusion in an AOE (aoes cant be reflected if targeted at something else) and Jahiera cast insect plague in the top corner. This spell causes spell casters to fail so a big deal for crowd control, especially as the mages AOEs are really dangerous (confusion, ricocheting lightning). You learn quick enough also that you need to divide your party up to mitigate the amount of damage these spells do to you and also to slap the fucking mages as this can also interrupt their spells.

 

 

One thing I learned also is to stop using the dispel ability on the paladins. Reason is that certain AOE magic has 'friendly fire', so they kept dispelling my own buffs as well. This is a good example of the multiple things the game asks you to take into consideration when choosing what spell to use, you can burn your fingers in this game very easily. So I really only had a single dispel I could use, spell thrust, which is a targeted dispel which can remove certain tiers of magic. Then it's just sort of wearing them down, my second paladin and Yoshimo died, Aerie was buffing people under sanctuary which prevents her taking attacks but somehow I messed up at some point and she got silenced, don't know how, so threw her in the corner and had her cast a cloudkill wand, which makes a massive room filling AOE with poisonous smoke, which of course affects you too so you got to move people around careful

 

Shit's complicated, it's very hard to really see and read the fights in this game. Not specifically cause of all the complicated spells, positions and things to think about but more that you have to read this battle log to find out what's going on, and it's very hard to actually identify what they enemy sprites are. I don't think it's a technical limitation of the game's age tho. It's cause they go for this real time stuff when it sort of feels like it should be turn based. The way they abstract the real time element feels inelegant to me, where every 'round' is 6 seconds and every turn has 10 rounds. I read in the bitmap CRPG book that it might have been trying to copy RTS games at the time, these combat systems

 

Wouldn't say no to a nice, simple fetch quest now. The little space hamster in my brain is overworked.

 

edit rescuing this guy was hard work, but worth it, he's staying in the gang

 

[one-armed dwarf]

That Planar Prison was like the hyperbolic chamber or something cause now it feels like the weights are off. Ran into a weird scripting bug where I triggered, and completed, a quest involving a dickhead 

Spoiler

dragon with a grudge before meeting the questgiver for the quest, which happened to be the dragon in disguise. Funny, dunno how he fit in those human clothes. Got a bunch of loot out of it (although the dragon remains unfought, I'm only level 10 on my Inquisitor Paladin).

Have this mask thing in 6 parts, dunno what it's for, but I bet it will be good when I find out. Bought a lot of gear to get the AC of my mages up so they're better at dodging damage. Things looking up, thinking like finally I will do one or two quests and then pay the 20Gs to the Shadow Thieves to get the info on where Imoen and Irenicus are, especially cause Aerie is getting really annoying giving out about all her trauma so I was going to retire her. then

 

Spoiler

fecking Nalia gets abducted by her jealous ex-fiance who wants to put her in her place, have to sub back in the Minsc and his hamster and reconsider what I was doing, his gear is mad outdated and his damage held back by him being specced for two weapon style, and I only have one decent mace and one crappy one.

 

and now Jaheria has gotten cursed by a slaver she caught during her harper days (ironically, while I am uncovering evidence suggesting that Nalia's fiance is also involved in a different slaving crime). My Remove Curse spell is useless on it. These quests have clever mechanical ways of stalling your progress. That's not a complaint, it's a really hectic game where you're dealing with so many crises and it all develops the story and flows really well

 

The game is getting good now, it's escaping the slow drudgery I was finding with it and the character plotlines are weaving through with the general progression, so the adventuring is less of a grind and has a steady momentum now. I have to say tho, the romance stuff in this is probably the worst I've seen in a Bioware game. Jahiera is diminished by the crap they write for her in this, I should have played as a girl (unless she's bisexual but I don't think Bioware were writing anything other than straight romance options at this point)

[one-armed dwarf]

Went off to the eastern part of the map where it gets a bit Baldur's Gate 1 with how you are moving through forests clearing the fog. They did a Blair Witch Project joke with it, which is important otherwise you would forget that the release date for this game was 2000.

 

Met the halfling Mazzy in the dungeon in the forest who I instantly liked cause she's a fighter, not a boring mage or thief type class that halflings seem to be usually, and can beat things up (but limited to stuff like shortswords, and STR capped at 15 but equipment/potions could fix that). She's voiced by Jennifer Hale which I recognised instantly cause it's her Naomi Hunter voice from the first Metal Gear Solid, with the english accent.

 

I had to kick her out for a bit tho cause in the nearby village where all the blair witch stuff was happening there was a new character, Valygar, tormented by his ancestors who are all necromancers. I just had too many melee based characters in the party at that point. I'm having issues with his skills tho, I can't really tell where his strengths lie and I've only just managed to figure out how to use the snares that Yoshimo has (you can throw one of them, or you can lay one in front of a door that you think enemies will be behind). The non-magic stuff is a bit harder to work with if they don't already have an excellent weapon, which has led to me relying a lot on mages and just having main guy and Jaheria as the run up and punch people classes.

 

So I find him a bit rubbish currently but this is probably my own skill issue (though I also think it's cause he specialises in katanas, which are really hard to find so I don't think he has much to offer offense wise just yet). I think his story is really interesting tho and so are his dialogues with other characters, did his quest and

 

Spoiler

went into the planar sphere in the slums of Akhtala which is like a transporter to different parts of the multiverse or something, I don't know, and used a combination of dispel and silence skills to fight Valygar's great-great-etc grandad who had a really nasty AOE called something something of bad wilting, which murders the fuck out of you, like 80-90 damage in a massive AOE. This is where I really got into learning how the 'speed factor' of skills work, cause you don't want your insect/silence magic-casting debuff to hit the mage while he still has spell turning up, so have to make sure that the breach spell that removes it hits first

 

I'm understanding RTWP better now, cause you can have multiple characters at once make decisions about what they are doing in the next turn, and the 'speed factor'/casting time will tell you the order in which they will come out, like a script.

[one-armed dwarf]

Right so, I'll just pop that in the bag alongside the demon hearts, bastard swords and flaming arrows. Nice

 

 

Ok this time I swear I will pay the 20G to move on to chapter 3, but I read some spoilers that sort of made it sound like I should do certain sidequests first

 

Spoiler

Yoshimo's, cause he betrays you or something. I barely know a thing about this character, so spoiled or not I wanna know why I should even care at this point cause he's not said a word since the opening dungeon hardly

 

I just saved a drow from being burned to death and Aerie was really racist about it, but then the drow was talking about doing ethic cleansing after I saved her. Fecking elves. So I couldn't really bring Viconia with me, but I did recruit a gnome who won't stop talking about turnips. He has a gun that shoots turnips as well, I think, so this is surely a game changer for the team. Aerie on the bench for now

[one-armed dwarf]

On chapter 3 now. One thing which is neat I've noticed is how all the shopkeepers in Akthala recognise Mazzy. One of them gave me some thieving boots, which was nice. Stuff like that makes the world feel alive and gives an excuse to just sort of hang out in it, and try every character to see what they have to say or what unexpected interactions emerge. That sense of 'hangoutitude' is something I really value in an RPG (which is why I was giving out about Cyberpunk not having it and just being about going to waypoints murdering people)

 

I had to spoil something for myself though

Spoiler

when Imoen gets back, cause I was impatient. I expected it to be chapter 3 but they have me fighting different guilds and looking into vampires and stuff. She doesn't come back until chapter 6, the fecking end of the game at which point a lot of these sidequests will be redundant I'm sure. So I'm just giving up on rushing through to that point and sticking to the Akthala stage of the game for a little longer

 

Fortunately, Jan the turnip fetishist is a mage/thief, so I have that going for me. I cast Luck on him and used a thieving potion to nick a lot of spell scrolls from Deirdre in the adventure mart and learned a bunch of spells I have no idea as to what they really do. I'm beginning to think this whole 'lawful good' thing is largely meaningless especially as the main quest has already forced me to murder people to progress.

 

I might just hang out and try to get Jan up some more levels, and steal more shit off people.

[one-armed dwarf]

Played the hell out of this today, most of the way through chapter 4 I think. They give you a choice about how to end the chapter and I think I took the choice that makes things longer, but I'm pretty worn out and might need to take an intermission with it. It's the section of the game where the huge, open part is left behind and you're in dungeons and prisons, trying to sort out Irenicus. 

 

I was reading an article about this game where one of the designers played FFVII in between Baldur's Gate 1 and 2, and he came away from it feeling really unconfident about how they handled your party members in BG1. So they made that a specific thing to improve upon in part 2 and I think it really works. Characters have friendships and rivalries. Some characters in my party fall in love, not with the main character but with each other (which for whatever reason, doesn't come across as cringy as the player-centric romance options. Which I fucked up anyway, typical). Others hate each other, and so you can't just put evil people in the same group as nice people. The decision I make about what characters I bring on a mission isn't solely dictated by their battle capabilities but also what things they seem to be saying to each other, so I can see how these types of stories evolve. It's a very immersive approach they have here, and it's kind of weird to me that games like Mass Effect don't offer this type of thing as such. But I guess it's cause they would have to animate cutscenes for it, which is one of the reasons why I think 'lo-fi' gaming is really underrated cause it has such flexibility with things like this. You couldn't do all these missable events as easily in a modern game.

 

On the FFVII stuff I was reminded of Sephiroth with how Irenicus will do all these ridiculously powerful spells, shaking the screen and tearing people's souls out of them, exploding people into pieces of meat like he's a walking natural disaster. The game telling you 'this is how powerful you go to be to complete your quest, cause this is the fucker you gotta slap around later on'. Chapter 4 is really dramatic with this stuff, and the voice acting really dramatic for this guy. 

 

My party now is 

Spoiler

Aerie, Imoen, the druid guy who turns into a werewolf, Valygar who finally has a second katana and is dualwielding and becoming a decent DPS, and Nalia. A bit heavy on the casters so I'm going to swap some of these guys out when I get back to Akthala. Unfortunately tho I'm locked into this selection for now. I'm going to bring Jaheira back in for the finale I think cause the druid werewolf is a bit underwhelming

 

Yoshimo is dead now and I got his heart. He betrayed me cause he's affected by a 'geas', which made me think of Code Geass the anime where the guy mind controls people with his eye. Super weird how this guy has almost no presence in the story, then becomes a major presence just like that. I must have missed some interactions with this guy or something, so that didn't really land the way I feel it's supposed to. I sort of don't miss him, his snares were good but that was all. I wonder what happens if you don't bring him to Spellhold, does he just stay the way he is

 

A new plot element has emerged where all the Bhall stuff has allowed me to turn into a horrible monster with amazing stats, at a cost of 2 reputation. Which is an interesting thing to consider as a paladin, given that the class becomes feeble if you lose too much rep. Maybe I save this up for the finale, and fuck Irenicus up. Of course you can carry your save into Throne of Baahl later on so maybe I shouldn't

 

Definitely the best Bioware game I've played I think, at this point. Sorta wonder where this version of them went in their later games, and it must suck for some people at Bioware hearing all the negative comparisons between Dragon Age and Baldurs Gate 3, given it was their series. I guess they did Neverwinter Nights after this but I never hear people talk about that one. 

[shinymcshine]

Neverwinter Nights is an odd one - it came almost as a bridge between an RPG, ARPG and took elements of MMO - plus it had a huge custom content community.

 

But it was quite different in gameplay to the BG games, focussed primarily on a single player character (with recruitable NPCs) but the feel & gameplay of it was all very different - and I never really warmed to it as much as the BG games (even tried more recently playing it on NS and just can't get back into the whole vibe of it). 

[one-armed dwarf]

I remember reading the custom module stuff before, some of it sounded interesting. There's even a conversion of the BG games to NW, though they seem to lose a lot visually in replacing the pre-rendered isometric visuals with prefab 3D modules.

[shinymcshine]

There's some pretty awful use of radial, action, menus in Neverwinter Nights too, that I didn't particularly enjoy.

[one-armed dwarf]

Chapter 5 is a marathon, basically doing like one or two fights an evening cause they require a lot of figuring out. I know how to deal with mindflayers, sorta, and have identified a cavern of some asshole beholders and other evil eyeball guys that I'll return to at endgame (I believe you can come back to the underdark later).

 

These mindflayer guys have me trying to entertain them by fighting as a gladiator against Githyanki. I learned how to fight some of these guys in the sewers, where they were hiding out. But they do rather like making me regret that I gave 8 intelligence to my paladin, cause they way they fuck you is by debuffing your int and when it's low enough they OHKO you by gobbling your brains up. Thank god I dumped Minsc ages ago cause his dialogue was doing me head in, otherwise I'd be down two idiots everytime I fight these guys. My main character is drinking so many int/wisdom potions to keep his brains in his head, cause otherwise my guy is too stupid to fight!. 

 

(protection against evil gives you a bit of an edge against it I think though, and anything which buffs your saving throws. Still tho, it ain't easy being dumb)

 

I managed to find a hilt in this dungeon that matches a gem I found ages back in chapter 2, a two handed sword which scales relative to how far away you are from true neutral alignment. Kicking myself that I didn't buy a single proficiency point in two handed swords, cause clearly this is a weapon for paladins. Keldorn is gonna be replacing Valygar I think, 2 Inquisitors what could go wrong? The druid werewolf will be getting the kick then as well cause I'll have two tanks.

 

This game is a bit too heavy on the combat content tbh. It remains the one big problem I have with the game, there's a lack of interesting quests designed around interacting with NPCs (so far, I've found one speech check in the game, a 'Spectator' guarding a chest with a shark tooth, which I quite liked). Planescape is still the best DnD game I've played for that reason, though all I've played of DnD is that and the 3 BGs now. 

 

Also notice that the NPC interactions don't seem to occur in these chapter 4 and 5 dungeons, though they do have their own reactive dialogue to the events. Aerie really hates the Underdark, cause of all the nazi elves. I've only just learned this but I can't quite get over the fact that they wrote an entire race of elves, the Drow, as being inherently evil. Seems fucked up. I wish I kept Viconia around and didn't tell her to fuck off cause I'd like to understand better why they are written this way. 

[shinymcshine]

Re Mindflayers & Minsc etc

 

Spoiler

Pretty sure if you beserked Minsc then he's immune to those mind effect spells - or summon things that are also immune to mind effects (skeletons / undead).

 

Was definitely a point in the game when I remember carefully picking through the spell list in the manual to work how to progress.