Dude. We are HERE BECAUSE OF the length of the videos. We want them long! We want them detailed! And we are willing to wait for them for as long as we have to! Good luck with Baldur's Gate 2! It's a timeless masterpiece, but it really gets difficult at times. Think carefully, tread lightly and change your character to a male, because otherwise, you will lose an amazing romance with a particular dark-skinned lady :) Enjoy!
It is batshit insane how difficult it is to find a decent retrospective on the Baldur's Gate series given its incredible influence on the genre and industry. And it's even more frustrating that it took about fifteen pages of TH-cam's dumbass algorithm to find this video after 100 videos that were just short clips, reviews and memes that had nothing to do with retrospectives. I know this video is old, and I haven't checked to see if you're still making content, but I hope you are and I appreciate the work you've already done
I've always found "alignment" a backwards concept as part of character creation. You classify how you're going to behave and then act accordingly rather than simply playing in a certain way and being classified based on that.
I still have my old boxed copies of these games and the books (game guides) I really miss the older boxed games with maps, books and keyboard overlays. This is a great video, its good to see some older games getting some love
When you were talking about the character creation being a bit complex I felt like pointing out that a lot of the complexity actually comes from Baldurs Gate 2. The original didn't have so much in the way of sub-classes and had fewer weapon skills and such. But the Enhanced Edition took a lot of the original content and essentially laid the BG2 skin over it. This was good for people who had played both games back in the day, as the sequel added much more than the original, but I agree it would be a bit daunting when now even the first entry has as much complexity as the sequel.
Ah yes, the good old days when you would read the manual during the drive/bus ride home after buying a physical copy of a game. Not something I have ever really thought about until you mentioned how we used to read manuals back then, and it's very true.
Baldur's Gate is a big part of the reason i got involved in D&D as a tabletop rpg and didn't leave it to computer adaptations. I've now DMed 2 games and have partaken in 5 games as a player. I'm now a huge supporter of BG3 and cant wait to see it completed
@@Wyti for a warrior class strength is 2 rolls, your first roll which can be up to 18 and then a percentile roll for "exceptional strength" (if you rolled 18 only) with 100 = 18/00 and 1 = 18/01..there are 5 different tiers of exceptional strength each giving different bonuses to hit, carry weight, attack and bashing dmg (lockbreaking). 01-50, 51-75, 76-90, 91-99, 00.
@@Wyti For a quick look at what exactly you get for each XX/YY STR score, just do a google image search for something like "dnd 2nd edition strength" and you'll get a handy table of the bonuses or penalties granted by high or low strength (also applies for other abilities; 2E can be quite arbitrary when it comes to the effects of ability scores). For strength the "second roll" - as smoking one calls it - is surprisingly important!
yessss! Hyped for this. There's been a lot of TH-cam analysis/review/video essay types who have been giving worthless boilerplate reviews to old games, avoiding spoilers or any in-depth design analysis and are basically indistinguishable from the at-the-time reviews of the 90s (except with more waffling about "for the time" when talking about the graphics) and it's been driving me up the wall. But Chris always really dives right in and I appreciate it
I do like when spoilers are avoided. If they're not, and there's no warning, that's pretty annoying. Just because a game is old shouldn't mean "you should've played it already, this is your fault, sucks to be you" ya know? He gave a warning though so I have no issue with this vid
It would have been informative to mention just how many people still play the game and that there is a vibrant community existing around it that will give advice, who are still creating content and who are still arguing about whether you should take Minsc or Edwin with you or kill them on sight (as there is argument about every other NPC, every character build, every optimum power build, dwarf or elf, good or evil ect.). For anybody considering playing such an old game, that's important because if they do like it, or are having difficulties, there is opportunity to talk about it and get help.
Both Baldur's Gate and Fallout get one thing right for me over their bigger, more polished sequels: the main story is integrated into the world and exploration in a much more satisfying way. In BG2, you might ignore the world as a distraction from the long and isolated main quest. In Fallout 2, the main quest is really a sideshow railroad at the very end. In both Fallout and Baldur's Gate, the world-exploration and main quest develop and reinforce each other in a very natural way: the exploration often gives you clues, while the main quest unlocks new areas. The originals gave me a stronger sense of immersion in these big wide worlds, whereas the sequels's areas sometimes struck me as a bit too flamboyant and contrived. Though I love both sequels and they have superior replay value.
I think BG was the first RPG I played. And perhaps it wasn't the first RPG ever made but it kind of had that innocence. I'm not sure if I would describe BG 2 as flamboyant but it started - I think - much more self-important. I mean in BG 1 the first companions you meet are like idk ... total ass-bandits. While playing I really had the feeling that I was a just a clueless dude in a big foreign world which is perhaps the best vibe for an RPG.
Good video as always Chris. I think you may have missed though that the party's AI can be disabed (ex. for the chess set in durlag's tower). You can also set the AI for thieves to automatically look for traps and things. Very useful (although you didn't have a thief, hah)
Yeah. Two Mines are two Mines. But storywise it is good I think, because the Iron Thrones goal in the first mine is to make the iron useless and the secend mine is a secret and for their goals. The Iron Throne is no sect or cult that wants to end the world. They just want shitload of money. It is Sarevok who wants to start the war, not the Iron Throne. So in the end the Iron Throne has believable goals and are a good target for low level adventures. Good video. Keep it up :)
Love your history of isometric RPGs history videos! Yes Baldur’s Gate can be rough on your fist play through without an understanding of D&D 2nd Edition and it’s quirks like thaco. But once you grasp the necessary knowledge and tactics it’s thoroughly enjoyable. Played through many times on core rules, which I feel is the way Bioware wanted it to be played. Just use basic tactics, scout ahead for traps with thief, don’t aggro The Whole room. Once engage, get your tanks and fighters up front to keep enemies busy, get archers/thief’s filling enemy mages full of arrows (especially arrows that inflict extra damage such as poison), have your cleric constantly healing and buffing, then most importantly, get your mage shooting spells like sleep and other debilitating spells and/or damaging spells like magic missile. Fireball is excellent, but best launch that before your party engages otherwise your fighter is going to eat damage. It drives me nuts when I watch BG videos and the player selects all 6 characters and bum_rushes the room. Then complains how hard the combat is. Your mages have no armor, they will die quickly if engaged in mele. Also, you can turn off companion AI on the lantern looking button bottom right. This will prevent them from blundering into traps and will only act when you tell them to. One cheesy tactic is to scout ahead stealthed, return with mage, launch stinking cloud over enemies before they can see you and aggro, then summon skeletons. The skeletons are not affected by the cloud and will go in and kill everyone. Mages will waste their spells on the skeletons if they aren’t asleep. Then move in with archers and kill whatever’s left. Some of the fights are legit difficult, but that makes it all the more satisfying when you win. BG 2 fights are WAY more difficult than anything in BG. Love both these games, SOD? Meh....it was alright I guess. Played it once, never will again. Beamdog is no 1998-2002 Bioware. Keep doing these videos, love them!
22:50 this is indeed part of the standard D&D rules and one of the main reasons - at least in my opinion - why it breaks in video games is due to the fact that players in video games can basically rest at any given time. In a real D&D session you DM would most likely intervene or send enemies your way or some other shennanigans to keep you from abusing the rest system. Also encounters in D&D usually take quite some time since everybody has to first think what they want to do in each round, then they have to actually do it, perform dice rolls, inspect the result of their actions and maybe take some more actions if possible. This can easily take a minute per player per turn. Turning encounters with multiple enemies in a group of say 5 players into something that takes some thirty minutes if not longer. If you'd do it that way in a video game players would be bored as hell - in real life D&D you'd usually short rest after an encounter or two - making it not overly abusable since enough time passes between encounters anyway and due to them being not as frequent per session in general. Video games work differently though - you can see this in other D&D based games as well like Never Winter Nights which totally bork the rest mechanics making casters very very powerful.
Alot of the issues that you ran into with your partymembers came because of the fact that you let the AI control them. The game becomes ALOT easier and becomes more fun when you micro manage them yourselves. It feels daunting at first but quikly improves on the gameplay alot so much so that youd probably wonder how you managed without it :)
Scouting ahead would require a thief character with good amount of points put into Hide in Shadows, otherwise your stealth breaks very quickly and it takes way too many tries to go into stealth mode in a first place, and you will have to trade lockpicking, pickpocketing and detecting traps to be good at stealth, or it would require a mage constantly wasting a 2nd level spell to make someone invisible before and after every encounter. So you either give up on having any freedom on your thief character or you go through a tedious process of casting invisibility and resting a lot because of that. And even then you wouldn't always know what kind of encounter you're getting into just by looking at the enemy, you don't know what spells enemy mages are gonna cast, you don't know how strong enemy physical damage dealers are just by looking at them. Not to mention ambushes or encounters that will spawn extra enemies, or encounters that start from dialogue with strangers(some of them are obvious bandits and enemies, but a lot of them aren't) And scouting ahead isn't even an option a lot of the times, you can't scout ahead to find out how many doppelgangers Saverok will spawn when you confront him at the duke palace.
@@MrFr2eman I replayed BG 1 a few weeks ago on the switch. When I was in the last maze before Sarevok, I tried doing the proper "detect traps and scout ahead" approach but I found the location so tedious that I ended up bruteforcing it with constant saves and only doing trap detect when I already knew there was a trap. So far in BG 2 I don't need to brute force that much, but then again I have BG 2 memorized after almost 20 years of playing it, while I only ever finished Vanilla BG once and promptly forgot about it in favor of the sequel.
Interesting to see an in-depth analysis from a newcomer. I myself have been playing this game for the past 20 years so it holds no secrets to me. Even my nickname originates here! I only watched the first 18 minutes so far due to time restrains, so I will only add a couple of remarks. Pardon if you do touch on this later. This game really shines with mods. The community have been working on it for 20 years and all the love shows. At this point I consider mods like BG1 NPC Project to be CANON. It makes all the joinable NPCs (and there is a HUGE cast) much more complex and nuanced, akin to BG2, making the new Beamdog's NPCs blend in much better. This is the one thing that cements the longevity of this game for much more than one initial playthrough. You can only enjoy the main story so much, it all becomes about the characters. You have almost infinite possible party setups, each feeling different and having their own drama and friendships, interacting with each other differently. Also I would advice looking for stuff like Scales Of Balance, I will be honest here, 2nd edition of dnd is ATROCIOUS by today standard, you really have to know it inside and out to know what you are doing. It is arbitrary and convoluted. There are mods that make entire system fresh and much better. I can elaborate further with my mod list if needed.
It's 2019 and I'm still hitting that "reroll" button to get better starting stats. Also I probably played this game for 200 hours, never made it to Baldur's Gate. I always give up after killing Tazok, and start over a few months later. Don't know how many time I started over, but I know the beginning by heart.
@@ericpass3842 But the last part is probably the worst part. BG 1 feld flat on its face for me after you return from Candlekeep. You either have to crawl around severs or run away from the flaming fist and approach the same location from a different side (since they have a fixed position) and the evidence gathering was tedious and to cryptic for me. The less I say about last maze and graveyard leading up to Sarevok the better. I can re-play BG 2 anytime anywhere on any platform, but I doubt I will every again want to play the last two chapters of BG 1
@@artur6912 for me it really went down at the last maze... what a pain... it makes sense in the storyline itself but the gameplay was painful... whenever I replay it it's always where I think twice about finishing again or not!
@@@artur6912 The ending was a bit of a slog. But I still consider the opening sprawl of Baldur's Gate to be the best RPG experience available on the PC, simply because you're free to go where you wish with dozens of locations available almost immediately. Not all of them are great, but some are. Loot's handled great, characters are distinct and memorable, but don't force themselves on you with elaborate stories. And I still just prefer the hand drawn maps and fleshed out characters in BG to the contentless, semi-random terrains of something like Skyrim. Every inch of BG had personality. So much of modern gaming is like that too. Just unplannedm haphazard busywork in randomized textures to gate gear instead of an engaging RPG experience in a carefully developed game world. To me fiction of any kind is like wrestling. As soon as it doesn't feel real the audience leaves. It's not supposed to be real. It just has to appear real. That's how fiction works. We're not dummies and know it's not real, regardless of how real it looks. Well, most of us anyway...
22:30 I have been playing TTRPGs for YEARS and 'carrying capacity for spells' is the single best analogy for the DND-style magic system I have ever heard.
About that daunting character creation -- I think it's important to note that what you're talking about is actually a Baldur's Gate 2 experience. That's because one of the main features of Beamdog's edition is repeating the work done in Tutu and Trilogy mods, that is adapting the game into the BG2 system. Original game doesn't feature subclasses, half-orcs or fighting styles, and the weapon profieciency system is much simpler -- you choose general weapon types like large swords, blunt weapons, missile weapons etc. By the way, some of those changes caused balancing issues. For example, the weapon choices were originally balanced (well, sort of) for original proficiency system, and with the more specific BG2 system the choices became very limited. Beamdog alleviated the problem slightly by adding a few additional weapons though.
I don't know if anyone has mentioned it, but around 24:00 you mention that that fight seems like a puzzle encounter. You were absolutely right, there's a ghoul in that area that you can go talk to and temporarily recruit that's immune to the petrify. You can just use your rogue to stealth out a line of sight and let him loose on em, and he'll mop up shop.
Correction, your character's alignment doesn't affect which companions you can have (nor dialogue options for that matter), but reputation affects companions. You can pick neutral evil and act all goody two shoes if you want. One thing your alignment does affect is combat spells such as Holy Smite, which deals damage to evil characters. And secondly, certain magical items are restricted to certain alignments. That's about it though, I think.
It's nice hearing thoughts on this older gem from newer players! Good video, don't worry about the length of it, it's a big game to cover! One last thing, Str actually goes up to 18/100 it's written as 18/00 and that's the strongest stat you can have in that range. I know many things are a bit backwards like AC and THAC0, and knowing that 18/00 is better than 18/99 is not intuitive either.
On dual classing, it really depends on what you are going for, it is highly useful but you will suffer for awhile because of it. I highly don't recommend dual classing in BG1 as the exp cap will screw you over if you don't class over at lower levels. If you have BG2+Throne of Bhaal this is not to much of an issue. It is useful for every class and I highly recommend it Fighter is the most beneficial classes to dual and I suggest it as the base class for example if you choose fighter as you base but your ultimate goal is a mage take about 7 levels in fighter then dual and you will end up with a mage with a very high HP pool far greater than if you leveled as a pure mage completely negating the mages most vulnerable stat while giving increased thaco bonuses, weapon professions and extra attacks. One of the most powerful combination I have found is the fighter/thief, I recommend the kensai fighter kit as your base, Kensai has some glaring weaknesses mainly the ability to not be able to wear any armor or gauntlets and unable to use any ranged weapons. The Kensai does have a lot of bonuses which include +2 to base armor class and another +1 every 4 levels and a +1 to damage and hit every 3 levels. You take this class to level 13 so you get all Hp bonuses you get for a fighter the extra 1 1/2 extra attacks per round and grand mastery in the weapon you choose, you then level as a thief it is level 17 I think is when you get your first class feat and you get the most overpowered feat in the entire game (Use Any Item) now all negatives from the Kensai are taken away he can wear any armor, use any wand, any scroll, any potion, that can turn invisible and backstab for over 100+ damage with -10+AC with 5 default attacks per round(10 with improved haste) and the ability to guarantee max damage for 5 rounds once a day. Very powerful character. If you want my opinion on one of the most overpowered items you can get early on is Celestrial Fury, its stun procs quite a bit its only downfall is it is a katana and there are not very many good katanas in the game, for Minsc screw the equalizer give him the Silver Sword I have killed celestrials and high level demons in one hit with this weapon anything not immune to death will fall to this blade its only weakness is the undead.
Such a good game. My first rpg was neverwinter nights, followed by oblivion, but the bg games are simply a class above modern games. Such a shame that modern graphics and gameplay fail to integrate their predecessors merits as they went along
@@JohnSmith-ik8nt that's quite a... difficult debate. I would say that it is rpg-ish. It still has a very cool magic system, you can play the story that you want with very little consequences (not on Skyrim's level for sure, but not on Morrowind as well, by a longshot). So I would say a true Action Rpg. Something like a True Neutral
Well, technically speaking, in a table top D&D session, there aren't a huge number of times when traps would require a thief in order to get by, particularly because of the openness of the format. Players faced with a pit-trap can use a spear or long pole to press down on the floor to activate the trap,then either jump over the hole, throw all the corpses they've encountered into it to fill it up, or even build a makeshift bridge - whatever they want to do. Even with pressure plates, it's very possible to just say, 'my character jumps over the pressure plate,' to the DM. However, with a videogame, which doesn't have the same malleability as the Table Top, the ability to capitalize on ingenuity is somewhat hampered, and so thieves become a far more important party member.
I found the combat to be fabulous. Especially on the harder or hardest settings. But I understand that it is hard to do if one is not fully knowledgable about the combat systems. And playing a hardcore game without reloading (dead is dead) is only possible to have full knowledge of every creature you encounter so you know which spells, potions and scrolls you need to have on you every moment in the game. But a fun challenge at that.
I love that you are new to all this, just like many of us that werent born in the 80s. Too many reviews/ analysis videos are pretentious and they fail to explain things because they are above all the simple ideas.
Hi! So glad i discovered this series. During summer i managed to beat all the infinity engine games so these videos are fun to watch while memory is still fresh. Btw have fun with icewind dale 2 since there is no enhanced edition and as far as i understand there will never be one. Makes you really appreciate all the work Beamdog does to modernize these games.
I enjoyed your video. I’m just not sure “infamous” means what you think it means. You call both the infinity engine and Baldurs Gate II infamous, which means they are known for a bad quality, which to my knowledge they are both incredibly well regarded. Either way, small correction. Great video!
Don't know. To me Infinity engine is mostly functional but the layout is cumbersome, things like pathfinding absolutely suck and sometimes makes playing the game extremely tedious and frustrating, early versions of the games didn't include several quality of life things we these days tend to expect and so forth. For its time it most likely was good engine but from todays perspective, eh. Especially the pathfinding. That damned pathfinding.
Started BG1 as a kid, but wasn't able to finish it. Coming from the launch of BG3 (on PC) I really appreciate that you made this. It's a well detailed video and the perspective is nice since there is no mention of BG3 content for us avoiding spoilers. =) And vids like this I know we're made from interest in the games as opposed to jumping on the hype train\voew.coumt train of BG3 content.
I loved the video but I completely disagree with your assessment of the magic system. Mages should be powerhouses in the sense that they can manipulate and control any battlefield. But only if used well. The memorization system forces mages to memorize a wide variety of spells in order to remain versatile in every encounter, which prevents the spamming of single powerful spells common in games with mana systems, games which many times reduce the effectiveness of mages to "area of effect archers " to balance out this change. I love dnds magic system. I feel like an actual arcane scholar instead of some bumpkin with a flamethrower for hands. One of skyrim most popular mods introduces a perk that makes spell casting like dnds and it makes the game so much more fun.
Or it forces simply resting all the time to memorize the exact spells you will need before the character would actually know they needed it. That's the problem, for mages to truly break the game, you need to know ahead of time what spells to prepare. The NPC mages are way, way, way more powerful than a player will be the first time they play Baldur's Gate unless they're using a guide.
@@irllcd13 > The NPC mages are way, way, way more powerful than a player will be the first time they play Baldur's Gate unless they're using a guide. Uh, no they aren't? The NPCs of baldur's gate are so stupid with the way they use their spells. This is fine for a new player, who will be better able to use his spells simply by applying them with basic thought (i.e. use web to stop the super strong fighters from overwhelming your party, silence the mage to stop him from casting, maybe use a spell shield to stop the mage from doing that to you but they generally won't. 99% of the time npc mages are either just buffing their teammates or lobbing spells that damage their party just as much as yours. Unlike the player NPCs generally don't have contingencies or they have like really stupid contingencies, and I can't recall the last time an enemy used any sort of spell sequencer. I mean, enemies don't even use potions, the intricacies of the spell system are not at all able to be properly utilized). >Or it forces simply resting all the time to memorize the exact spells you will need before the character would actually know they needed it. ???? not it doesn't? The game even punished you for trying to do this in dungeons since the about 80% of the time you try to rest in a dungeon you'll get ambushed by monsters instead. Just prepare a "general" selection of spells + combos that are always good (i.e. lower resistance + damage spell, malison + literally anything, blur+defensive image to tank) and you're fine. I mean, yes if you were really dedicated you could just cheese the whole game, but the game is easy enough as is I don't know why anyone would waste time to cheese mostly simple battles.
@@libenhagos9335 Yeah, they really are. Maybe if you're playing on a low difficulty level, but if not, even on core rules difficulty, someone just picking up the game isn't going to know to spam skull trap and other cheese tactics. That was my whole point.
irllcd13 you really don't need to resort to cheese tactics to win though. At least not when playing with normal 'core rules'. Smart usage of even the most basic spells will get you through, and you shouldn't need to exhaust your spells every single encounter. If anything, bows are a bit overpowered in the first Baldurs Gate.
@@matternicuss "Bows are a bit overpowered in the first Baldur's Gate" Everyone thinks my fear of skeleton archers comes from Minecraft... *has PTSD flashbacks to entire party getting massacred by ice arrows in Thieves' Guild labyrinth*
11:44 Hey that man is an epic butt kicking machine for goodness. 14:48 No class kits in the original to confuse you. Not to mention they have added extra classes and kits to what was available in BG2SoA. 15:45 I still have the tattered remains of my BG2SoA manual somewhere. That thing saw a lot of use.
Thank you for the recommendation towards Extra Credits. I found the design commentary on the tower's design very interesting. It's been such a long time since I've played BG and any of it's extra content, and I was very young at the time. I remember the highlights of the story for BG1 but the doppleganger twist definitely caught me off guard when I was a lad.
hahaha i love that you mention finding Dynaheir. playing it the first time, took me HOURS to find her. having played the original on CDs (5+1 for TotSC), then on BG2 engine using BGT mods, the enhanced edition really was a godsend and i sunked in another 200hrs almost two decades after playing the game for the first time. still great. my stability was really good though? i remember playing without the bags was... a challenge. deciding what you want to take out of a dungeon and what to leave, or what to come back for. *realism* haha Reroll system. when there was no "total roll" row :D one time spent 2h rolling, and doing quick math in my head.
Unfortunate side effect of the digital download is that you miss out on the 159 page manual that came with the original Baldur's Gate. Many a bathroom break was spent learning about the stats of the more obscure classes, and reading about spells I never used before.
@@megamike15 It's not the same. The manual is for when you are away from your computer. If you're in front of your computer, would you rather play the game or read the manual?
Just finished my first playthrough of BG1 last night and really enjoyed it. Still need to get to the expansion but I wanted to at least jump back into this video to see the thoughts on the story wrap up. I definitely want to jump into BG2 but after it taking me 70+ hours just for the 1st without the expansion, I can only imagine how long BG2 will take.
Well done. I've been playing D&D since the 70's and 2nd edition rulesets are really confusing, especially for those who have no experience in the game. I think I've played BG 1 & 2 at least a dozen times each, with all of the mods out there now, you can get a new play through everytime. The easy thing to remember, the more +'s on something, armor, rings, helms, weapons...etc etc. Use it. Your want your AC low. It top's out (bottoms out actually) at -10 AC. Your character will look like a walking Sherman tank or have so much magic billowing off you that you will set off car alarms a mile away, once you hit the -10AC area. In BG2 you will hit -10 AC pretty fast, relatively speaking. It won't matter, there are so many mobs and characters that will hit you regardless. When I played the tabletop version of the game, it was a nightmare to hit an AC 2 and lower. Let alone something like a -4 AC. I have characters in BG 1 & BG 2 below 0 AC in the -4 to -6 area and I was having punk robbers and goblin archers or Kobold Commandos lighting us up. It was like my tank character had no armor on was standing still to be hit. Nice review and a sub from me. I look forward to the review/playthrough of SoD and then your review of BG2. BG2 is a beast, so get ready. You can easily drop 300+ hours into the game. Good luck to you.
Couple of things: To kill Karoug, you need to find the +4 wolfwere slaying dagger, equip your strongest fighter with it, and load up that character with giant strength, heroism, invulnerability, and haste. There is also the +4 "staff of Rhynn" (IIRC) that can hit Karoug. "+1 or better weapon to hit" is an old AD&D "special defense" for certain magical creatures. In the case of Karoug, it's "+4 or better weapon to hit." Which is pretty nuts, even at very high level, let alone around 9th. Don't use 2x3 formation, especially in the small dungeons. I use either 1x6 or the staggered formation. Your pathing issues in dungeons should be mostly taken care of that way.
I havent played this since the original came out, but arent the gripes about pathfinding when moving as a group in small places and the stupid AI, fixed by just using formations and writing your own script? I can recall spending hours tweaking scripts so that I didnt have to micromange so much. You used the default AI scripts that came with the game? (8:36)
I'm sure you noticed this, but strength actually goes up to 100. That's the 18/00. The reason, if you're curious, is because there is no 0 on a "100 sided die." 18/00 is master tier!
I really enjoyed this video! I loved hearing about the game from the perspective of a relatively new player to the series. I especially look forward to the your opinions on the Siege of DragonSpear. When you finallly get to BG2 you'll have a blast, it's a classic.
I started play BGEE recently and didn't realize Neera and Dorn were new characters, but I feel like they are decent additions since all the other allies have very plain and limited quests. I've gone so far out of my way to keep Neera alive and intend to ditch Dorn soon after finishing off his revenge quest. My team right now is 2 good, 2 neutral and 2 evil, so maybe I shouldn't ditch him and ruin my balance though? idk, we'll see
My fondest memory of Baulders Gate was using a wand of summoning to surrond Drizzit with animals he couldnt attack through, and spending about 30 minutes attacking him from range till he died. Still wish that statue would have summoned a temporary panther
The sheer amount of wilderness zones that you adventure through for no reason is amazing. There is a huge sense of danger because you do not know what kind of enemies will be in that zone and any human encounter is potentially incredibly lethal. Baldur's Gate 2 is truly amazing, but the frontloading of all the sidequests seems very strange to me. Some are HUGELY above your level. We all know that one door in the harbor that we DO NOT ENTER until we are ready for doing a bunch of terrible things to liches almost immediately.
Character creation #1 tip. Half Orc gives one a +1 to strength allowing all classes to reach 19. Normally only warriors (fighters, rangers, and paladins) can access the 18/-- exceptional strength table. This jump immediately grants you plus 3 to hit and 7 to damage which is wonderful for warriors but more importantly makes clerics and monks more formidable in melee than warriors. In 2e p&p ability scores were static not increasing with level while magical items would buff scores with temporary increases.
This is still one of my favourite RPGs of all time. Rarely a game gives me that sense of adventuring that is so prevalent in BG1. Don't worry about not getting dual classing, it is very tricky and hard to plan for when you don't know the exact XP caps in the game.
Your character didn't react to Gorion's death because the developers likely didn't want to assume your role as the player. If Gorion dies and you're playing chaotic evil, what sense would it make if your character goes into some monologue about how sad he is. Your character's reaction is how YOU, the player, react.
@@EpicHashTime Why ? They are easily ignorable if you don't want them and have at least somewhat decent stats (something I can't say about most BG 1 NPCs) if you like being a munchkin (which I do) and they provide at least some interaction (something that no og BG 1 NPC did). While I usually ignore the new npc in bg2 because in that game the regular npc have interactions and romances, in bg1 they are a very nice inclusion.
This was a much better video than you latest one in the series. It's an interesting take on these games from a perspective of a newcomer. In the new one you spend way too much time defining very awkwardly what is or isn't an Isometric CRPG in a counterproductive manner. Not to mention it had multiple inaccuracies. This one however was very enjoyable.
The fight with Karoug (the leader of the Wolfwares in the expansion) is best fought using Kondar, a bastard sword you can get in the main game. You get it by helping the leader of the Merchant’s League, first in the Cloakwood Forest (where he is accosted by shadow druids for hunting) then in Baldur’s Gate, where doppelgängers are attempting to take over the League. Do this, and he rewards you with Kondar, which is +1 against everything, and +3 against shapeshifters. This includes both doppelgängers AND lycanthropes. Ajantis has specialization in bastard sword, and you can give this to any other fighter-type characters as they progress in levels. Have it along with the necklace Dradeel gives you, and buff the wielder with haste, heroism, regeneration, and strength to take out Karoug pretty quickly on Core Rules.
This game has so many annoying features, but yet I keep coming back playing it. Here are some points I think you missed: 1) The spells: I guess this is a core feature of the game. I've never figured out if most of the spells have any practical use (in combat) or their purpose is just to add ambience to the game. By just reading their description it is often difficult asses how to use them. Most of the spells takes a long time to setup. And some also are meant to be used in close range, which seems like a bad choice for characters with little or no armour. Even if there are lots of spells in the game, I've only used a couple of them. Most of the time my magic user end up using slings because using magic is so annoying. 2) Finding traps: Even if your character has the highest value in "finding traps", it still takes some random time finding them. So you are never sure if there are any traps or not. Which makes the whole feature sooo annoying. 3) Bow and arrow: The game seem to be skewed to range weapons, especially bow and arrow. Melee weapons are only good when it comes to higher bosses or enemies with some magical protection. Otherwise range weapons takes care of most enemies in the game.
i remember spending about 2hrs with the manual before sitting down to play this game. i even took notes on the character i would create when i eventually was able to play.
Even when I'm not that interested in the game you're covering, I still really enjoy your videos. I'm moving tomorrow and playing this video in the background while I'm packing makes me feel so relaxed.
Another great installment in a series I'm excited to see whenever it updates. It's been a longterm tradition of mine to play through the Baldur's Gate series, from start to end, biannually. I played through Baldur's Gate 2 when I was just starting secondary school - it was my first introduction to D&D and my first real narrative-focused RPG and I fell in love. It was only years later that I went back and played BG1 in order to get the full story and, well, the quality disparity between the games is... noticable. I appreciate that the story is much more low-key and a lot of the encounter design is really good. The leaps in power you get feel great: You go from getting crushed by kobolds to beating down powerful wizards and tough warriors and it always feels rewarding. My problem, however, is that a lot of the writing is tonally all over the place and it's a problem that persists from the beginning to the end of the game. You can very clearly tell it's a game made with love and dedication by a group of people who weren't entirely sure what direction they wanted to take the story. You'll run into characters who use olde timey Englishe like "Thees" and "Thous" (An exception I'll make for Dynaheir, where it's part of her character) and next you'll run into people with fairly modern modes of speaking. Your own dialogue responses generally fit the mood and setting but there's an alarming quantity of metacommentary, references to pop culture and phrases or terms that are goofy or completely out of touch with the D&D setting. I'm not advocating that all the dialogue should be straight-faced because that would get boring quickly, but sometimes it feels like Bioware couldn't help putting NPCs or conversations in which were just there because they wanted to do something silly while they were bored during development. The wilderness exploration is neat at first but leads to a game that feels very wide and very shallow, contrasted to BG2's much more focused and content-packed yet smaller areas. If you're running the game at a default speed without changing the framerate in the .ini to somewhere in the 40's, expect a lot of dead air (and dead wolves) as your characters walk through areas mostly devoid of anything other than a small set piece or building to loot. It's still a decent game and I'm happy to play through it in my trilogy run, but I think people are largely justified in passing it over for BG2. The sequel feels a lot more professional and focused and it really shows. Great video, I'm very eager to see more and especially your thoughts on PS:T. I only played through that game shortly before the EE was released for it and enjoyed it until the very end when the game forgets that its combat is NOT its selling point: I'm sure we'll see that crop up next video.
There's quite an extensive list of mods for Baldur's gate, both 1&2, most of which don't work with enhanced edition. So if you are someone who is already proficient with cRPGs, I would recommend the original so that you won't miss them. They offer most of the improvements and much more content, some of which is really wonderful. The game might crash more often like this, so watch out.
Agreed. I always play bg2 original with the g3 fix and tweak packs and some other assorted mods and I didn't experience anything like a crash every 4 hours. Unfinished business and the like are great too. You probably want a sound foundational understanding of the game before modding or tweaking any of the rules though.
This, I was trying to recall the name but couldn't. Boy was I in for a shock playing BGT with ascension and running into Silke on a fresh character. Brave brave Sir Garrick ran away, as did everyone else.
BG can be pretty brutal, but if you dedicate enough time to its systems, the heightened difficulty becomes very rewarding. If I ever played the Throne of Bhaal again, it would definitely be with Ascension just as before, but I understand that it's not like that for everyone, as I've played the 2nd game 3 times. Plus there are mods that are much more bullshit than Ascension. 😂 But yeah, probably something around a quarter of the mods works with EE.
I think once you've gone through the game a couple of times and know your way around magic even the toughest challenges in the game can be trivialized, I think ascension helped me replay it for the nth time and be surprised by intelligent mage ai that made the game strategically difficult in combat again. It's not for everyone though and having done one play through with it I doubt I'd have the patience to do it again. But it's worth a look if you know the game really well imo.
Infinity Engine games are one of those rare games that provide many exploits and ways to cheese if you understand the core mechanics and had the logic and creativity to experiment on its potentials
btw, Mage/Fighter combo is extreemly efficient and fun to play. Even better is Kensai/Mage but that require a bit more skill and knowledge. Focus on Katanas/Long Swords, Flails, and Two-weapon Style. Once you have access to Stoneskin you don't need to worry about armor. Focus on Combat buff spells. As for weapons Flail of Ages is the strongest one in BG2 so its good to prepare for that, and there are tons of different great longswords in both games. Katanas are for the EE edition but also require some knowledge where to find the best gear. Flails and Swords also covers 3 different damage types. Blunt, Piercing and Slash. Brilliant to swap around. Mage/Cleric is also fun and insane strong, but require a bit more knowledge and is not as strong in earlier levels.
My opinion about the kits: *Fighter* Berserker - This is your default Fighter, there's no reason to pick generic over this. You gain a very useful ability (abilities are fun, especially considering Fighters get so few) and the only disadvantage is you can't use ranged weapons very well. If you want a guy who wears armor and smashes stuff, go with this. Fighter - Don't. Only pick this if you want to be an archer and don't want to be an Archer (Ranger) for some reason. Or if you want to be Lawful, which you can't as a Berserker. Wizard Slayer - Don't. Spell interruption sounds good but in reality if a Fighter manages to hit a Mage even once the fight is already almost over. Inquisitor (Paladin) is a far superior anti-mage kit. Kensai - An absolute monster that doesn't get to wear any clothes. Definitely don't pick it if you're totally new because loot is a fun part of the game. A good choice for a second playthrough though. Barbarian - Runs fast and has high hp, excellent offtank. Movement speed is very useful. Ability is less useful than Berserker's but very good against casters. Don't expect amazing damage, pick Berserker or Kensai for that. *Ranger* Archer - Pick this if you want to shoot stuff. Archery can be a little boring though. Archers are not there to do massive damage, but they are good at hitting powerful foes which other classes will miss and they are good at hitting casters and disrupting their spells. Amuse yourself by managing the different kinds of ammunition, which can actually be very useful. Stalker - Good damage and kind of has a lot going on. A great choice if you want to focus on combat and like to stealth and backstab but still want to kick ass and survive hits afterward. Beast Master - Don't. Your Familiar WILL die if you let him out of your bags (has permanent consequences). Since you can't wear good armor, he's not very useful to you inside your bags either. Ranger - Only reason to choose generic is if you want to wear metal armor and therefore don't want to use stealth. Then you're just as tanky as Berserkers but deal less damage. The Druid spells you eventually get don't make up for the difference, but this remains an alright choice. *Paladin* Cavalier - This is your default Paladin. No reason to choose generic over this. Shines as a tank. Immune to a lot of common bad stuff and has situational bonuses as well with basically no downside. Great choice for a first playthrough, *USE DETECT EVIL* on anyone you find suspicious! Don't ignore it! Inquisitor - Very, very good. Loses a lot of Paladin utility but gains the most useful single ability in the game, Dispel Magic at double level with a fast cast. Also has handy immunities. However, it's a one-trick pony which can be boring, plus it counters casters so hard they almost don't even exist. I do not recommend this for your first playthrough because you will lose all respect for Mages. Undead Hunter - Just be a Cavalier. Level drain immunity is good but the wrong kind of good, like the shield which reflects Beholder attacks. Just removes content from the game, not fun. Blackguard - Good offtank. Aura of Despair is very useful. Great choice if you want to be Evil. Paladin - Just be a Cavalier. *Cleric & Mage* Kit doesn't matter much. *Druid* Totemic - Better choice than generic if you don't want to shapeshift. Shapeshifter - Don't. Avenger - Good and has a LOT going on. Not recommended for first-timers because of its complexity. Good caster and good melee (Sword Spider with appropriate spells) with good utility and high potential. *Thief* Assassin - Much less useful than other Thief kits due to slow thief skill growth. Damage relies on poison until high level. Not recommended for beginners; if you're new and found this playstyle tempting then I recommend Stalker (Ranger) instead. Bounty Hunter - An okay choice. Traps can be fun but skill growth is a little slow. Not a playstyle I would recommend to a beginner. Swashbuckler - Good choice for beginners. Basically a weaker Kensai who can wear clothes and has useful abilities. Can't backstab so plays more like a Fighter with Thief utility. Not a powerhouse but has very useful Thief abilities and can at least hold his own in combat. Can become powerful if properly equipped. Shadowdancer - Okay if you like to stealth and backstab but somewhat confusing and again for new players I strongly recommend Stalker (Ranger) instead. Thief - Don't. Only pick generic if you want Thief skills to be your main purpose and don't expect to fight aside from maybe coming in for a crucial backstab. If you can part with backstab, pick Swashbuckler. If you must backstab, give up the Thief utility and play a Stalker (Ranger). *Bard* Jester - Don't, unless you want to be a joke. Skald - Very good, also very simple and possibly boring. All he does in combat is play his (amazing) song to buff his allies and maybe shoot an occasional spell. As a new player you might find yourself "busy enough" in combat managing your party members, making the Skald a good choice. Useful out of combat as well for buffing and identifying. Blade - Very powerful and decent utility, but pretty complicated. Not recommended for beginners. Needs to combo spells to be effective. Bard - Mediocre. Weak melee and decent utility.
Please continue the series, by the way! A lot of the newer isometrics like Original Sin 2, POE 2, Tyranny, Pathfinder, etc would benefit from your analysis
You know, as of late I've had a hard time watching people talk about film, books and videogames. They don't usually investigate or research, so I've become more and more disillusioned. That said, your content, Chris, is a relief and a life raft. Thank you.
I played BG as a kid and never had to bother with AC and TAC0 until Throne of Bhaal. The game does an excellent job at keeping the understanding of the rules not a necessity to play.
Great video brother. I love these long videos because it allows you to really go in-depth with the game. I actually like listening to long videos like this in sessions which I did with this video. Thanks for taking the time to make this video and I really look forward to the next two videos. You got a like and a subscribe from me 👍
Thanks for the great retro of this game! I can confirm that with the 2.6 patch (which is still in beta at the moment), the issues you had have disappeared, or at least I haven't experienced them. Pathfinding is not perfect but seems to work pretty well (almost as well as other modern games, as far as I can tell). For the manual, however, I recommend finding a copy of the original one as complement (especially for AC, THAC0 and so on), Beamdog is a bit confusing sometimes.
I played this a lot on release and am almost positive that it never crashed on me even once. I think it's probably a compatibility issue with newer Windows versions. I have no idea why people were complaining about new content though, short of perhaps that this is such a classic game that it was commercially viable to release it twice, like Homeworld was, so many people want just the old game without any newfangled flim flam and get upset when there are changes. I personally had this in a big way with Homeworld, because I very specifically did not like the auto harvest function they had added to the sequels and now also to the remastered original. If you want to take your philistine hammer to a classic in that way I shall protest! People should know when they are working on a classic and treat it with due respect. Go make your own game and do it there if you have any bright ideas, basically. I don't bring my red crayon and propeller hat to art museums and neither should Beamdog.
I'm sold on it man. I hear there is a 19.99 special for the entire series that comes on sometimes. Not going to drop 100.00 on a 20 year old game but i'll put it 20.00 when it comes back.
Great Video,love your Retrospectives ! Thought about getting back into the old Infinity Engine Games,but already knew that they were too Huge for my Patience these Days. Already finished both back in the Days so i changed my Mind and went with Icewind Dale Series cause i never finished the second one. You sadly cant play a Group through both Games and it isnt that much deep on Decisions and Story,but still good Rpgs just a bit more Combat focused. I dont regret it,they give me the Rpg Feeling i wanted,the Nostalgia Feel from the Infinity Games and i dont need to play them every Day to keep in Mind whats happening and where i need to go and so on. And they still have enough Conent to play even the First for Weeks if you want. I think Icewind Dale is maybe the go to Rpg for Busy Gamers :)
Enjoyed your vid and subscribed. Looking forward to the next one. I remember THAC0 really confusing me due to the +gear bonuses lowering the score, and I had at least some idea going in. Going to check out the other vids on your channel.
Baldur's Gate (I and II) is my most favorable game. I played it when it came, in last century, and I love everything about it, music, atmosphere, fights etc. The game also influenced my writing and my mocing (making things from LEGO (something I do for livving now:) In any case, I strongly reccomend downloading a soundtrack, and experiencing a game in a way that you read every text Every few years I play it, or Icewind Dale, and although I know everyting, I still get surprised with something new :)
yes, I make dioramas out of LEGO bricks with which I make exhibits for which eather entrance is paid, r venue pays me - this is just a smal part of activities, most are with club of adults who like lego, and we just have fun :)
Want some of the most satisfying character development you can get in a CRPG? Play through BG1 and BG2 with the same mage character, where you begin as a lowly spell caster that can barely fire off a spell, and watch your mage grow more and more competent, until by the end of ToB your once pathetic mage will be truly god-like
6 ปีที่แล้ว
Just stumbled upon your videos (and subscribed)...Great job, IMO. Thanks! I loved so many of these isometric CRPGs back in the day, but I (sadly?) don't have the patience for most of it now. I'm 42, lol. On Baldur's Gate...I cannot imagine playing this with zero experience with AD&D 2e. I used to play the table top game, and indeed obsess over its intricacies. Also, party management is a chore...Wow...These days, I play games like Grim Dawn, Path of Exile, and Dragon Quest XI. I dislike the FPS Fallout has become. Anyway, Keep up the good work, sir!
The most memorable line from the original Baldur's Gate was without doubt "You must gather your party before venturing forth!"
That and "Go for the eyes Boo"
What about
"I serve the Flaming fist"
for me it was "Gorion would be proud of your actions"
Oh man, it's that or "Hiya it's me Imoen," for me
@@varrusironfist4335 this is the one fo sho!!!
Dude. We are HERE BECAUSE OF the length of the videos. We want them long! We want them detailed! And we are willing to wait for them for as long as we have to! Good luck with Baldur's Gate 2! It's a timeless masterpiece, but it really gets difficult at times. Think carefully, tread lightly and change your character to a male, because otherwise, you will lose an amazing romance with a particular dark-skinned lady :) Enjoy!
It is batshit insane how difficult it is to find a decent retrospective on the Baldur's Gate series given its incredible influence on the genre and industry.
And it's even more frustrating that it took about fifteen pages of TH-cam's dumbass algorithm to find this video after 100 videos that were just short clips, reviews and memes that had nothing to do with retrospectives.
I know this video is old, and I haven't checked to see if you're still making content, but I hope you are and I appreciate the work you've already done
Noah Caldwell Gervais has a good one too.
>No secret that Beamdog wanted to develop baldur's gate 3
*laughs in Larian*
*laughs with you*
*laughing tentacles*
*laughs at cuckdog losing to chadrian*
MWAHAHAHA! HA!
Good more chance of larian doing it justice beamdogs writing for new content was terrible and they made the game worse not better.
I've always found "alignment" a backwards concept as part of character creation. You classify how you're going to behave and then act accordingly rather than simply playing in a certain way and being classified based on that.
I still have my old boxed copies of these games and the books (game guides) I really miss the older boxed games with maps, books and keyboard overlays. This is a great video, its good to see some older games getting some love
When you were talking about the character creation being a bit complex I felt like pointing out that a lot of the complexity actually comes from Baldurs Gate 2. The original didn't have so much in the way of sub-classes and had fewer weapon skills and such. But the Enhanced Edition took a lot of the original content and essentially laid the BG2 skin over it. This was good for people who had played both games back in the day, as the sequel added much more than the original, but I agree it would be a bit daunting when now even the first entry has as much complexity as the sequel.
The crashing issue is probably fixed. Just got done with a 60 hour play through that didn't crash once.
Ah yes, the good old days when you would read the manual during the drive/bus ride home after buying a physical copy of a game. Not something I have ever really thought about until you mentioned how we used to read manuals back then, and it's very true.
Shadows of Amn is my favorite game of all time.
Baldur's Gate is a big part of the reason i got involved in D&D as a tabletop rpg and didn't leave it to computer adaptations. I've now DMed 2 games and have partaken in 5 games as a player. I'm now a huge supporter of BG3 and cant wait to see it completed
Correction, 18/00 is the highest number for strength you can get on the abilities screen. 18/00 > 18/99
How do those work anyway?
2E rules are extremely gimmicky for a 5E player like me :D
@@Wyti from weakest to strongest:
18
18/01 - 18/99
18/00
@@Wyti for a warrior class strength is 2 rolls, your first roll which can be up to 18 and then a percentile roll for "exceptional strength" (if you rolled 18 only) with 100 = 18/00 and 1 = 18/01..there are 5 different tiers of exceptional strength each giving different bonuses to hit, carry weight, attack and bashing dmg (lockbreaking). 01-50, 51-75, 76-90, 91-99, 00.
@@Wyti For a quick look at what exactly you get for each XX/YY STR score, just do a google image search for something like "dnd 2nd edition strength" and you'll get a handy table of the bonuses or penalties granted by high or low strength (also applies for other abilities; 2E can be quite arbitrary when it comes to the effects of ability scores). For strength the "second roll" - as smoking one calls it - is surprisingly important!
This. 18/00 = 18/100
yessss! Hyped for this. There's been a lot of TH-cam analysis/review/video essay types who have been giving worthless boilerplate reviews to old games, avoiding spoilers or any in-depth design analysis and are basically indistinguishable from the at-the-time reviews of the 90s (except with more waffling about "for the time" when talking about the graphics) and it's been driving me up the wall. But Chris always really dives right in and I appreciate it
th-cam.com/video/DjWWuUDtSaE/w-d-xo.html This video by Noah Caldwell is very good. You might enjoy it as much as this one :)
I do like when spoilers are avoided. If they're not, and there's no warning, that's pretty annoying. Just because a game is old shouldn't mean "you should've played it already, this is your fault, sucks to be you" ya know? He gave a warning though so I have no issue with this vid
It would have been informative to mention just how many people still play the game and that there is a vibrant community existing around it that will give advice, who are still creating content and who are still arguing about whether you should take Minsc or Edwin with you or kill them on sight (as there is argument about every other NPC, every character build, every optimum power build, dwarf or elf, good or evil ect.). For anybody considering playing such an old game, that's important because if they do like it, or are having difficulties, there is opportunity to talk about it and get help.
It would have been informative to say where this vibrant community can be found
Both Baldur's Gate and Fallout get one thing right for me over their bigger, more polished sequels: the main story is integrated into the world and exploration in a much more satisfying way. In BG2, you might ignore the world as a distraction from the long and isolated main quest. In Fallout 2, the main quest is really a sideshow railroad at the very end. In both Fallout and Baldur's Gate, the world-exploration and main quest develop and reinforce each other in a very natural way: the exploration often gives you clues, while the main quest unlocks new areas. The originals gave me a stronger sense of immersion in these big wide worlds, whereas the sequels's areas sometimes struck me as a bit too flamboyant and contrived. Though I love both sequels and they have superior replay value.
I think BG was the first RPG I played. And perhaps it wasn't the first RPG ever made but it kind of had that innocence. I'm not sure if I would describe BG 2 as flamboyant but it started - I think - much more self-important. I mean in BG 1 the first companions you meet are like idk ... total ass-bandits. While playing I really had the feeling that I was a just a clueless dude in a big foreign world which is perhaps the best vibe for an RPG.
Good video as always Chris. I think you may have missed though that the party's AI can be disabed (ex. for the chess set in durlag's tower). You can also set the AI for thieves to automatically look for traps and things. Very useful (although you didn't have a thief, hah)
Yeah. Two Mines are two Mines. But storywise it is good I think, because the Iron Thrones goal in the first mine is to make the iron useless and the secend mine is a secret and for their goals. The Iron Throne is no sect or cult that wants to end the world. They just want shitload of money. It is Sarevok who wants to start the war, not the Iron Throne. So in the end the Iron Throne has believable goals and are a good target for low level adventures.
Good video. Keep it up :)
Love your history of isometric RPGs history videos! Yes Baldur’s Gate can be rough on your fist play through without an understanding of D&D 2nd Edition and it’s quirks like thaco. But once you grasp the necessary knowledge and tactics it’s thoroughly enjoyable. Played through many times on core rules, which I feel is the way Bioware wanted it to be played. Just use basic tactics, scout ahead for traps with thief, don’t aggro The Whole room. Once engage, get your tanks and fighters up front to keep enemies busy, get archers/thief’s filling enemy mages full of arrows (especially arrows that inflict extra damage such as poison), have your cleric constantly healing and buffing, then most importantly, get your mage shooting spells like sleep and other debilitating spells and/or damaging spells like magic missile. Fireball is excellent, but best launch that before your party engages otherwise your fighter is going to eat damage. It drives me nuts when I watch BG videos and the player selects all 6 characters and bum_rushes the room. Then complains how hard the combat is. Your mages have no armor, they will die quickly if engaged in mele. Also, you can turn off companion AI on the lantern looking button bottom right. This will prevent them from blundering into traps and will only act when you tell them to. One cheesy tactic is to scout ahead stealthed, return with mage, launch stinking cloud over enemies before they can see you and aggro, then summon skeletons. The skeletons are not affected by the cloud and will go in and kill everyone. Mages will waste their spells on the skeletons if they aren’t asleep. Then move in with archers and kill whatever’s left. Some of the fights are legit difficult, but that makes it all the more satisfying when you win. BG 2 fights are WAY more difficult than anything in BG. Love both these games, SOD? Meh....it was alright I guess. Played it once, never will again. Beamdog is no 1998-2002 Bioware. Keep doing these videos, love them!
the sheer joyful adventure of balders gate series is what most rpgs are missing. the joy of adventure.
"Dr." is a title - Doctor is a profession.
It is correct to refer to someone with doctorate as "Dr.", irrespective of what they do for a living
22:50 this is indeed part of the standard D&D rules and one of the main reasons - at least in my opinion - why it breaks in video games is due to the fact that players in video games can basically rest at any given time. In a real D&D session you DM would most likely intervene or send enemies your way or some other shennanigans to keep you from abusing the rest system. Also encounters in D&D usually take quite some time since everybody has to first think what they want to do in each round, then they have to actually do it, perform dice rolls, inspect the result of their actions and maybe take some more actions if possible. This can easily take a minute per player per turn. Turning encounters with multiple enemies in a group of say 5 players into something that takes some thirty minutes if not longer.
If you'd do it that way in a video game players would be bored as hell - in real life D&D you'd usually short rest after an encounter or two - making it not overly abusable since enough time passes between encounters anyway and due to them being not as frequent per session in general.
Video games work differently though - you can see this in other D&D based games as well like Never Winter Nights which totally bork the rest mechanics making casters very very powerful.
Alot of the issues that you ran into with your partymembers came because of the fact that you let the AI control them. The game becomes ALOT easier and becomes more fun when you micro manage them yourselves. It feels daunting at first but quikly improves on the gameplay alot so much so that youd probably wonder how you managed without it :)
23:17 Save and reload? How about just scouting ahead? Hiding in shadows isn't just for backstabbing.
Scouting ahead would require a thief character with good amount of points put into Hide in Shadows, otherwise your stealth breaks very quickly and it takes way too many tries to go into stealth mode in a first place, and you will have to trade lockpicking, pickpocketing and detecting traps to be good at stealth, or it would require a mage constantly wasting a 2nd level spell to make someone invisible before and after every encounter. So you either give up on having any freedom on your thief character or you go through a tedious process of casting invisibility and resting a lot because of that.
And even then you wouldn't always know what kind of encounter you're getting into just by looking at the enemy, you don't know what spells enemy mages are gonna cast, you don't know how strong enemy physical damage dealers are just by looking at them. Not to mention ambushes or encounters that will spawn extra enemies, or encounters that start from dialogue with strangers(some of them are obvious bandits and enemies, but a lot of them aren't) And scouting ahead isn't even an option a lot of the times, you can't scout ahead to find out how many doppelgangers Saverok will spawn when you confront him at the duke palace.
@@MrFr2eman I replayed BG 1 a few weeks ago on the switch. When I was in the last maze before Sarevok, I tried doing the proper "detect traps and scout ahead" approach but I found the location so tedious that I ended up bruteforcing it with constant saves and only doing trap detect when I already knew there was a trap. So far in BG 2 I don't need to brute force that much, but then again I have BG 2 memorized after almost 20 years of playing it, while I only ever finished Vanilla BG once and promptly forgot about it in favor of the sequel.
Interesting to see an in-depth analysis from a newcomer. I myself have been playing this game for the past 20 years so it holds no secrets to me. Even my nickname originates here! I only watched the first 18 minutes so far due to time restrains, so I will only add a couple of remarks. Pardon if you do touch on this later.
This game really shines with mods. The community have been working on it for 20 years and all the love shows. At this point I consider mods like BG1 NPC Project to be CANON. It makes all the joinable NPCs (and there is a HUGE cast) much more complex and nuanced, akin to BG2, making the new Beamdog's NPCs blend in much better. This is the one thing that cements the longevity of this game for much more than one initial playthrough. You can only enjoy the main story so much, it all becomes about the characters. You have almost infinite possible party setups, each feeling different and having their own drama and friendships, interacting with each other differently.
Also I would advice looking for stuff like Scales Of Balance, I will be honest here, 2nd edition of dnd is ATROCIOUS by today standard, you really have to know it inside and out to know what you are doing. It is arbitrary and convoluted. There are mods that make entire system fresh and much better. I can elaborate further with my mod list if needed.
I SERVE THE FLAMING FIST!
Geez calm down. Always got me that
I AM the Law!!
It's 2019 and I'm still hitting that "reroll" button to get better starting stats.
Also I probably played this game for 200 hours, never made it to Baldur's Gate. I always give up after killing Tazok, and start over a few months later. Don't know how many time I started over, but I know the beginning by heart.
Second part of the game is literally the best part. Baldurs Gate is the best part of the game.
@@ericpass3842 But the last part is probably the worst part. BG 1 feld flat on its face for me after you return from Candlekeep. You either have to crawl around severs or run away from the flaming fist and approach the same location from a different side (since they have a fixed position) and the evidence gathering was tedious and to cryptic for me. The less I say about last maze and graveyard leading up to Sarevok the better. I can re-play BG 2 anytime anywhere on any platform, but I doubt I will every again want to play the last two chapters of BG 1
@@artur6912 for me it really went down at the last maze... what a pain... it makes sense in the storyline itself but the gameplay was painful... whenever I replay it it's always where I think twice about finishing again or not!
@@@artur6912 The ending was a bit of a slog. But I still consider the opening sprawl of Baldur's Gate to be the best RPG experience available on the PC, simply because you're free to go where you wish with dozens of locations available almost immediately. Not all of them are great, but some are. Loot's handled great, characters are distinct and memorable, but don't force themselves on you with elaborate stories. And I still just prefer the hand drawn maps and fleshed out characters in BG to the contentless, semi-random terrains of something like Skyrim. Every inch of BG had personality. So much of modern gaming is like that too. Just unplannedm haphazard busywork in randomized textures to gate gear instead of an engaging RPG experience in a carefully developed game world. To me fiction of any kind is like wrestling. As soon as it doesn't feel real the audience leaves. It's not supposed to be real. It just has to appear real. That's how fiction works. We're not dummies and know it's not real, regardless of how real it looks. Well, most of us anyway...
Hopefully by now you've made it all the way through and also BG2. Trust me bro, it just gets better and better.
22:30 I have been playing TTRPGs for YEARS and 'carrying capacity for spells' is the single best analogy for the DND-style magic system I have ever heard.
About that daunting character creation -- I think it's important to note that what you're talking about is actually a Baldur's Gate 2 experience. That's because one of the main features of Beamdog's edition is repeating the work done in Tutu and Trilogy mods, that is adapting the game into the BG2 system. Original game doesn't feature subclasses, half-orcs or fighting styles, and the weapon profieciency system is much simpler -- you choose general weapon types like large swords, blunt weapons, missile weapons etc.
By the way, some of those changes caused balancing issues. For example, the weapon choices were originally balanced (well, sort of) for original proficiency system, and with the more specific BG2 system the choices became very limited. Beamdog alleviated the problem slightly by adding a few additional weapons though.
I don't know if anyone has mentioned it, but around 24:00 you mention that that fight seems like a puzzle encounter. You were absolutely right, there's a ghoul in that area that you can go talk to and temporarily recruit that's immune to the petrify.
You can just use your rogue to stealth out a line of sight and let him loose on em, and he'll mop up shop.
Correction, your character's alignment doesn't affect which companions you can have (nor dialogue options for that matter), but reputation affects companions. You can pick neutral evil and act all goody two shoes if you want. One thing your alignment does affect is combat spells such as Holy Smite, which deals damage to evil characters. And secondly, certain magical items are restricted to certain alignments. That's about it though, I think.
It's nice hearing thoughts on this older gem from newer players! Good video, don't worry about the length of it, it's a big game to cover!
One last thing, Str actually goes up to 18/100 it's written as 18/00 and that's the strongest stat you can have in that range. I know many things are a bit backwards like AC and THAC0, and knowing that 18/00 is better than 18/99 is not intuitive either.
On dual classing, it really depends on what you are going for, it is highly useful but you will suffer for awhile because of it. I highly don't recommend dual classing in BG1 as the exp cap will screw you over if you don't class over at lower levels. If you have BG2+Throne of Bhaal this is not to much of an issue. It is useful for every class and I highly recommend it Fighter is the most beneficial classes to dual and I suggest it as the base class for example if you choose fighter as you base but your ultimate goal is a mage take about 7 levels in fighter then dual and you will end up with a mage with a very high HP pool far greater than if you leveled as a pure mage completely negating the mages most vulnerable stat while giving increased thaco bonuses, weapon professions and extra attacks. One of the most powerful combination I have found is the fighter/thief, I recommend the kensai fighter kit as your base, Kensai has some glaring weaknesses mainly the ability to not be able to wear any armor or gauntlets and unable to use any ranged weapons. The Kensai does have a lot of bonuses which include +2 to base armor class and another +1 every 4 levels and a +1 to damage and hit every 3 levels. You take this class to level 13 so you get all Hp bonuses you get for a fighter the extra 1 1/2 extra attacks per round and grand mastery in the weapon you choose, you then level as a thief it is level 17 I think is when you get your first class feat and you get the most overpowered feat in the entire game (Use Any Item) now all negatives from the Kensai are taken away he can wear any armor, use any wand, any scroll, any potion, that can turn invisible and backstab for over 100+ damage with -10+AC with 5 default attacks per round(10 with improved haste) and the ability to guarantee max damage for 5 rounds once a day. Very powerful character.
If you want my opinion on one of the most overpowered items you can get early on is Celestrial Fury, its stun procs quite a bit its only downfall is it is a katana and there are not very many good katanas in the game, for Minsc screw the equalizer give him the Silver Sword I have killed celestrials and high level demons in one hit with this weapon anything not immune to death will fall to this blade its only weakness is the undead.
Such a good game. My first rpg was neverwinter nights, followed by oblivion, but the bg games are simply a class above modern games.
Such a shame that modern graphics and gameplay fail to integrate their predecessors merits as they went along
Its all about the storywriting. Warcraft 3 had a good story too and that's why Blizzard was so successfull with Wow.
Oblivion is not an rpg
@@JohnSmith-ik8nt yes it is lol
@@JohnSmith-ik8nt that's quite a... difficult debate. I would say that it is rpg-ish. It still has a very cool magic system, you can play the story that you want with very little consequences (not on Skyrim's level for sure, but not on Morrowind as well, by a longshot).
So I would say a true Action Rpg.
Something like a True Neutral
@@JohnSmith-ik8nt it is an rpg. But with low roleplay capacity compared to other rpgs. Tes series never has been that great on this aspect
Well, technically speaking, in a table top D&D session, there aren't a huge number of times when traps would require a thief in order to get by, particularly because of the openness of the format. Players faced with a pit-trap can use a spear or long pole to press down on the floor to activate the trap,then either jump over the hole, throw all the corpses they've encountered into it to fill it up, or even build a makeshift bridge - whatever they want to do. Even with pressure plates, it's very possible to just say, 'my character jumps over the pressure plate,' to the DM. However, with a videogame, which doesn't have the same malleability as the Table Top, the ability to capitalize on ingenuity is somewhat hampered, and so thieves become a far more important party member.
Fantastic series Chris, I'm so very happy you're doing this & I hope you're doing great
I found the combat to be fabulous. Especially on the harder or hardest settings. But I understand that it is hard to do if one is not fully knowledgable about the combat systems. And playing a hardcore game without reloading (dead is dead) is only possible to have full knowledge of every creature you encounter so you know which spells, potions and scrolls you need to have on you every moment in the game. But a fun challenge at that.
10/10. Great game. Would play again.
Realized I've watched 8 of your longform videos without subbing, sooooo subbed. Great content, fella, keep it up.
"How can we take on a massive dragon on 1 minute and the next we die to a spider barely big enough to raise an Australian's eyebrow?" Ahahahah
I love that you are new to all this, just like many of us that werent born in the 80s. Too many reviews/ analysis videos are pretentious and they fail to explain things because they are above all the simple ideas.
Hi! So glad i discovered this series. During summer i managed to beat all the infinity engine games so these videos are fun to watch while memory is still fresh. Btw have fun with icewind dale 2 since there is no enhanced edition and as far as i understand there will never be one. Makes you really appreciate all the work Beamdog does to modernize these games.
I enjoyed your video. I’m just not sure “infamous” means what you think it means. You call both the infinity engine and Baldurs Gate II infamous, which means they are known for a bad quality, which to my knowledge they are both incredibly well regarded. Either way, small correction. Great video!
Yeah, I think the word he's looking for is something like "storied" or "fabled".
"Beloved" would be far more appropriate.
Don't know. To me Infinity engine is mostly functional but the layout is cumbersome, things like pathfinding absolutely suck and sometimes makes playing the game extremely tedious and frustrating, early versions of the games didn't include several quality of life things we these days tend to expect and so forth. For its time it most likely was good engine but from todays perspective, eh. Especially the pathfinding. That damned pathfinding.
Started BG1 as a kid, but wasn't able to finish it. Coming from the launch of BG3 (on PC) I really appreciate that you made this. It's a well detailed video and the perspective is nice since there is no mention of BG3 content for us avoiding spoilers. =) And vids like this I know we're made from interest in the games as opposed to jumping on the hype train\voew.coumt train of BG3 content.
Damn. Now I need to get five bags of popcorn and sodas.
oh god. i remember playing it two decades ago, and it took me over 2hrs to find Dynaheir.
Thanks man, because of I tried Fallout 1 and 2 and I was enjoying myself. Again, thanks a lot.
I uhh I'm kinda glad bean dog didn't get to make bg3
I loved the video but I completely disagree with your assessment of the magic system. Mages should be powerhouses in the sense that they can manipulate and control any battlefield. But only if used well. The memorization system forces mages to memorize a wide variety of spells in order to remain versatile in every encounter, which prevents the spamming of single powerful spells common in games with mana systems, games which many times reduce the effectiveness of mages to "area of effect archers " to balance out this change.
I love dnds magic system. I feel like an actual arcane scholar instead of some bumpkin with a flamethrower for hands. One of skyrim most popular mods introduces a perk that makes spell casting like dnds and it makes the game so much more fun.
Or it forces simply resting all the time to memorize the exact spells you will need before the character would actually know they needed it. That's the problem, for mages to truly break the game, you need to know ahead of time what spells to prepare. The NPC mages are way, way, way more powerful than a player will be the first time they play Baldur's Gate unless they're using a guide.
@@irllcd13 > The NPC mages are way, way, way more powerful than a player will be the first time they play Baldur's Gate unless they're using a guide.
Uh, no they aren't? The NPCs of baldur's gate are so stupid with the way they use their spells. This is fine for a new player, who will be better able to use his spells simply by applying them with basic thought (i.e. use web to stop the super strong fighters from overwhelming your party, silence the mage to stop him from casting, maybe use a spell shield to stop the mage from doing that to you but they generally won't. 99% of the time npc mages are either just buffing their teammates or lobbing spells that damage their party just as much as yours. Unlike the player NPCs generally don't have contingencies or they have like really stupid contingencies, and I can't recall the last time an enemy used any sort of spell sequencer. I mean, enemies don't even use potions, the intricacies of the spell system are not at all able to be properly utilized).
>Or it forces simply resting all the time to memorize the exact spells you will need before the character would actually know they needed it.
???? not it doesn't? The game even punished you for trying to do this in dungeons since the about 80% of the time you try to rest in a dungeon you'll get ambushed by monsters instead. Just prepare a "general" selection of spells + combos that are always good (i.e. lower resistance + damage spell, malison + literally anything, blur+defensive image to tank) and you're fine.
I mean, yes if you were really dedicated you could just cheese the whole game, but the game is easy enough as is I don't know why anyone would waste time to cheese mostly simple battles.
@@libenhagos9335 Yeah, they really are. Maybe if you're playing on a low difficulty level, but if not, even on core rules difficulty, someone just picking up the game isn't going to know to spam skull trap and other cheese tactics. That was my whole point.
irllcd13 you really don't need to resort to cheese tactics to win though. At least not when playing with normal 'core rules'. Smart usage of even the most basic spells will get you through, and you shouldn't need to exhaust your spells every single encounter. If anything, bows are a bit overpowered in the first Baldurs Gate.
@@matternicuss "Bows are a bit overpowered in the first Baldur's Gate"
Everyone thinks my fear of skeleton archers comes from Minecraft...
*has PTSD flashbacks to entire party getting massacred by ice arrows in Thieves' Guild labyrinth*
11:44 Hey that man is an epic butt kicking machine for goodness.
14:48 No class kits in the original to confuse you. Not to mention they have added extra classes and kits to what was available in BG2SoA.
15:45 I still have the tattered remains of my BG2SoA manual somewhere. That thing saw a lot of use.
Thank you for the recommendation towards Extra Credits. I found the design commentary on the tower's design very interesting. It's been such a long time since I've played BG and any of it's extra content, and I was very young at the time. I remember the highlights of the story for BG1 but the doppleganger twist definitely caught me off guard when I was a lad.
It's time to return Chris. We need you for the third game
hahaha i love that you mention finding Dynaheir. playing it the first time, took me HOURS to find her.
having played the original on CDs (5+1 for TotSC), then on BG2 engine using BGT mods, the enhanced edition really was a godsend and i sunked in another 200hrs almost two decades after playing the game for the first time. still great. my stability was really good though?
i remember playing without the bags was... a challenge. deciding what you want to take out of a dungeon and what to leave, or what to come back for. *realism*
haha Reroll system. when there was no "total roll" row :D one time spent 2h rolling, and doing quick math in my head.
Unfortunate side effect of the digital download is that you miss out on the 159 page manual that came with the original Baldur's Gate. Many a bathroom break was spent learning about the stats of the more obscure classes, and reading about spells I never used before.
theres a pdf of it in the game fodler.
@@megamike15 It's not the same. The manual is for when you are away from your computer. If you're in front of your computer, would you rather play the game or read the manual?
Just finished my first playthrough of BG1 last night and really enjoyed it. Still need to get to the expansion but I wanted to at least jump back into this video to see the thoughts on the story wrap up. I definitely want to jump into BG2 but after it taking me 70+ hours just for the 1st without the expansion, I can only imagine how long BG2 will take.
BG2 is by far the superior game, give it a whirl if you haven't already.
"by far" is crazy. They're on the same level and inseparable from each other. @@Memnon45
Awesome. Glad you are still making these. Can't wait to get home from work and listen.
Well done. I've been playing D&D since the 70's and 2nd edition rulesets are really confusing, especially for those who have no experience in the game. I think I've played BG 1 & 2 at least a dozen times each, with all of the mods out there now, you can get a new play through everytime.
The easy thing to remember, the more +'s on something, armor, rings, helms, weapons...etc etc. Use it. Your want your AC low. It top's out (bottoms out actually) at -10 AC. Your character will look like a walking Sherman tank or have so much magic billowing off you that you will set off car alarms a mile away, once you hit the -10AC area. In BG2 you will hit -10 AC pretty fast, relatively speaking. It won't matter, there are so many mobs and characters that will hit you regardless. When I played the tabletop version of the game, it was a nightmare to hit an AC 2 and lower. Let alone something like a -4 AC. I have characters in BG 1 & BG 2 below 0 AC in the -4 to -6 area and I was having punk robbers and goblin archers or Kobold Commandos lighting us up. It was like my tank character had no armor on was standing still to be hit. Nice review and a sub from me. I look forward to the review/playthrough of SoD and then your review of BG2. BG2 is a beast, so get ready. You can easily drop 300+ hours into the game. Good luck to you.
How did i not know this is the vid series ive always wanted
"Big Suze"
LOL
Couple of things:
To kill Karoug, you need to find the +4 wolfwere slaying dagger, equip your strongest fighter with it, and load up that character with giant strength, heroism, invulnerability, and haste. There is also the +4 "staff of Rhynn" (IIRC) that can hit Karoug. "+1 or better weapon to hit" is an old AD&D "special defense" for certain magical creatures. In the case of Karoug, it's "+4 or better weapon to hit." Which is pretty nuts, even at very high level, let alone around 9th.
Don't use 2x3 formation, especially in the small dungeons. I use either 1x6 or the staggered formation. Your pathing issues in dungeons should be mostly taken care of that way.
Great content, and it's fascinating hearing someone do a retrospective like this without the heavy nostalgia goggles on.
I havent played this since the original came out, but arent the gripes about pathfinding when moving as a group in small places and the stupid AI, fixed by just using formations and writing your own script? I can recall spending hours tweaking scripts so that I didnt have to micromange so much. You used the default AI scripts that came with the game? (8:36)
I'm sure you noticed this, but strength actually goes up to 100. That's the 18/00. The reason, if you're curious, is because there is no 0 on a "100 sided die." 18/00 is master tier!
I really enjoyed this video! I loved hearing about the game from the perspective of a relatively new player to the series. I especially look forward to the your opinions on the Siege of DragonSpear. When you finallly get to BG2 you'll have a blast, it's a classic.
I started play BGEE recently and didn't realize Neera and Dorn were new characters, but I feel like they are decent additions since all the other allies have very plain and limited quests. I've gone so far out of my way to keep Neera alive and intend to ditch Dorn soon after finishing off his revenge quest. My team right now is 2 good, 2 neutral and 2 evil, so maybe I shouldn't ditch him and ruin my balance though? idk, we'll see
I've tried to get through baldurs gate once and stopped after nashkel. You have encouraged me to get back at it!
My fondest memory of Baulders Gate was using a wand of summoning to surrond Drizzit with animals he couldnt attack through, and spending about 30 minutes attacking him from range till he died. Still wish that statue would have summoned a temporary panther
The sheer amount of wilderness zones that you adventure through for no reason is amazing. There is a huge sense of danger because you do not know what kind of enemies will be in that zone and any human encounter is potentially incredibly lethal. Baldur's Gate 2 is truly amazing, but the frontloading of all the sidequests seems very strange to me. Some are HUGELY above your level. We all know that one door in the harbor that we DO NOT ENTER until we are ready for doing a bunch of terrible things to liches almost immediately.
"thaco is whacko and I want no part of it" Noah Caldwell-Gervais
I love his videos
Character creation #1 tip. Half Orc gives one a +1 to strength allowing all classes to reach 19. Normally only warriors (fighters, rangers, and paladins) can access the 18/-- exceptional strength table. This jump immediately grants you plus 3 to hit and 7 to damage which is wonderful for warriors but more importantly makes clerics and monks more formidable in melee than warriors.
In 2e p&p ability scores were static not increasing with level while magical items would buff scores with temporary increases.
This is still one of my favourite RPGs of all time. Rarely a game gives me that sense of adventuring that is so prevalent in BG1.
Don't worry about not getting dual classing, it is very tricky and hard to plan for when you don't know the exact XP caps in the game.
Your character didn't react to Gorion's death because the developers likely didn't want to assume your role as the player. If Gorion dies and you're playing chaotic evil, what sense would it make if your character goes into some monologue about how sad he is. Your character's reaction is how YOU, the player, react.
Really interesting video. Thoroughly enjoyed it! Will now go watch ep 1 and 2 and keep an eye on notifications for new episodes.
I love this series, i come back to it more than any other game
10:15
"The new characters are Neera, Dorn, and Rasaad."
AND Baeloth! Don't forget Baeloth.
The best one, really...
New characters are cringey fanfic. Beamdog shouldn't have added their own stuff in the game.
@@EpicHashTime Why ? They are easily ignorable if you don't want them and have at least somewhat decent stats (something I can't say about most BG 1 NPCs) if you like being a munchkin (which I do) and they provide at least some interaction (something that no og BG 1 NPC did). While I usually ignore the new npc in bg2 because in that game the regular npc have interactions and romances, in bg1 they are a very nice inclusion.
This was a much better video than you latest one in the series. It's an interesting take on these games from a perspective of a newcomer. In the new one you spend way too much time defining very awkwardly what is or isn't an Isometric CRPG in a counterproductive manner. Not to mention it had multiple inaccuracies. This one however was very enjoyable.
The fight with Karoug (the leader of the Wolfwares in the expansion) is best fought using Kondar, a bastard sword you can get in the main game. You get it by helping the leader of the Merchant’s League, first in the Cloakwood Forest (where he is accosted by shadow druids for hunting) then in Baldur’s Gate, where doppelgängers are attempting to take over the League. Do this, and he rewards you with Kondar, which is +1 against everything, and +3 against shapeshifters. This includes both doppelgängers AND lycanthropes. Ajantis has specialization in bastard sword, and you can give this to any other fighter-type characters as they progress in levels. Have it along with the necklace Dradeel gives you, and buff the wielder with haste, heroism, regeneration, and strength to take out Karoug pretty quickly on Core Rules.
This game has so many annoying features, but yet I keep coming back playing it. Here are some points I think you missed:
1) The spells: I guess this is a core feature of the game. I've never figured out if most of the spells have any practical use (in combat) or their purpose is just to add ambience to the game. By just reading their description it is often difficult asses how to use them. Most of the spells takes a long time to setup. And some also are meant to be used in close range, which seems like a bad choice for characters with little or no armour. Even if there are lots of spells in the game, I've only used a couple of them. Most of the time my magic user end up using slings because using magic is so annoying.
2) Finding traps: Even if your character has the highest value in "finding traps", it still takes some random time finding them. So you are never sure if there are any traps or not. Which makes the whole feature sooo annoying.
3) Bow and arrow: The game seem to be skewed to range weapons, especially bow and arrow. Melee weapons are only good when it comes to higher bosses or enemies with some magical protection. Otherwise range weapons takes care of most enemies in the game.
i remember spending about 2hrs with the manual before sitting down to play this game. i even took notes on the character i would create when i eventually was able to play.
Even when I'm not that interested in the game you're covering, I still really enjoy your videos. I'm moving tomorrow and playing this video in the background while I'm packing makes me feel so relaxed.
I love how he causally burns popular games throughout the video
Another great installment in a series I'm excited to see whenever it updates. It's been a longterm tradition of mine to play through the Baldur's Gate series, from start to end, biannually. I played through Baldur's Gate 2 when I was just starting secondary school - it was my first introduction to D&D and my first real narrative-focused RPG and I fell in love. It was only years later that I went back and played BG1 in order to get the full story and, well, the quality disparity between the games is... noticable.
I appreciate that the story is much more low-key and a lot of the encounter design is really good. The leaps in power you get feel great: You go from getting crushed by kobolds to beating down powerful wizards and tough warriors and it always feels rewarding. My problem, however, is that a lot of the writing is tonally all over the place and it's a problem that persists from the beginning to the end of the game. You can very clearly tell it's a game made with love and dedication by a group of people who weren't entirely sure what direction they wanted to take the story.
You'll run into characters who use olde timey Englishe like "Thees" and "Thous" (An exception I'll make for Dynaheir, where it's part of her character) and next you'll run into people with fairly modern modes of speaking. Your own dialogue responses generally fit the mood and setting but there's an alarming quantity of metacommentary, references to pop culture and phrases or terms that are goofy or completely out of touch with the D&D setting. I'm not advocating that all the dialogue should be straight-faced because that would get boring quickly, but sometimes it feels like Bioware couldn't help putting NPCs or conversations in which were just there because they wanted to do something silly while they were bored during development.
The wilderness exploration is neat at first but leads to a game that feels very wide and very shallow, contrasted to BG2's much more focused and content-packed yet smaller areas. If you're running the game at a default speed without changing the framerate in the .ini to somewhere in the 40's, expect a lot of dead air (and dead wolves) as your characters walk through areas mostly devoid of anything other than a small set piece or building to loot.
It's still a decent game and I'm happy to play through it in my trilogy run, but I think people are largely justified in passing it over for BG2. The sequel feels a lot more professional and focused and it really shows. Great video, I'm very eager to see more and especially your thoughts on PS:T. I only played through that game shortly before the EE was released for it and enjoyed it until the very end when the game forgets that its combat is NOT its selling point: I'm sure we'll see that crop up next video.
There's quite an extensive list of mods for Baldur's gate, both 1&2, most of which don't work with enhanced edition. So if you are someone who is already proficient with cRPGs, I would recommend the original so that you won't miss them. They offer most of the improvements and much more content, some of which is really wonderful. The game might crash more often like this, so watch out.
Agreed. I always play bg2 original with the g3 fix and tweak packs and some other assorted mods and I didn't experience anything like a crash every 4 hours. Unfinished business and the like are great too. You probably want a sound foundational understanding of the game before modding or tweaking any of the rules though.
This, I was trying to recall the name but couldn't. Boy was I in for a shock playing BGT with ascension and running into Silke on a fresh character. Brave brave Sir Garrick ran away, as did everyone else.
BG can be pretty brutal, but if you dedicate enough time to its systems, the heightened difficulty becomes very rewarding. If I ever played the Throne of Bhaal again, it would definitely be with Ascension just as before, but I understand that it's not like that for everyone, as I've played the 2nd game 3 times. Plus there are mods that are much more bullshit than Ascension. 😂 But yeah, probably something around a quarter of the mods works with EE.
I think once you've gone through the game a couple of times and know your way around magic even the toughest challenges in the game can be trivialized, I think ascension helped me replay it for the nth time and be surprised by intelligent mage ai that made the game strategically difficult in combat again. It's not for everyone though and having done one play through with it I doubt I'd have the patience to do it again. But it's worth a look if you know the game really well imo.
Infinity Engine games are one of those rare games that provide many exploits and ways to cheese if you understand the core mechanics and had the logic and creativity to experiment on its potentials
btw, Mage/Fighter combo is extreemly efficient and fun to play. Even better is Kensai/Mage but that require a bit more skill and knowledge. Focus on Katanas/Long Swords, Flails, and Two-weapon Style. Once you have access to Stoneskin you don't need to worry about armor. Focus on Combat buff spells. As for weapons Flail of Ages is the strongest one in BG2 so its good to prepare for that, and there are tons of different great longswords in both games. Katanas are for the EE edition but also require some knowledge where to find the best gear. Flails and Swords also covers 3 different damage types. Blunt, Piercing and Slash. Brilliant to swap around.
Mage/Cleric is also fun and insane strong, but require a bit more knowledge and is not as strong in earlier levels.
Thank God this game comes to switch and I will be able to replay it
My opinion about the kits:
*Fighter*
Berserker - This is your default Fighter, there's no reason to pick generic over this. You gain a very useful ability (abilities are fun, especially considering Fighters get so few) and the only disadvantage is you can't use ranged weapons very well. If you want a guy who wears armor and smashes stuff, go with this.
Fighter - Don't. Only pick this if you want to be an archer and don't want to be an Archer (Ranger) for some reason. Or if you want to be Lawful, which you can't as a Berserker.
Wizard Slayer - Don't. Spell interruption sounds good but in reality if a Fighter manages to hit a Mage even once the fight is already almost over. Inquisitor (Paladin) is a far superior anti-mage kit.
Kensai - An absolute monster that doesn't get to wear any clothes. Definitely don't pick it if you're totally new because loot is a fun part of the game. A good choice for a second playthrough though.
Barbarian - Runs fast and has high hp, excellent offtank. Movement speed is very useful. Ability is less useful than Berserker's but very good against casters. Don't expect amazing damage, pick Berserker or Kensai for that.
*Ranger*
Archer - Pick this if you want to shoot stuff. Archery can be a little boring though. Archers are not there to do massive damage, but they are good at hitting powerful foes which other classes will miss and they are good at hitting casters and disrupting their spells. Amuse yourself by managing the different kinds of ammunition, which can actually be very useful.
Stalker - Good damage and kind of has a lot going on. A great choice if you want to focus on combat and like to stealth and backstab but still want to kick ass and survive hits afterward.
Beast Master - Don't. Your Familiar WILL die if you let him out of your bags (has permanent consequences). Since you can't wear good armor, he's not very useful to you inside your bags either.
Ranger - Only reason to choose generic is if you want to wear metal armor and therefore don't want to use stealth. Then you're just as tanky as Berserkers but deal less damage. The Druid spells you eventually get don't make up for the difference, but this remains an alright choice.
*Paladin*
Cavalier - This is your default Paladin. No reason to choose generic over this. Shines as a tank. Immune to a lot of common bad stuff and has situational bonuses as well with basically no downside. Great choice for a first playthrough, *USE DETECT EVIL* on anyone you find suspicious! Don't ignore it!
Inquisitor - Very, very good. Loses a lot of Paladin utility but gains the most useful single ability in the game, Dispel Magic at double level with a fast cast. Also has handy immunities. However, it's a one-trick pony which can be boring, plus it counters casters so hard they almost don't even exist. I do not recommend this for your first playthrough because you will lose all respect for Mages.
Undead Hunter - Just be a Cavalier. Level drain immunity is good but the wrong kind of good, like the shield which reflects Beholder attacks. Just removes content from the game, not fun.
Blackguard - Good offtank. Aura of Despair is very useful. Great choice if you want to be Evil.
Paladin - Just be a Cavalier.
*Cleric & Mage*
Kit doesn't matter much.
*Druid*
Totemic - Better choice than generic if you don't want to shapeshift.
Shapeshifter - Don't.
Avenger - Good and has a LOT going on. Not recommended for first-timers because of its complexity. Good caster and good melee (Sword Spider with appropriate spells) with good utility and high potential.
*Thief*
Assassin - Much less useful than other Thief kits due to slow thief skill growth. Damage relies on poison until high level. Not recommended for beginners; if you're new and found this playstyle tempting then I recommend Stalker (Ranger) instead.
Bounty Hunter - An okay choice. Traps can be fun but skill growth is a little slow. Not a playstyle I would recommend to a beginner.
Swashbuckler - Good choice for beginners. Basically a weaker Kensai who can wear clothes and has useful abilities. Can't backstab so plays more like a Fighter with Thief utility. Not a powerhouse but has very useful Thief abilities and can at least hold his own in combat. Can become powerful if properly equipped.
Shadowdancer - Okay if you like to stealth and backstab but somewhat confusing and again for new players I strongly recommend Stalker (Ranger) instead.
Thief - Don't. Only pick generic if you want Thief skills to be your main purpose and don't expect to fight aside from maybe coming in for a crucial backstab. If you can part with backstab, pick Swashbuckler. If you must backstab, give up the Thief utility and play a Stalker (Ranger).
*Bard*
Jester - Don't, unless you want to be a joke.
Skald - Very good, also very simple and possibly boring. All he does in combat is play his (amazing) song to buff his allies and maybe shoot an occasional spell. As a new player you might find yourself "busy enough" in combat managing your party members, making the Skald a good choice. Useful out of combat as well for buffing and identifying.
Blade - Very powerful and decent utility, but pretty complicated. Not recommended for beginners. Needs to combo spells to be effective.
Bard - Mediocre. Weak melee and decent utility.
tldr
New Players: I recommend Berserker, Stalker, Swashbuckler, or Cavalier (use detect evil).
Other decent choices for new players: Barbarian, Archer, Blackguard, Skald, Sorcerer, Dwarven Defender, Bounty Hunter, Ranger, Fighter, Paladin, Cleric, Undead Hunter.
For intermediate players: I recommend Inquisitor, Cleric, Mage, Sorcerer, or Cleric/Ranger (multiclass).
Other decent choices: Monk, Kensai, Blackguard, Archer, Bard, Totemic Druid, Stalker, Barbarian, Bounty Hunter, Swashbuckler, Assassin, or Fighter/Druid (multiclass).
For advanced players: I recommend Avenger, Blade, Cleric/Mage (multiclass, gnome), Kensai/Thief (dual class), or Berserker/Cleric (dual).
Other decent choices: Berserker/Druid (dual), Kensai/Mage (dual), Berserker/Mage (dual), Cleric/Ranger (multiclass), Skald, Inquisitor, Bounty Hunter, or Assassin.
i like using druid, cuz they have the spell creeping doom
Disagree that mage kit doesn't matter. Like you would have to be insane to pick Diviner or Illusionist.
Nice videos, man! These got me interested in tackling classic CRPGs. Also, your voice and accent reminds me of Michael Bisping, lol.
Please continue the series, by the way! A lot of the newer isometrics like Original Sin 2, POE 2, Tyranny, Pathfinder, etc would benefit from your analysis
You know, as of late I've had a hard time watching people talk about film, books and videogames. They don't usually investigate or research, so I've become more and more disillusioned. That said, your content, Chris, is a relief and a life raft. Thank you.
I played BG as a kid and never had to bother with AC and TAC0 until Throne of Bhaal. The game does an excellent job at keeping the understanding of the rules not a necessity to play.
Great job! Classic game for sure!
Great video brother. I love these long videos because it allows you to really go in-depth with the game. I actually like listening to long videos like this in sessions which I did with this video. Thanks for taking the time to make this video and I really look forward to the next two videos. You got a like and a subscribe from me 👍
Thanks for the great retro of this game! I can confirm that with the 2.6 patch (which is still in beta at the moment), the issues you had have disappeared, or at least I haven't experienced them. Pathfinding is not perfect but seems to work pretty well (almost as well as other modern games, as far as I can tell). For the manual, however, I recommend finding a copy of the original one as complement (especially for AC, THAC0 and so on), Beamdog is a bit confusing sometimes.
I played this a lot on release and am almost positive that it never crashed on me even once. I think it's probably a compatibility issue with newer Windows versions. I have no idea why people were complaining about new content though, short of perhaps that this is such a classic game that it was commercially viable to release it twice, like Homeworld was, so many people want just the old game without any newfangled flim flam and get upset when there are changes. I personally had this in a big way with Homeworld, because I very specifically did not like the auto harvest function they had added to the sequels and now also to the remastered original. If you want to take your philistine hammer to a classic in that way I shall protest! People should know when they are working on a classic and treat it with due respect. Go make your own game and do it there if you have any bright ideas, basically. I don't bring my red crayon and propeller hat to art museums and neither should Beamdog.
I'm sold on it man. I hear there is a 19.99 special for the entire series that comes on sometimes. Not going to drop 100.00 on a 20 year old game but i'll put it 20.00 when it comes back.
One of the best games in rpg history, it’s worth it no matter the cost.
i got it for free, love torrent
Great Video,love your Retrospectives !
Thought about getting back into the old Infinity Engine Games,but already knew that they were too Huge for my Patience these Days. Already finished both back in the Days so i changed my Mind and went with Icewind Dale Series cause i never finished the second one.
You sadly cant play a Group through both Games and it isnt that much deep on Decisions and Story,but still good Rpgs just a bit more Combat focused.
I dont regret it,they give me the Rpg Feeling i wanted,the Nostalgia Feel from the Infinity Games and i dont need to play them every Day to keep in Mind whats happening and where i need to go and so on.
And they still have enough Conent to play even the First for Weeks if you want. I think Icewind Dale is maybe the go to Rpg for Busy Gamers :)
Enjoyed your vid and subscribed. Looking forward to the next one. I remember THAC0 really confusing me due to the +gear bonuses lowering the score, and I had at least some idea going in. Going to check out the other vids on your channel.
Baldur's Gate (I and II) is my most favorable game. I played it when it came, in last century, and I love everything about it, music, atmosphere, fights etc. The game also influenced my writing and my mocing (making things from LEGO (something I do for livving now:)
In any case, I strongly reccomend downloading a soundtrack, and experiencing a game in a way that you read every text
Every few years I play it, or Icewind Dale, and although I know everyting, I still get surprised with something new :)
yes, I make dioramas out of LEGO bricks with which I make exhibits for which eather entrance is paid, r venue pays me - this is just a smal part of activities, most are with club of adults who like lego, and we just have fun :)
Want some of the most satisfying character development you can get in a CRPG? Play through BG1 and BG2 with the same mage character, where you begin as a lowly spell caster that can barely fire off a spell, and watch your mage grow more and more competent, until by the end of ToB your once pathetic mage will be truly god-like
Just stumbled upon your videos (and subscribed)...Great job, IMO. Thanks! I loved so many of these isometric CRPGs back in the day, but I (sadly?) don't have the patience for most of it now. I'm 42, lol.
On Baldur's Gate...I cannot imagine playing this with zero experience with AD&D 2e. I used to play the table top game, and indeed obsess over its intricacies. Also, party management is a chore...Wow...These days, I play games like Grim Dawn, Path of Exile, and Dragon Quest XI. I dislike the FPS Fallout has become.
Anyway, Keep up the good work, sir!
Great work as usual Chris, thanks