You didn't spend 3 hours rerolling stats in the character creator until you get the best possible roll, so you missed out on the true Baldurs Gate experience.
Must I? One of these maniacs thinks nobody can tell he's going to betray the party, another is speaking to a hampster, and I swear wolves have already carried Imoen off, so...
Missile weapon for everyone is essential in BG1. Dual class Imoen into a mage as one thief is enough. Add a script for every character. Find Minsc and Boo.
It's straightforward, just ridiculously counter-intuitive. I struggle to think of any other system where you want both your armour rating and your to-hit rating to be as low as possible
My advice, Jon? Run this as a livestream with a brand new character and take a little bit of mechanics input from the audience. Not spoilers from them, but, as you’ve seen some of the mechanics are a bit obscure and opaque.
The viewers have been asking for literally years at this point, but it's a slightly long winded series so he's been putting it off till he can do it justice. Source: the patroncast
@Victoria Carson Eh. I agree with learning everything, but I never play as a fighter until I've exhausted all other options for the same reason that I don't play humans if I can play as anything else. It's boring when you have all the weapons but nothing flashy. Companions often get switched out, but you have to play with your character until the end - barring one-off companion only quests.
@Victoria Carson The point of DnD is to play the game how you want to play it. Not to be some tryhard spike who just wants to "win the game." DM's hate players like you.
@@minscandboo9749 He really is a miniature giant space hamster; Hamsters have a lifespan of 2-3 years, giant space hamsters have a lifespan of several decades, as do their miniature variant.
@@Boarbatrice Actually, it's a very good port (from my experience playing through the main trilogy on an iPad). What about it would intrinsically be dreadful?
@@athath2010 The UI, combat, Inventory management, movement, screen size, lack of hotkeys. Saying that it would be even worse on the consoles they just released it on.
@@arrgghh1555 I have played through Baldur's Gate 1 on my phone, and heartily agree with Andrew Grottle that it is a very good port. The style of something like Dungeons and Dragons, where everything is turn-based and not dependent on timing and immediate action, is perfect for mobile input. I will agree that the lack of hotkeys occasionally slows things down very slightly. However, I do not see it being a deal breaker with the kind of game it is. Additionally, Baldur's Gate was made for displays with an even lower resolution to begin with, so it looks ok with less of the screen real estate. Interactions, like UI or clicking the screen to move, are not really different in size or management than those from other applications.
thaco = takes to hit armor class 0. the lower it is the easier it is to hit your target. the most confusing part for people is armor class as the lower the number the better.
Wow I'd never think I'd see this game on the channel!? This was my favourite game for a very long time. Most of my free time in 98 went into this game.
every single fan of matn: jon, play kotor. you love star wars. you love bioware games. you love old clunky rpgs. you have 0 perception and will not catch on to anything at all. jon, please. jon: hello here's baldur's gate!
littlebluecaboose I thought he had played KOTOR in his personal time, could swear he’s referenced it. BUT! I thought he’d played dragon age already, here he says he hasn’t. He’d love it!
Oh I love this game. Play and beat it and every counterpart and DLC on every difficulty. I love that Jon is playing it, but I was cringing the entire time.
This channel randomly showed up on my feed. You guys really like listening to this guy do the over the top infomercial voice the whole video? I listened 30 seconds and was annoyed. He seems funny but that inflection is fucking grating.
Jon creating a character: "Thief... sure... magic is hard..." Me: JON NOOOOO MAGIC IS SO OP IN THIS GAME AND IT'S AWESOME. Thieves aren't nearly as OP in this game as they are in later action RPGs. Namely because hiding in shadows is.... difficult. You actually need to be.... in the shadows.
Many A True Nerd resting and using them sparingly. You get more spell slots later too. You can just run them as archers/generic ranged attackers when not casting spells. Ranged weapons are amazing in this game since everyone’s running around with pretty low hp.
Mages in bg 1 are def not op because it such low level game. In bg2 mages and especially sorcerers get hugely op with higher levels. Back in the day played through bg2 with solo sorcerer.
@@ManyATrueNerd Low level magic users are pitifully weak. It works best when you've gained levels and can stock away a few more spells. It works best when you know the game better and can strategize what spells you'll need for upcoming encounters. (Honestly, that's about the only weakness in the BG series.) Starting as a thief or warrior the first time is smart.
Mages can be powerful even in the early game if they come equipped with a good spell selection. The trick is to use them for maximum impact with minimum spell usage. That is to say, use them for crowd control instead of DPS. A first level mage can end a low level encounter with a well placed sleep, followed with a couple volleys of arrows/bolts/stones/darts/whatver from the rest of the party. A third level mage can do the same with web, except more reliably, and so on. The problem is, most mages you find come equipped with lousy spell selections. Especially Xar, who seems to be designed to kill himself as soon as humanly possible.
Yes please. Draft Matt, Dan, and Claire and play theater of the mind style. Don't even need to bother with cameras like they did with the fallout board game.
Since Dan's mentioned a distinct lack of interest in D&D I was thinking Jon, Claire, Matt and Upisnotjump, but frankly it sounds a lot of fun any which way
Thac0= To Hit Armor Class 0. The lower your targets armor class (AC) the harder it is to hit them. The higher the easier.. if he is wearing leather his ac would be 8. So subtract 8 from the thac0. Roll that # to hit.
The absolute best part of this game was that you could import characters from this game into the 2nd game. I played this game with EVERY FREAKING CHARACTER so that I could continue those characters in BGII. I LOVED this game. I still have the original disks in a folder with all of the original material and strategy guide.
@@zidahya I thought about it, even did it on one save. That guy is a stone cold killer. Way easier to just cheat. I wonder if the "gold box" games are available to play. Those are the real origin of computer RPGs. :)
@@buddhabunny4142 Not half as bad as if you provoke Demogorgon after freeing him in the Helm's Deep DLC. The dialogue option may as well be "I've heard the afterlife is nice this time of year"
I am loving the blind run of one of my favorite games. I was not surprised a wolf killed you. Fun fact. The rats in the basement have more effective hitpoints than the endgame boss on legend of baal difficulty due to a quirk of their damage mitigation.
The "first quest is about rats" meme might be popularized by this (doubt it though) but its definitely not the first. Amberstar (1992) had sewers and a rat king in the home city as the first quest. Might and Magic 4 (also 92) had an extermination quest as the first too. Slimes and Bugs in that case, but I would let that count. And I am sure that meme had even earlier origins. Rats and bugs fit in well with the "peaceful hometown" theme that would NOT be handled by guards (thiefs and robber), a hunter (wildlife) or other specialists that have more important stuff to do. Its a quest that makes sense to give to an adventurer.
I have a suspicion that exploring a basement with rats early on was a D&D with human DM trope to help new PCs gain XP. So part of the pre-computer fantasy RPG culture.
I've always thought that I would like to create a game/run a campaign where the first quest is to kill the rats. Then you fall through the floor of the cellar, have the whole adventure and finally make it back to town having killed the big bad, only to have the townspeople berate you for having left some rats alive.
Pillars of Eternity 1+2 have similar gameplay while looking gorgeous. Highly recommended. When it comes to the classic Infinity games, Icewind Dale is worth a look as well.
“Never played Dragon Age but the final boss should look like that” Jon the final boss of Dragon Age was a dragon (Yes I know it was an Archdemon, still a dragon)
The comment that mentioned meredith is the one that made me realize how little those games have impacted me. Sure they were fun when I was playing them, but nothing memorable. Although I think meredith was that anti-mage "paladin" right? Old lady with white hair? The origins one I remember most about buit mostly because I have restarted that game about as many times as I've played star wars the old republic. If there is a game I usually return to it's either of those two.
lakkakka Origins was the most memorable to me, but maybe I just played it the most. Inquisition had some EPIC moments. Mother Giselle singing into finding Skyhold and naming the Inquisitor was probably my favorite sequence in the entire game canon. But 2 was kinda devoid of moments that spoke to me. I still enjoyed it but it wasn’t as memorable
To be honest, I think Bioware took the things they learned from these early licensed titles and greatly improved on them in later games such as Dragon Age and Mass Effect. Baldur's Gate along with Fallout and Daggerfall were all my first PC gaming experiences so all have a special in my heart (even though I've kind of soured on the Fantasy genre due to it being mostly interchangeable pseudo-medieval Tolkienesque nonsense. Maybe I'll give Jade Empire a try though).
You know it's going to be an entertaining LP of a 2nd ed. D&D game when the person says "I don't know what THAC0 is". Oh, Jon, you sweet, poor summer child...
One one hand, yeah he is making a lot of the basic mistakes, however on the other hand this is the first time he plays the game while I have it pretty much memorized, so I try not to get too worked up about it. However I would like to know what happened that made Khalid fight with his bare hands in the last encounter.
They are fine. Apart from the resolution for text and stuff. He just massively overthinks the fights. At least against simple enemies. You set the basic behaviour of companions and a formation and then rightclick let them sort it out. Not spend 30 turnbased minutes on every rat. So you need much less micromanagement and UI handling. The UI is planned with that in mind. That's the point of pausable real time combat. Unless you get the idea and UI horribly wrong like POE (Spells in submenus, no Hotbar?) which needed a lot of micromanagement despite this combat. That's a bad combination, worst of both worlds, in a rather recent game. They "fixed" that by adding a turn based option not streamlining the UI.... Dragon Age did it well, Kingmaker does, Legends of the sword coast did it very well... BG,2, ID, PST, Arcanum .... all did it well.
It's fun as hell watching MATN discover this old gem, warts and all. I hope he plays some of the other Infinity Engine games. They don't lend themselves well to videos, but his narration makes it entertaining.
I only played this game for about a million hours! So many happy memories. I miss you Imoen, I hadn't realise how much til I heard your voice for the first time in like 15 years!
This game brings back memories for me. I went from enjoying Diablo 1, to falling in love with this game. Baldur's Gate is one of the greatest dungeon crawling RPG's of all-time.
I wonder if this company ever did anything with Star Wars? Maybe a mass requested game for years now that Jon has gone out out his way to not play? Maybe even driven me a little crazy by playing the MMO instead of the classic RPG...
Jon.... you can drag the character portraits around on the right hand side and it'll determine the order of your party "formation". The formation can be changed to things like "dual line" or "triangle" etc. I generally used to put the fighter at the front (top of the list) and then use a triangle formation. Be careful though, the top person in the list is the one who does the talking if you have multiple people selected. You can still select your own character and have them talk to whomever. Also, certain people get better prices from the shopkeeps, so it's useful to talk to the shopkeeps with specific people in your party....
To add to your ruminations in the beginning of the video. Yes we might very well not have seen a great many rpg's without Baldurs Gate. Shortly before it came out rpg's were written off as a dead genre. I distinctly remember the cover title of a games magazine back then calling it the savior of rpg's.
Yes, but for a while it really looked as if it could happen. Now even at the time it was probably hyperbole but RTS were all the rage on pc and the consoles weren't really a place for rpg's either.
Oh yea these rpg's are just a flucke. Life services that's what the customer wants! If we just keep putting more microt... cough.. timesavers in.. and mini-dlc's!
Not quite that bad. There was the Might & Magic and Wizardry series, and Elder Scroll: Arena came out a few years earlier. Baldur's Gate was a big step above all in the quality of the graphics and much of the gameplay though, and it certainly saved D&D on the PC since the goldbox games were some time earlier.
The quest you're thinking of at the end is 'In My Time Of Need', and it's intentionally left ambiguous whether Sadia or the Alki'r are actually telling the truth.
If your target is wearing steel plate armor with shield he's at -2 ac. Which you add to your thac0. If your thac0 is 18 and he is wearing leather (ac8) subtract 8 from thac0 turning your thac0 to 10 to hit for that enemy. AC-2 means you add 2 to the thac0 meaning you need a 20 to hit with a 20 sided dice.
Love that you are playing this and your perception is keen as always. PS Go look at the ground east of the Friendly Arm in entrance....use shift....there's a treasure there.....
So if you played this one are you going to play Knights of the Old Republic? I mean, are you going to play Planescape: Torment? Wait, no, I mean Arcanum, wait...
Also.... there's a hidden cache of jems in one of the trees on that first(ish) screen. It's literally hidden, I don't think it shows up in the "reveal intractable things" mode. IIRC it was on the left side of the road... while walking up the right side of the map.
Oh man this would make such a good series, please play more of this. I played this game as a kid in the late 90s on my amd k6 system so this is extremely nostalgic for me
Make sure you have THAC0 lowest as possible - it stands for To Hit Armor Class 0. If you notice the armor class goes down the more armor you have that's because once you're being attacked there's a "behind the scene" dice roll for each attack. the dice is D20 and you subtract the armor level from the D20 and that's the number you need to pass in order to have a successful attack. For example if you're thac0 is 12 and you roll 15 than the best armor you can hit is -3 [12-15=-3]. Let's say you fight an enemy which has armor class of 5 than you need to roll 7 or higher to hit him. [12-5=7] - basically. Aim for lower AC as possible and lower THAC0 as possible. Notice when you change weapones if the numbers become red [worse than what you have] or green [better than what you have], check the char sheet for each party member to check what weapons they're best with [Jaheira can use slings and Khalid is somewhat OKAY with a bow] - overall Ranged weapons are overpowered in this game :)
@@alexmbrennan It very much isn't. You get lots of favorable dialogue options in this game that are only available if you pass invisible charisma checks. It just doesn't point out to you when it's happening like Fallout and games like it do. Not to mention the massive percentage-based discount you get on some of the higher-tier unique items. (provided you haven't gone out of your way to be counter-productively evil for no reason and piss off every NPC in the game)
6:49 Ive both seen. Lizardfolk rouge dude was a 8ft tall lizard and was the stealthes person alive, very low dex though, used a sneak attack with a GreatAxe once it was great.
So many comments. You're making me feel old, Jon. I tried to buy this game the day it came out but couldn't because the shop had sold out. I managed to get it soon afterwards and it came on five CDs (for you youngsters, they are those shiny discs you sometimes see as coasters or birdscarers and they held 650MB data each). Now you're here talking about it as the ancient past. Watching you play is a mixture of nostalgia since I remember my first play though and teeth-clenching annoyance at all the things you are missing. It's morally necessary so reveal every bit of the map you can reach as there are so many little touches, like the man threatening suicide, scattered everywhere. By the way, my favourite response is telling him to jump (spoiler: he doesn't). Ranged attacks and kiting can take you though a lot of the game, as you already are discovering. The low resolution graphics you comment about (even in the enhanced edition) were touted as one one the selling points of the game, as every map has hand-drawn backgrounds. Of course, viewing them on a 14" screen in 640x480 does allow details to be glossed over. Repeat after me: JaheirA, JaheirA. While we are at it, don't forget she can cast spells as well. I would love to see you complete a blind playthrough of Baldur's Gate 1 & 2. So many other games though so you are forgiven if it just gets a live play.
theres a secret magic ring at the front of the inn in a small nook of a tree i think, also this game doesnt pause when you check ur inventory whereas baldurs gate 2 does.. also baldurs gate 2 you can press a button (tab or something??) to highlight containers & loot... i dont think you can in bg1 or at least you couldnt when it first came out when i used to play it.
Please play more! I LOVE your commentary! This was my first real computer game. I even traded in my 6 CDs for a single DVD of the game. My first DVD! I have such love for it.
Also it’s best to have a party of 2-4 rather than a full 6 man party since xp is shared, I don’t mean like, kill something, get 30xp so they all get 30xp, no that 30xp would be split amongst your 6 members granting 5xp each, less members, faster levels, any companions you don’t currently have in your party and you level up to say 3, they will be the same level as you (or close to, maybe 2 on the cusp of 3) when you next recruit them
THACO is To Hit Armor Class Zero. The armor goes from 10 worst to -10 best. If your THACO is 12, that means you need to roll a twenty sided die and get 12 or higher to hit your target, if they have an armor class of 0.
Hey Jon! You should put your fighters at the top of your list followed by clerics or druids followed by thieves with your magic users at the bottom. Be aware that there are different formations that your characters can use as well. Wedge is great as is the circle with your squishy mages and thieves in the middle.
10:30 Jon: _"I am not allowed to communicate with the Cow. Boooo!"_
Alternate Reality Jon: _"I _*_am_*_ allowed to communicate with the cow! Moooo!"_
You didn't spend 3 hours rerolling stats in the character creator until you get the best possible roll, so you missed out on the true Baldurs Gate experience.
The underlying reason for most world events seems to be "Diddily, diddily, dee."
Most people seem to only pay attention to the diddilies when what they should really look out for is the dees.
Breaking News: Comedian Jack Dee Did Diddle his Neighbour Dudly.D.Didle in a deadly dispute over dead man's deeds. Dee Diddled Dudly's Deeds.
Hey diddly doodly
@@MysticTroll I think Flanders would say Hi diddly ho, but dont mix your memes!
"Double-check I know the names: Khalid, Jaheiree. Look for people called: Jalid, Taheiree"
Jon's stat: Long-term memory +10, Short-term memory -10
I almost choked at that point
That was a joke I think
Tee-hee-ree
Jalid and Taheiree, friends of Goree-on.
You must gather your party before venturing forth.
Must I?
One of these maniacs thinks nobody can tell he's going to betray the party, another is speaking to a hampster, and I swear wolves have already carried Imoen off, so...
@@mysticmallachi777 You must gather your You must gather your You You
YYYYYYou must gathYou must gather your party before venturing forth.
@@Condorito380 best comment on all of youtube
YOU MUST CONSTRUCT ADDITIONAL PYLONS!
now you have no excuse not to play star wars knights of the old republic
oh boy
as someone who's played through these games many times
good luck jon
LMAO when he didn't reroll, even once?! Nothing like starting with a nice 87
That is what we all say to our-self on a new run of Balder's Gate. "Good luck me....(oh god not again)"
@@niccolemanz oh god, its only 78, this physically hurts
I giggled when he bewailed 8hp, thats amazing for a lv1 gnome.
Yeaaaaaah 78 on a first blind run and non-multi classed thief
"I was just spectacularly lucky, and should not have been running around randomly." The new motto for MATN.
Hmmm something about that profile picture seems familiar
@@jadesabre6893 It's from the Starlight Brigade music video.
Keith look at the person you just replied to and then think about what you said.
@@namavoid3266 Bah, it wasn't their icon when I commented, I swear.
Keith I changed it to this like a week ago but it’s UA-cam so idk
"I don't know what THACO is"
Don't worry Jon, no one else does either.
It stands for "To Hit Armor Class 0" for anyone curious.
Missile weapon for everyone is essential in BG1. Dual class Imoen into a mage as one thief is enough. Add a script for every character. Find Minsc and Boo.
That's just a stupid meme, THAC0 is easy to understand for anyone who didn't drop out of high school.
It's straightforward, just ridiculously counter-intuitive. I struggle to think of any other system where you want both your armour rating and your to-hit rating to be as low as possible
To hit against armour class zero - the Best of all the AC's - roll required on a single standard 1x d20 hit dice... Sorry I'll get my hat.
This just makes me want to see a MATN DnD campaign.
A 'kill everything murder hobo' one shot would be hilarious
GO FOR THE EYES JON, GO FOR THE EYES!
Squeak
Squeaks at Boo.
Your time to shine, eh?
Minsc And Boo KICKING BUTT FOR GOODNESS!
Minsc and Boo! *_BUTT KICKING TIME_*
"Finally I will be the one laying traps" *play clip of john dropping like 50 mines in fallout*
My advice, Jon? Run this as a livestream with a brand new character and take a little bit of mechanics input from the audience. Not spoilers from them, but, as you’ve seen some of the mechanics are a bit obscure and opaque.
"I've never played Dragon Age." JON! My dude, this needs to be fixed immediately! Preferably on video...
I mean but still that red queen looking lady should be a boss somewhere.
The viewers have been asking for literally years at this point, but it's a slightly long winded series so he's been putting it off till he can do it justice. Source: the patroncast
I never got far through dragon age so i'd love to see a whole series
@Victoria Carson Eh. I agree with learning everything, but I never play as a fighter until I've exhausted all other options for the same reason that I don't play humans if I can play as anything else. It's boring when you have all the weapons but nothing flashy. Companions often get switched out, but you have to play with your character until the end - barring one-off companion only quests.
@Victoria Carson The point of DnD is to play the game how you want to play it. Not to be some tryhard spike who just wants to "win the game." DM's hate players like you.
"One of them has a hamster." That was the Ranger wasn't it?
Boo the hamster... Minsc lol.
A miniature giant space hamster
that was minsc and boo and you should be ashamed for not knowing that vital piece of D&D lore
@@minscandboo9749 He really is a miniature giant space hamster; Hamsters have a lifespan of 2-3 years, giant space hamsters have a lifespan of several decades, as do their miniature variant.
Yes, as far as I know
And Tali qoutes him in Mass Effect 2 when she sends out her drone
Friendly reminder that the Enhanced Edition versions of the Baldur's Gate series is now available on certain mobile devices, including iPads.
That sounds absolutely dreadful to play
@@Boarbatrice Actually, it's a very good port (from my experience playing through the main trilogy on an iPad). What about it would intrinsically be dreadful?
@@athath2010 The UI, combat, Inventory management, movement, screen size, lack of hotkeys. Saying that it would be even worse on the consoles they just released it on.
It's also just released on xbox one and PS4! As an added bonus it also contains Buldars Gate 1 & 2!
@@arrgghh1555 I have played through Baldur's Gate 1 on my phone, and heartily agree with Andrew Grottle that it is a very good port. The style of something like Dungeons and Dragons, where everything is turn-based and not dependent on timing and immediate action, is perfect for mobile input. I will agree that the lack of hotkeys occasionally slows things down very slightly. However, I do not see it being a deal breaker with the kind of game it is. Additionally, Baldur's Gate was made for displays with an even lower resolution to begin with, so it looks ok with less of the screen real estate. Interactions, like UI or clicking the screen to move, are not really different in size or management than those from other applications.
Ratty
Gnome, Chaotic Good.
Is a Rogue.
Nah she's fine.
Not even a joke there's nothing wrong with her as a character.
Unfortunately in his rush to not explore the inn Jon missed the best and most potent magical pants of all time. 😉
It is actually pretty OP if you manage to get all the parts
4 years later we got Baldur's Gate 3 and it won game of the year, heck it even beat a Zelda game. This just shows how evergreen this system is
thaco = takes to hit armor class 0. the lower it is the easier it is to hit your target. the most confusing part for people is armor class as the lower the number the better.
Wow I'd never think I'd see this game on the channel!? This was my favourite game for a very long time. Most of my free time in 98 went into this game.
Me and you both buddy.
@Trebonius Flonius ditto!
@Trebonius Flonius Well, Deus Ex came out in 99 and that took over for me. I still have both of those games on nearly every compute I own though.
Yes! This and BG II: Shadows of Amn are what got me into gaming AND D&D as a kid. Just fantastic fantastic games. :)
Squints and sees some evil facial hair, continues to refer to the necromancer as 'she'
DaWombatGaming I’ve met many an evil woman with facial hair. Usually the more they have, the more unpleasant they are.
Jon: (switches Jaheria's weapon): Hmmm, THAC0 of 22 seems better than 20.
Jon: " I dont know what THACO is, but I think I don't want my enemies to have much of it."
😬😬😬
to hit armor class 0
You want them to have lots of THACO
@@jonkerr7959 very good 🙄
@@jonathanboram7858 I'm beginning to think neither of you read my comment correctly.
Ben Scott
🏌️♀️🎴🐯
every single fan of matn: jon, play kotor. you love star wars. you love bioware games. you love old clunky rpgs. you have 0 perception and will not catch on to anything at all. jon, please.
jon: hello here's baldur's gate!
littlebluecaboose I thought he had played KOTOR in his personal time, could swear he’s referenced it. BUT! I thought he’d played dragon age already, here he says he hasn’t. He’d love it!
I absolutely adored this game when it first came out. I am going to have my head in my hands watching this, aren't I?
MonkeyThief86 Oh man. Not one reroll.... otherwise not terrible!
Oh I love this game. Play and beat it and every counterpart and DLC on every difficulty. I love that Jon is playing it, but I was cringing the entire time.
Yes. Yes you will.
One time my friend ragequit this game after a wolf killed his entire party
Were we friends?
Literally same thing happened to my brother!
same thing happened to me.....actually never picked up BG1 ever again after this, Baldurs Gate 2 however :)
Children die to a wolf, real men hunt bears after leaving Candlekeep
@@escarche9917 can't argue against you, even if I really want to XD
I think I was 12 or so at that time :)
You've never played Dragon Age? Well, Jon. You know what must be done.
It would be more interesting if he played divinity.
He cruelly teased Dragon Age before just to hurt us. It's only fair.
This channel randomly showed up on my feed. You guys really like listening to this guy do the over the top infomercial voice the whole video? I listened 30 seconds and was annoyed. He seems funny but that inflection is fucking grating.
Jon creating a character: "Thief... sure... magic is hard..." Me: JON NOOOOO MAGIC IS SO OP IN THIS GAME AND IT'S AWESOME. Thieves aren't nearly as OP in this game as they are in later action RPGs. Namely because hiding in shadows is.... difficult. You actually need to be.... in the shadows.
How do you get around the magic 'ammo' thing - it felt like my mages ran dry almost immediately...
Many A True Nerd resting and using them sparingly. You get more spell slots later too. You can just run them as archers/generic ranged attackers when not casting spells. Ranged weapons are amazing in this game since everyone’s running around with pretty low hp.
Mages in bg 1 are def not op because it such low level game. In bg2 mages and especially sorcerers get hugely op with higher levels. Back in the day played through bg2 with solo sorcerer.
@@ManyATrueNerd Low level magic users are pitifully weak. It works best when you've gained levels and can stock away a few more spells. It works best when you know the game better and can strategize what spells you'll need for upcoming encounters. (Honestly, that's about the only weakness in the BG series.) Starting as a thief or warrior the first time is smart.
Mages can be powerful even in the early game if they come equipped with a good spell selection. The trick is to use them for maximum impact with minimum spell usage. That is to say, use them for crowd control instead of DPS. A first level mage can end a low level encounter with a well placed sleep, followed with a couple volleys of arrows/bolts/stones/darts/whatver from the rest of the party. A third level mage can do the same with web, except more reliably, and so on. The problem is, most mages you find come equipped with lousy spell selections. Especially Xar, who seems to be designed to kill himself as soon as humanly possible.
This has kinda got me wanting to see Jon play some actual D&D
A chaotic good bounty hunter Gnome thief would be welcome in many a D&D troupe to be sure.
Would be great to see him and Claire join a troupe
Yes please. Draft Matt, Dan, and Claire and play theater of the mind style. Don't even need to bother with cameras like they did with the fallout board game.
Since Dan's mentioned a distinct lack of interest in D&D I was thinking Jon, Claire, Matt and Upisnotjump, but frankly it sounds a lot of fun any which way
Thac0= To Hit Armor Class 0. The lower your targets armor class (AC) the harder it is to hit them. The higher the easier.. if he is wearing leather his ac would be 8. So subtract 8 from the thac0. Roll that # to hit.
The absolute best part of this game was that you could import characters from this game into the 2nd game. I played this game with EVERY FREAKING CHARACTER so that I could continue those characters in BGII. I LOVED this game. I still have the original disks in a folder with all of the original material and strategy guide.
Never clicked so hard in my life. This is my childhood.
Weirdly enough, after more than 20 years I had decided to replay this game only few months ago!
And the second one is ever better. This is the first game that I "hacked" so that I could get Drizzt Do'Urden's swords.
@@buddhabunny4142 You could have instead "hack" Drizzt do pick up the swords from his cold body...
@@zidahya I thought about it, even did it on one save. That guy is a stone cold killer. Way easier to just cheat.
I wonder if the "gold box" games are available to play. Those are the real origin of computer RPGs. :)
@@buddhabunny4142 Not half as bad as if you provoke Demogorgon after freeing him in the Helm's Deep DLC. The dialogue option may as well be "I've heard the afterlife is nice this time of year"
I am loving the blind run of one of my favorite games. I was not surprised a wolf killed you.
Fun fact. The rats in the basement have more effective hitpoints than the endgame boss on legend of baal difficulty due to a quirk of their damage mitigation.
"I'll be just tossing you at the enemy, so I can get away." Chaotic? Yes. Good? Ummm....
Jon has his own special alignment, Chaotic thinks-he-is-Good.
The "first quest is about rats" meme might be popularized by this (doubt it though) but its definitely not the first. Amberstar (1992) had sewers and a rat king in the home city as the first quest. Might and Magic 4 (also 92) had an extermination quest as the first too. Slimes and Bugs in that case, but I would let that count.
And I am sure that meme had even earlier origins. Rats and bugs fit in well with the "peaceful hometown" theme that would NOT be handled by guards (thiefs and robber), a hunter (wildlife) or other specialists that have more important stuff to do. Its a quest that makes sense to give to an adventurer.
I have a suspicion that exploring a basement with rats early on was a D&D with human DM trope to help new PCs gain XP.
So part of the pre-computer fantasy RPG culture.
I've always thought that I would like to create a game/run a campaign where the first quest is to kill the rats. Then you fall through the floor of the cellar, have the whole adventure and finally make it back to town having killed the big bad, only to have the townspeople berate you for having left some rats alive.
I saw Baldur’s Gate and assumed D&D
I was correct
Now I need Jon to play D&D with Matt and Dan
And Claire
And Rebecca
Yes
And Tabby
David Farrey
She can be DM
Can you imagine Jon dming.... Convaluted stories and very precise checks everywhere
All monsters would have poor perception though
Jamie Vs The Internet
That’s why you leave the dm job to Tabby
I steadfastly refuse to believe that anyone calling themselves ‘many a true nerd’ doesn’t know what THAC0 is.
How times have turned.
I'd love to see you do a full playthrough of this and KoToR. Though you might need to do a little reading up on D&D mechanics for both of them.
11:02 "Okay, no shop yet." He says at the first shop.
Pillars of Eternity 1+2 have similar gameplay while looking gorgeous. Highly recommended. When it comes to the classic Infinity games, Icewind Dale is worth a look as well.
as much as this game is aged and hard to play, i would still absolutely love to see jon play more
I'm the crushing despair felt by everyone watching this that knows how "useful" Charisma is in this game... ;)
Ah THACO the only dnd rule I can never understand even after told what it is istill forget it
W00t! It simultaneously hurts and excites me to watch Jon play this.
“Never played Dragon Age but the final boss should look like that” Jon the final boss of Dragon Age was a dragon (Yes I know it was an Archdemon, still a dragon)
I mean, to be fair, the portrait isn't *that* different from Meredith in DA:II after she took all that lirium.
Looks kind of like the depiction of Flemeth on the game loader too.
The comment that mentioned meredith is the one that made me realize how little those games have impacted me. Sure they were fun when I was playing them, but nothing memorable. Although I think meredith was that anti-mage "paladin" right? Old lady with white hair?
The origins one I remember most about buit mostly because I have restarted that game about as many times as I've played star wars the old republic. If there is a game I usually return to it's either of those two.
lakkakka Origins was the most memorable to me, but maybe I just played it the most. Inquisition had some EPIC moments. Mother Giselle singing into finding Skyhold and naming the Inquisitor was probably my favorite sequence in the entire game canon.
But 2 was kinda devoid of moments that spoke to me. I still enjoyed it but it wasn’t as memorable
so, speaking of Dragon Age, I'd love to see a MATN series of Origins
M Lipton I can’t believe he hadn’t played it before, it seems like EXACTLY his kind of RPG
To be honest, I think Bioware took the things they learned from these early licensed titles and greatly improved on them in later games such as Dragon Age and Mass Effect. Baldur's Gate along with Fallout and Daggerfall were all my first PC gaming experiences so all have a special in my heart (even though I've kind of soured on the Fantasy genre due to it being mostly interchangeable pseudo-medieval Tolkienesque nonsense. Maybe I'll give Jade Empire a try though).
"I don't know what THACO is." To quote my favorite video essay person, Noah Caldwell Gervais, "THACO is Wacko." ;)
He is good and the length of his videos makes Jon look like a slacker.
THAC0 not THACO dumbass
Anyone else's eye twitch a little bit when Jon equipped the belt without identifying it?
"Proper fighter. You are my new best friend Khalid" hahaha, we'll see how long that assesment stands :D
Fights the urge to crap himself at the sight of his own shadow with an 80% success rate.
You know it's going to be an entertaining LP of a 2nd ed. D&D game when the person says "I don't know what THAC0 is". Oh, Jon, you sweet, poor summer child...
6:37 Female voice 3 is the voice of every character I've played, male or female.
watching him play is tearing me apart, but in all fairness this game's ui and controls haven't aged the best
One one hand, yeah he is making a lot of the basic mistakes, however on the other hand this is the first time he plays the game while I have it pretty much memorized, so I try not to get too worked up about it. However I would like to know what happened that made Khalid fight with his bare hands in the last encounter.
@@artur6912 i didnt notice but my guess is his sword broke, what with the bad iron going round
They are fine. Apart from the resolution for text and stuff. He just massively overthinks the fights. At least against simple enemies. You set the basic behaviour of companions and a formation and then rightclick let them sort it out.
Not spend 30 turnbased minutes on every rat. So you need much less micromanagement and UI handling. The UI is planned with that in mind. That's the point of pausable real time combat.
Unless you get the idea and UI horribly wrong like POE (Spells in submenus, no Hotbar?) which needed a lot of micromanagement despite this combat. That's a bad combination, worst of both worlds, in a rather recent game. They "fixed" that by adding a turn based option not streamlining the UI.... Dragon Age did it well, Kingmaker does, Legends of the sword coast did it very well... BG,2, ID, PST, Arcanum .... all did it well.
@@ddddoublerainbow Oh yeah, I forgot that was a thing in the first one
It's fun as hell watching MATN discover this old gem, warts and all. I hope he plays some of the other Infinity Engine games. They don't lend themselves well to videos, but his narration makes it entertaining.
I only played this game for about a million hours! So many happy memories.
I miss you Imoen, I hadn't realise how much til I heard your voice for the first time in like 15 years!
Ahhh, what a wonderful nostalgia hit!
This game brings back memories for me. I went from enjoying Diablo 1, to falling in love with this game. Baldur's Gate is one of the greatest dungeon crawling RPG's of all-time.
I wonder if this company ever did anything with Star Wars? Maybe a mass requested game for years now that Jon has gone out out his way to not play? Maybe even driven me a little crazy by playing the MMO instead of the classic RPG...
Nice to see that Obsidian is still using a lot of the mechanics from Baldur's gate on their RPGs today, like PoE and Tyranny.
Jon.... you can drag the character portraits around on the right hand side and it'll determine the order of your party "formation". The formation can be changed to things like "dual line" or "triangle" etc. I generally used to put the fighter at the front (top of the list) and then use a triangle formation. Be careful though, the top person in the list is the one who does the talking if you have multiple people selected. You can still select your own character and have them talk to whomever. Also, certain people get better prices from the shopkeeps, so it's useful to talk to the shopkeeps with specific people in your party....
Jon playing Baldurs gate? Yes Please!
To add to your ruminations in the beginning of the video. Yes we might very well not have seen a great many rpg's without Baldurs Gate. Shortly before it came out rpg's were written off as a dead genre. I distinctly remember the cover title of a games magazine back then calling it the savior of rpg's.
That's pretty cool. Today it is hard to imagine that people ever thought that actually roleplaying as a character would go out of style.
Yes, but for a while it really looked as if it could happen. Now even at the time it was probably hyperbole but RTS were all the rage on pc and the consoles weren't really a place for rpg's either.
to be fair, some idiots are still saying RPGs won't work out. game developers (well, publishers really) are known for being hideously out of touch
Oh yea these rpg's are just a flucke. Life services that's what the customer wants! If we just keep putting more microt... cough.. timesavers in.. and mini-dlc's!
Not quite that bad. There was the Might & Magic and Wizardry series, and Elder Scroll: Arena came out a few years earlier. Baldur's Gate was a big step above all in the quality of the graphics and much of the gameplay though, and it certainly saved D&D on the PC since the goldbox games were some time earlier.
The quest you're thinking of at the end is 'In My Time Of Need', and it's intentionally left ambiguous whether Sadia or the Alki'r are actually telling the truth.
You passed over swashbuckler?!?! The closest thing to Pirate?!
Yoshimo is a swashbuckler and he broke my heart.
Day 1 of asking Jon to play Dragon Age Origins.
hell yeah
You’re on day 1? Welcome to the fight my friend, by god it’s been a long one...
If your target is wearing steel plate armor with shield he's at -2 ac. Which you add to your thac0. If your thac0 is 18 and he is wearing leather (ac8) subtract 8 from thac0 turning your thac0 to 10 to hit for that enemy. AC-2 means you add 2 to the thac0 meaning you need a 20 to hit with a 20 sided dice.
I've just realised this is on the switch.. goodbye life
Love that you are playing this and your perception is keen as always. PS Go look at the ground east of the Friendly Arm in entrance....use shift....there's a treasure there.....
So if you played this one are you going to play Knights of the Old Republic? I mean, are you going to play Planescape: Torment? Wait, no, I mean Arcanum, wait...
Also you can click the little red diamond on your hot bar to see items on the ground in a long row above the hot bar
*checks contacts’ names to ensure no mistakes when remember their names, immediately makes mistakes*
Also.... there's a hidden cache of jems in one of the trees on that first(ish) screen. It's literally hidden, I don't think it shows up in the "reveal intractable things" mode. IIRC it was on the left side of the road... while walking up the right side of the map.
Oh yeah Jon, ride that trend! DUNGEONS AND DRAGOOOONNSSS *Travis voice*
Me, a parrot: *mimics Travis doing this after reading so much as a comment*
He should put this out on Thursday afternoons and end with “Is it Thursday yet?” So we can get in D&D moods before CritRole
@@JB-xl2jc thats an amazing idea, yesss
Nice video, watched it completly 10/10
Oh man this would make such a good series, please play more of this. I played this game as a kid in the late 90s on my amd k6 system so this is extremely nostalgic for me
You are going to miss out on half the buildings if you think the only entrances are highlighted in purple.
Also you can go up stairs in many places...
Make sure you have THAC0 lowest as possible - it stands for To Hit Armor Class 0. If you notice the armor class goes down the more armor you have that's because once you're being attacked there's a "behind the scene" dice roll for each attack. the dice is D20 and you subtract the armor level from the D20 and that's the number you need to pass in order to have a successful attack. For example if you're thac0 is 12 and you roll 15 than the best armor you can hit is -3 [12-15=-3]. Let's say you fight an enemy which has armor class of 5 than you need to roll 7 or higher to hit him. [12-5=7] - basically. Aim for lower AC as possible and lower THAC0 as possible. Notice when you change weapones if the numbers become red [worse than what you have] or green [better than what you have], check the char sheet for each party member to check what weapons they're best with [Jaheira can use slings and Khalid is somewhat OKAY with a bow] - overall Ranged weapons are overpowered in this game :)
"This probably the worst character."
*Makes an above-average character set up.*
Yes, all the best players max out charisma because that totally isn't a useless dump stat...
@@alexmbrennan It very much isn't. You get lots of favorable dialogue options in this game that are only available if you pass invisible charisma checks. It just doesn't point out to you when it's happening like Fallout and games like it do. Not to mention the massive percentage-based discount you get on some of the higher-tier unique items. (provided you haven't gone out of your way to be counter-productively evil for no reason and piss off every NPC in the game)
Full play through please!
6:49 Ive both seen. Lizardfolk rouge dude was a 8ft tall lizard and was the stealthes person alive, very low dex though, used a sneak attack with a GreatAxe once it was great.
You forgot to spend 45 minutes brute-force clicking "Re-Roll" when you made your character.
Aw, was hoping you'd do a full playthrough. :(
Do a full playthrough please!
Gods I loved the tutorial. I'll say this for the first time ever, and I mean ever; series please!
So many comments.
You're making me feel old, Jon. I tried to buy this game the day it came out but couldn't because the shop had sold out. I managed to get it soon afterwards and it came on five CDs (for you youngsters, they are those shiny discs you sometimes see as coasters or birdscarers and they held 650MB data each). Now you're here talking about it as the ancient past.
Watching you play is a mixture of nostalgia since I remember my first play though and teeth-clenching annoyance at all the things you are missing. It's morally necessary so reveal every bit of the map you can reach as there are so many little touches, like the man threatening suicide, scattered everywhere. By the way, my favourite response is telling him to jump (spoiler: he doesn't).
Ranged attacks and kiting can take you though a lot of the game, as you already are discovering.
The low resolution graphics you comment about (even in the enhanced edition) were touted as one one the selling points of the game, as every map has hand-drawn backgrounds. Of course, viewing them on a 14" screen in 640x480 does allow details to be glossed over.
Repeat after me: JaheirA, JaheirA. While we are at it, don't forget she can cast spells as well.
I would love to see you complete a blind playthrough of Baldur's Gate 1 & 2. So many other games though so you are forgiven if it just gets a live play.
When you really think about it, they haven’t gotten that much better overall since then, have they?
Nope
Bioware is trash.
@@JoshuaKevinPerry hardly. Anthem excluded.
theres a secret magic ring at the front of the inn in a small nook of a tree i think, also this game doesnt pause when you check ur inventory whereas baldurs gate 2 does.. also baldurs gate 2 you can press a button (tab or something??) to highlight containers & loot... i dont think you can in bg1 or at least you couldnt when it first came out when i used to play it.
By the way, Baldur's Gate III comes out next year.
made by one of the best developers in the world right now too!
Please play more! I LOVE your commentary! This was my first real computer game. I even traded in my 6 CDs for a single DVD of the game. My first DVD! I have such love for it.
I have played this game before and watched others play it, but I will sit through the whole thing again with Many a True Nerd.
The joy of seeing THACO again,To Hit Armour Class Zero, there was never a better idea.
Also it’s best to have a party of 2-4 rather than a full 6 man party since xp is shared, I don’t mean like, kill something, get 30xp so they all get 30xp, no that 30xp would be split amongst your 6 members granting 5xp each, less members, faster levels, any companions you don’t currently have in your party and you level up to say 3, they will be the same level as you (or close to, maybe 2 on the cusp of 3) when you next recruit them
finally seeing you play one of these. my day is infinitely better.
THACO is To Hit Armor Class Zero. The armor goes from 10 worst to -10 best. If your THACO is 12, that means you need to roll a twenty sided die and get 12 or higher to hit your target, if they have an armor class of 0.
FYI this was my 1st Dungeons & Dragons video game and just watching you do this and hearing it all brings back my nostalgia for this game.
Hey Jon! You should put your fighters at the top of your list followed by clerics or druids followed by thieves with your magic users at the bottom. Be aware that there are different formations that your characters can use as well. Wedge is great as is the circle with your squishy mages and thieves in the middle.
Do a series please
Yes, please give this one a go on a stream! I just love watching Jon come to grips with this game's systems.
In all the time I've watched John...I've never seen this video pop up. How did I miss this!?
Khalid and Jaheira ❤ 27:10