Baldur's Gate Retrospective | A History of Isometric CRPGs (Episode 3)
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- Опубліковано 26 сер 2018
- Baldur's Gate is episode 3 in my series on isometric CPRGs. Spoilers start at the 30-minute mark. If you would like to know more about my series on isometric CRPGs then please check out this video: • UPDATE: New CRPG video...
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Fallout 1 Retrospective (Episode 1): • Fallout 1 Retrospectiv...
Fallout 2 Retrospective (Episode 2): • Fallout 2 Retrospectiv...
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Extra Credits video on Durlag's Tower: • Baldur's Gate: Durlag'...
Kotaku article: kotaku.com/the-struggle-to-br...
GDC 2010: • GDC Europe 2010: Baldu...
Shattered Steel footage: • Shattered Steel - MS-DOS - Ігри
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!!!
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 UA-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.
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!
>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.
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.
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.
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
The crashing issue is probably fixed. Just got done with a 60 hour play through that didn't crash once.
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
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)
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 :)
Fantastic series Chris, I'm so very happy you're doing this & I hope you're doing great
Awesome. Glad you are still making these. Can't wait to get home from work and listen.
I SERVE THE FLAMING FIST!
Geez calm down. Always got me that
I AM the Law!!
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!
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.
the sheer joyful adventure of balders gate series is what most rpgs are missing. the joy of adventure.
Really interesting video. Thoroughly enjoyed it! Will now go watch ep 1 and 2 and keep an eye on notifications for new episodes.
yessss! Hyped for this. There's been a lot of UA-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
ua-cam.com/video/DjWWuUDtSaE/v-deo.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
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.
Realized I've watched 8 of your longform videos without subbing, sooooo subbed. Great content, fella, keep it up.
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.
Great work as usual Chris, thanks
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 👍
Great job! Classic game for sure!
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
How did i not know this is the vid series ive always wanted
I love these videos. Glad I found your channel
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.
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.
10/10. Great game. Would play again.
Enjoyed the vid looking forward to the next one
Thanks man, because of I tried Fallout 1 and 2 and I was enjoying myself. Again, thanks a lot.
Thank you. Great video as always. :)
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.
Just found out about your channel today, really enjoying your vids! Please keep making more :).
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.
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.
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.
I enjoy listening to these while im at work.
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.
I love this series, i come back to it more than any other game
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.
"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
Great expose. I have BG 1 but never managed to get into the game thanks for the elaborate explanation. I subbed
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!
"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
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 :)
Thanks for the videos, friend!
I love your videos generally, and this one had a new high point for me personally... Using protection from petrification to fight the basilisks. Like, of course I should have figured that out, but as someone who had already been playing D&D for years before Baldur's Gate, the only strategy I ever used to fight things like that was to summon skeletons or otherwise use fodder creatures and send them in first. Our noble protectors.
Thanks for the video!
I've tried to get through baldurs gate once and stopped after nashkel. You have encouraged me to get back at it!
Damn. Now I need to get five bags of popcorn and sodas.
Wonderful meaty content. You’re winning me over.
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 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.
Love your videos brother thank you :)
"Big Suze"
LOL
oh god. i remember playing it two decades ago, and it took me over 2hrs to find Dynaheir.
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.
My favorite series of all times.
Great content, and it's fascinating hearing someone do a retrospective like this without the heavy nostalgia goggles on.
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.
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.
great vid.
I must say, for a person who's not a huge fan of the combat such as yourself this was high praise. It warms an old adventurers heart ^^.
It's still my favourite game of all time, while I'd probably agree that BG2 is superiour in almost all the ways (Story, complexity, Party interraction, combat, etc.) This holds a more special place in my heart.
I think it's the feeling you were talking about in the first part of the game, the feeling of being small in a big world, of being weak and the world being so, so dangerous at times. The atmosphere.
I also love the exploring of the maps, most of the small encounters feel like puzzles to solve, while you don't get main story out of the smaller maps there are still small stories to explore that I do appriciate so much. Like the Captain of the Nashkel guards, the mad priest, random gatherings of evil wizards or gnomes that have a stone garden.
A bit of advice for the next game.
Since these games focus HEAVILY on combat and encounters, reloading if a fight goes bad isn't really a bad thing, view them as puzzles that you restart if you like. I personally try to not reload story choices or low health rolls when levling up and such, but what I belive most ppl consider "cheesing" in BG isn't really loading after fighting an earnest fight.
As for the difficulty, the better you get at these games the more you'll realise the faults in earlier choices :D. I still remember being woefully under leveled at Sarevok's fight the first time, and my understanding of English not being the greatest as well made the game almost unbeatable. But the same things made it so much more enjoyable when I started getting the systems and tricks. I do agree that the difficulty spike can be quite hard for a new player to the series, BG2 is more forgiving than the beginning of BG1, but also has harder fights (A lot harder fights).
Looking forward to your BG2 video, hope you'll like it. And as some people stated already, I don't think Dragonspear is really needed.
P.S
I love the music of this game so much.
P.P.S
Kotor?
Bg1was much more of a sandbox than bg2 which makes it my preferred version of the game
Great video. Always look forward to your stuff! Even though I don’t care too much about CRPGs haha.
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.
Nice videos, man! These got me interested in tackling classic CRPGs. Also, your voice and accent reminds me of Michael Bisping, lol.
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
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.
Really good video also probably should mention about mods for the baldur gate series since it also add a lot more vitality to the game age.
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.
I love how he causally burns popular games throughout the video
I enjoyed hearing your criticism, you focus on quite interesting points.
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.
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.
Great channel, subbed :)
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.
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.
"thaco is whacko and I want no part of it" Noah Caldwell-Gervais
I love his videos
Welcome back, favourite insecute brit of mine!
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 :)
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.
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.
Love these games
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 most memorable line from the voice acting is actually "You must gather your party before venturing forth"
Boo: "Eep"
The VA who is also Jolee in KOTOR
@@bozoclown2925 And Sarevok
"I'm gone".
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 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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
It's time to return Chris. We need you for the third game
Hell yeah! The next critique is on the Mass Effect trilogy! Well that's my guess anyhow. We love the series and we have been known to get upset with the creators. lol I hope I'm right because I think you'll do a phenomenal job at it.
Oh and as to Durlag's tower chess combat - this is one of the situations when you have to switch off the AI, use pauses system, with the game stopping on all events and then you can work those rules to your advantage (and honestly this is the way most of us played the game all the time when it came out, hence playing to this approach in the expansion). :)