About the Game (From the Steam Store Page)
Kidnapped. Imprisoned. Tortured. The wizard Irenicus holds you captive in his stronghold, attempting to strip you of the powers that are your birthright.
Can you resist the evil within you, forge a legend of heroic proportions, and ultimately destroy the dark essence that haunts your dreams? Or will you embrace your monstrous nature, carve a swath of destruction across the realms, and ascend to godhood as the new Lord of Murder?
Baldur's Gate II: Enhanced Edition brings this critically acclaimed role-playing experience to back to life.
Previous Play Time
0 hours
What Was I Thinking When I Bought This
As I said in my opening post for Baldur's Gate I'd often heard the name in association with the all-time great rpgs. That was my primary motive for buying the first one. It was only later that I heard the recommendation that people skip the first one and move directly to the second. Needless to say, this dismayed me greatly, but it wasn't until the most recent sale that it got enough of a discount for me to take the plunge. It was probably inevitable that I'd get it, though. It's practically a compulsion. If things come in sets, I'm not entirely comfortable until I have the whole set. It's not an irresistible impulse or anything, but it definitely influenced my purchase.
Expectations and Prior Experience
When I played Baldur's Gate, I felt like it was a deeply flawed game with enormous potential. Thus, I am really excited about playing Baldur's Gate II. I expect it to be better balanced, have more (and more meaningful) choices, and for the plot to actually be comprehensible before the last hour and a half of the game.
On the other hand, it's still based off AD&D second edition, so far all the inevitable extra polish that comes with a sequel, it's entirely possible that I may find myself stymied by frustration. I have a strong hope that I'll get to the end of this one, and am optimistic about my chances, but I'm not 100% certain that I'll be able to make it.
So, I think I'll make a wager with myself. If I can get to the end of Baldur's Gate II's main story, I will reward myself by playing Planescape: Torment next (it's not on my Steam list, but I'll blog about as if it were). If I can't, I'll punish myself by going directly to Dungeons and Dragons Online (which I quit shortly after character creation - I've since heard this was a wise decision).
Thursday, November 13, 2014
Wednesday, November 12, 2014
Baldur's Gate: Enhanced Edition - 31 hours
I almost made it. According to the walkthrough, I got up to the second to the last battle. In theory, it should only take a few minutes to finish, but so many of my party members died that continuing on was impossible. I suspect I'm underleveled, but making my way back to a suitable grinding area would take so long that I've decided it'll be a better use of my time to move on to Baldur's Gate: II.
It turns out that the Iron Throne was at a the center of a conspiracy to use doppelgangers to in infiltrate the upper ranks of Baludr's Gate's high society. I tracked down the leadership, beat on them a bit, and was eventually framed for the murder of some high-ranking Iron Throne operatives that I would have killed anyway (they were doppelgangers). Once I got out of prison, I made another raid on the Iron Throne's tower and learned that their leader, Sarevok, was running the organization into the ground in his effort to become Grand Duke of Baldur's Gate and inflame the passions of anti-amnian factions to start a war and use the spiritual power of the slain to ascend to godhood. (Called it!)
As it happens, both Sarevok and Aryfa are children of Baal, the god of murder. We have a touching family reunion in the Duke's palace, just as Sarevok is being crowned. We have documents that prove he was behind a bunch of political assassination, and that leads to a brawl. But Sarevok escaped at the last minute, and led me on a merry chase through a maze under the thieves guild.
It was at the end of the maze that I ran into some remnant Iron Throne bounty hunters who wanted to kill both Sarevok and my party for their crimes against the organization. They successfully do so at least a half dozen times, and because I didn't get enough sleep for the past a couple of days, and I'm kind of grumpy, I chose this time to quit. I just know that I would completely fail to beat the final boss.
Overall, this game feels like a prototype. It has a lot of promise, but too many points of sloppy execution and missed potential. I've got my fingers crossed that Baldur's Gate II will deliver on that promise.
It turns out that the Iron Throne was at a the center of a conspiracy to use doppelgangers to in infiltrate the upper ranks of Baludr's Gate's high society. I tracked down the leadership, beat on them a bit, and was eventually framed for the murder of some high-ranking Iron Throne operatives that I would have killed anyway (they were doppelgangers). Once I got out of prison, I made another raid on the Iron Throne's tower and learned that their leader, Sarevok, was running the organization into the ground in his effort to become Grand Duke of Baldur's Gate and inflame the passions of anti-amnian factions to start a war and use the spiritual power of the slain to ascend to godhood. (Called it!)
As it happens, both Sarevok and Aryfa are children of Baal, the god of murder. We have a touching family reunion in the Duke's palace, just as Sarevok is being crowned. We have documents that prove he was behind a bunch of political assassination, and that leads to a brawl. But Sarevok escaped at the last minute, and led me on a merry chase through a maze under the thieves guild.
It was at the end of the maze that I ran into some remnant Iron Throne bounty hunters who wanted to kill both Sarevok and my party for their crimes against the organization. They successfully do so at least a half dozen times, and because I didn't get enough sleep for the past a couple of days, and I'm kind of grumpy, I chose this time to quit. I just know that I would completely fail to beat the final boss.
Overall, this game feels like a prototype. It has a lot of promise, but too many points of sloppy execution and missed potential. I've got my fingers crossed that Baldur's Gate II will deliver on that promise.
Tuesday, November 11, 2014
Baldur's Gate: Enhanced Edition - 26 hours
It's 26 hours in, and I am finally at the titular Baldur's Gate. Honestly, the thought of exploring a new city exhausts me. Talking with npcs is so time consuming, and probably my third least favorite part of the game (behind the ultra-deadly low levels and the slow rate of xp advancement). It's not a genre thing, though. I loved exploring the worlds of Mass Effect or Fallout. I'm simply not very interested in what's going on.
It's hard to say exactly where to lay the blame. Full disclosure: I came into Baldur's Gate with an existing prejudice against the Forgotten Realms universe. Ever since my purchase of the 3rd edition Forgotten Realms Campaign Setting, I've found this universe to be breathtakingly dull. Even so, it was only a minor dislike, so I'm not sure that can be the cause of my disinterest.
I think the real problem is that I've only the foggiest idea about what's actually going on. It seems like there is some evil faction, possibly called the Iron Throne, that is distributing a magical, iron-weakening potion to various bandits, mercenaries, and demihumans, who use it to contaminate various iron reserves and reduce the iron supply. Meanwhile, this group is also using its political connections to exacerbate border tensions between the city-state of Baldur's Gate and the nation of Amn, ostensibly to drive up the price of their own, uncorrupted iron, and thus make a shit-ton of money from selling weapons.
However, I suspect that their apparent motive is not their real one, and that the Iron Throne are in fact servants of a darker power who has some nefarious mystical goal that will threaten more than just the Baldur's Gate region. I also suspect that the main character is somehow pivotal to this scheme, and that the weird dreams with the impenetrable symbolism that she has after basically every chapter break are somehow indicative of a potent supernatural ancestry or legendary destiny that she has yet to discover.
That last speculation is really just based on general genre-savviness, though. There's something about the way Baldur's Gate presents its story that says to me "the main character is a secret Chosen One out to stop a Hidden Evil." But obvious hints aside (such as the mysterious clerical powers I get after my symbolic dreams, or the way Gorion and all of his friends seem to think I'm something special), the game doesn't really explore this much, and does virtually nothing to make the potential resolution of this mystery seem interesting.
So, I'm not sure I really care all that much about finishing the game. I've been cut loose in this big city with no real clue as to where to go next (the captain of the guard wants me to undertake a stealth mission - yeah right), and I'm absolutely positive that it will be another few hours before I raise in level. However, I also feel like I must be pretty close to the end, and it would be a shame to quit now.
The deciding factor will probably wind up being the difficulty of future fights. To get to Baldur's Gate, I had to kill Daveaorn, a powerful mage who repeatedly embarrassed my entire party. I got through it eventually (the solution involved kiting his assistant monsters, not engaging him until they were killed, and then sending in a hasted, berserking Arjyfa to take him out solo), but it was kind of an overwhelming fight. Future ones, in theory, should be even worse. If the difficulty curve keeps rising, I'm not at all confident in my party's ability to keep up (minus a bunch of tedious grinding that I'm not prepared to do).
The plan, then, is to keep going until I face my first serious obstacle and then give up if it takes more than, say, a half hour to overcome. It's a quitter's way, to be sure, but I've still got to play the sequel, and it would be a shame to become disgusted with the series before that can happen.
It's hard to say exactly where to lay the blame. Full disclosure: I came into Baldur's Gate with an existing prejudice against the Forgotten Realms universe. Ever since my purchase of the 3rd edition Forgotten Realms Campaign Setting, I've found this universe to be breathtakingly dull. Even so, it was only a minor dislike, so I'm not sure that can be the cause of my disinterest.
I think the real problem is that I've only the foggiest idea about what's actually going on. It seems like there is some evil faction, possibly called the Iron Throne, that is distributing a magical, iron-weakening potion to various bandits, mercenaries, and demihumans, who use it to contaminate various iron reserves and reduce the iron supply. Meanwhile, this group is also using its political connections to exacerbate border tensions between the city-state of Baldur's Gate and the nation of Amn, ostensibly to drive up the price of their own, uncorrupted iron, and thus make a shit-ton of money from selling weapons.
However, I suspect that their apparent motive is not their real one, and that the Iron Throne are in fact servants of a darker power who has some nefarious mystical goal that will threaten more than just the Baldur's Gate region. I also suspect that the main character is somehow pivotal to this scheme, and that the weird dreams with the impenetrable symbolism that she has after basically every chapter break are somehow indicative of a potent supernatural ancestry or legendary destiny that she has yet to discover.
That last speculation is really just based on general genre-savviness, though. There's something about the way Baldur's Gate presents its story that says to me "the main character is a secret Chosen One out to stop a Hidden Evil." But obvious hints aside (such as the mysterious clerical powers I get after my symbolic dreams, or the way Gorion and all of his friends seem to think I'm something special), the game doesn't really explore this much, and does virtually nothing to make the potential resolution of this mystery seem interesting.
So, I'm not sure I really care all that much about finishing the game. I've been cut loose in this big city with no real clue as to where to go next (the captain of the guard wants me to undertake a stealth mission - yeah right), and I'm absolutely positive that it will be another few hours before I raise in level. However, I also feel like I must be pretty close to the end, and it would be a shame to quit now.
The deciding factor will probably wind up being the difficulty of future fights. To get to Baldur's Gate, I had to kill Daveaorn, a powerful mage who repeatedly embarrassed my entire party. I got through it eventually (the solution involved kiting his assistant monsters, not engaging him until they were killed, and then sending in a hasted, berserking Arjyfa to take him out solo), but it was kind of an overwhelming fight. Future ones, in theory, should be even worse. If the difficulty curve keeps rising, I'm not at all confident in my party's ability to keep up (minus a bunch of tedious grinding that I'm not prepared to do).
The plan, then, is to keep going until I face my first serious obstacle and then give up if it takes more than, say, a half hour to overcome. It's a quitter's way, to be sure, but I've still got to play the sequel, and it would be a shame to become disgusted with the series before that can happen.
Saturday, November 8, 2014
Baldur's Gate: Enhanced Edition - 20/20 hours
Aryfa, the half-orc berserker has finally caught up with Trent the illusionist. She cleared out the Nashkel mines and defeated Tranzig. In the process, she soloed up to level 5, and recruited a party of level 6 companions. The weird thing is that the two save files took around the same time to play. This game is . . . not very well balanced.
I think Baldur's Gate represents both the best and the worst of old-school gaming. It very accurately models the AD&D ruleset, including a wide variety of spells, classes, monsters, and magic items. It's an ambitious design that creates an enormous potential for deep strategy and boundless replayability. Yet the flip side of this is that the video game elements of Baldur's Gate are unsophisticated and haphazardly implemented. In emulating a pen-and-paper ruleset, they incorporated a lot of legacy mechanics that simply do not work without a DM to vitiate their failure modes.
The aforementioned pacing issues are a prime example. It is positively perverse that you can recruit a six person party, play for 10 hours, and still be at level one, and also play a one person party for six hours, get to level five, and then recruit five level six party members. And it's doubly frustrating when it turns out that the solo character has fewer deaths and more combat power than an entire low level party, even at level one (this is due to a quirk of how AD&D's rules work - high physical stats can get you 2-3 levels worth of combat benefits).
Similarly, combat is, 90% of the time, a total whiff-fest. The random die rolls that power the system have a small chance to "hit" a competently built character. However, spells and other magical effects are difficult to resist, so you'd have things like a single ghoul (a low level monster) wiping out an entire party because it also has paralyzing claws, and once the front-line fighters are out of the picture, the various mages and rogues have no chance of connecting with attacks.
These are all things that, were I DM'ing Baldur's Gate as a D&D game, I would be able to work around, but the computer just throws them at me, and trusts that I'll be able to figure it out. And I have very mixed feelings about that. It's kind of exhilarating, having that kind of freedom to explore, to make my own destiny, and to potentially break the game by discovering broken combos. Yet it is also exhausting, having to constantly be working the angles, always on the lookout for the myriad ways in which the system can plain screw you over.
Honestly, what I really want to do is play Baldur's Gate II. My hope is that the makers learned a lesson from both the strengths and the weakness of the first game and delivered a more tightly tuned experience that could somehow offer the freedom of an open-ended AD&D-based rpg, while also somehow ditching (or at least minimizing) the awful arbitrariness of the pure rules-as-written.
It's something to look forward to, at least. For now, I'm going to try and finish Baldur's Gate. I'm no farther in the plot than I was at hour 10, but I am level 5, and optimistic about my chances going forward. I think I've passed the worst of AD&D's meat-grinder levels, and am now sturdy enough to start raking in some serious xp. Hopefully, that will give me enough momentum to get to the end of the main story.
Wish me luck!
I think Baldur's Gate represents both the best and the worst of old-school gaming. It very accurately models the AD&D ruleset, including a wide variety of spells, classes, monsters, and magic items. It's an ambitious design that creates an enormous potential for deep strategy and boundless replayability. Yet the flip side of this is that the video game elements of Baldur's Gate are unsophisticated and haphazardly implemented. In emulating a pen-and-paper ruleset, they incorporated a lot of legacy mechanics that simply do not work without a DM to vitiate their failure modes.
The aforementioned pacing issues are a prime example. It is positively perverse that you can recruit a six person party, play for 10 hours, and still be at level one, and also play a one person party for six hours, get to level five, and then recruit five level six party members. And it's doubly frustrating when it turns out that the solo character has fewer deaths and more combat power than an entire low level party, even at level one (this is due to a quirk of how AD&D's rules work - high physical stats can get you 2-3 levels worth of combat benefits).
Similarly, combat is, 90% of the time, a total whiff-fest. The random die rolls that power the system have a small chance to "hit" a competently built character. However, spells and other magical effects are difficult to resist, so you'd have things like a single ghoul (a low level monster) wiping out an entire party because it also has paralyzing claws, and once the front-line fighters are out of the picture, the various mages and rogues have no chance of connecting with attacks.
These are all things that, were I DM'ing Baldur's Gate as a D&D game, I would be able to work around, but the computer just throws them at me, and trusts that I'll be able to figure it out. And I have very mixed feelings about that. It's kind of exhilarating, having that kind of freedom to explore, to make my own destiny, and to potentially break the game by discovering broken combos. Yet it is also exhausting, having to constantly be working the angles, always on the lookout for the myriad ways in which the system can plain screw you over.
Honestly, what I really want to do is play Baldur's Gate II. My hope is that the makers learned a lesson from both the strengths and the weakness of the first game and delivered a more tightly tuned experience that could somehow offer the freedom of an open-ended AD&D-based rpg, while also somehow ditching (or at least minimizing) the awful arbitrariness of the pure rules-as-written.
It's something to look forward to, at least. For now, I'm going to try and finish Baldur's Gate. I'm no farther in the plot than I was at hour 10, but I am level 5, and optimistic about my chances going forward. I think I've passed the worst of AD&D's meat-grinder levels, and am now sturdy enough to start raking in some serious xp. Hopefully, that will give me enough momentum to get to the end of the main story.
Wish me luck!
Thursday, November 6, 2014
Baldur's Gate: Enhanced Edition - 15/20 hours
This game has defeated me. Oh, I'll still play to at least 20 hours (if Bad Rats couldn't stop me, I imagine nothing will), but my dream of becoming the greatest mage in the realms is dead. I managed to beat Mulahey, thanks to Imoen's wand of magic missiles, but that still wasn't enough to bump me up to level 2, and after that, it was more or less one humiliation after another. The straw that broke the camel's back was Zal, "the fastest dart thrower in the west." I took out his partner, Vax, easily enough, and then he proceeded to wipe out my entire party.
With darts.
To be fair, thanks to a quirk in the rules of AD&D 2nd edition, a high strength fighter specialized in darts is actually one of the strongest low level builds, and it's more than a little funny that the makers of Baldur's Gate referenced this absurdity in the game, but nevertheless, it is not at all fun to be on the receiving end of such cheese.
So, I started over, and built for survivability. I'm playing a half-orc fighter with max physical stats. Thanks to weapon specialization and armor, I'm now soloing encounters that used to wipe my entire party, and because I haven't recruited any npcs (and dismissed mandatory party member Imoen - I hope like hell that doesn't come back to bite me in the ass), I'm now level 3. My plan is to continue fighting random monsters by myself until I reach level 5 and then recruit a party. Hopefully, I'll be able to then snag a spellcaster with level 3 spells and enough hit points to not instantly die, and the fighter types will be accurate enough to actually hit the enemy more often than not.
I think this will work, and that I'll actually be able to get to the end of the game this way. I just wish I could have done it as a badass arch-mage (speaking of which, I noticed a bug - when you play a specialist mage, you can memorize any spell in your extra slot, by the rules you should only be able to put your specialist school spells in that slot - I wonder what other ways my knowledge of AD&D's rules might be screwing me over).
With darts.
To be fair, thanks to a quirk in the rules of AD&D 2nd edition, a high strength fighter specialized in darts is actually one of the strongest low level builds, and it's more than a little funny that the makers of Baldur's Gate referenced this absurdity in the game, but nevertheless, it is not at all fun to be on the receiving end of such cheese.
So, I started over, and built for survivability. I'm playing a half-orc fighter with max physical stats. Thanks to weapon specialization and armor, I'm now soloing encounters that used to wipe my entire party, and because I haven't recruited any npcs (and dismissed mandatory party member Imoen - I hope like hell that doesn't come back to bite me in the ass), I'm now level 3. My plan is to continue fighting random monsters by myself until I reach level 5 and then recruit a party. Hopefully, I'll be able to then snag a spellcaster with level 3 spells and enough hit points to not instantly die, and the fighter types will be accurate enough to actually hit the enemy more often than not.
I think this will work, and that I'll actually be able to get to the end of the game this way. I just wish I could have done it as a badass arch-mage (speaking of which, I noticed a bug - when you play a specialist mage, you can memorize any spell in your extra slot, by the rules you should only be able to put your specialist school spells in that slot - I wonder what other ways my knowledge of AD&D's rules might be screwing me over).
Wednesday, November 5, 2014
Baldur's Gate: Enhanced Edition - 10/20 hours
I've played this game for ten hours. Out of those ten hours, seven have been spent with Trent, the illusionist. He, and all but one of his party members, are still level 1. I don't think I've ever played a level-based game with such glacial pacing. I must be doing something wrong.
I can't imagine what that might be, though. I've been more or less following exactly where my journal has told me to go - to the mines of Nishakel, to investigate the iron shortage. And once in the mines, I didn't feel particularly underleveled. It's filled almost exclusively with kobolds, the weakest enemies in the monster manual (they are 1/2 hit die creatures), so if I were higher level, it would be gratuitous overkill.
Yet seven freaking hours at level one. It's starting to wear on me. I chose to play a magic user because I wanted to have fun with higher level spells. Even if I don't technically need them yet, it's still getting a little dull not having any new geegaws to play with. Though, actually, now that I think about, these kobolds have still managed to kill me often enough that maybe I do need more power (or at least more than 4 hp). I'd go somewhere else to grind, but there's no way I'm finding anything more survivable than kobolds.
Maybe I should have pursued more sidequests. They're a bit harder to find than in other rpgs, because most of the npcs look a lot alike, and many are generic "commoners," "guards," or "nobles."There is no easy way to tell at a glance who is an important, named character (also, for some reason Baldur's Gate does not especially honor the standard rpg conventions - at least half the people I meet will complain about me barging into their houses uninvited - it's silly, but their opprobrium had made me reluctant to do too much exploring).
It also doesn't help that the biggest, most obvious sidequests seem to come with the baggage of extra party members - finding Dynaheir attracts Minsc and his miniature giant space hamster, tracking down certain bandits involves getting entangled with Dorn, the blackguard. And while I don't really object to these guys, the maximum party size is 6, and thus getting anyone new would involve losing someone who's already earned half a level's worth of xp.
So, while I'm sure I've passed up a few easy xp gets, I'm also sure that there's not really a better place for me to be than the mines. There, at least, I know I can beat the majority of the enemies (though I don't know why I bother, the kobolds give me something like 2 xp apiece). I once decided to explore off the beaten path a little, in an area called High Hedge. I was able to beat the small band of gnolls I encountered, but then, without warning, I ran into a flesh golem! Why put such a high level creature so close to the beginning of the game? It's just a tpk time-bomb resting in area adjacent to the game's first town.
It's probably an old-school, hardcore thing I don't understand. Like seeding the various inns with assassins who can potentially wipe a whole level one party (my fight with Neira, the level 4 warrior, was a complete farce). Or giving the boss of the first dungeon a paralysis spell that can take out all of my front-line fighters, rendering my mages (who, if you recall, only have four fucking hit points), vulnerable to being ripped apart by skeletons (the disadvantage of being an illusionist crops up here).
That being said, I'm not ready to give up quite yet. I'm hoping that I'm just in the middle of a particularly weak portion of the game, and if I can make it out of this slump, I'll find an area with slightly tougher monsters who will raise my rate of xp gain to something acceptable, and that the hit points from new levels will make the game less luck-driven, and that a wider selection of spells will give me more options to deal with the occasional difficult encounter.
It's not a perfect plan, but it's the best I have for now. If things don't get better soon, I may have to start a new character and follow some advice I read on the forums - avoid recruiting a party until after I complete a bunch of easy fetch-quests, then, when others join my party, they'll automatically scale to my higher level (I can't do this now because quest xp splits evenly amongst your party).
Low level AD&D is definitely an acquired taste, which kind of makes me curious why the makers of Baldur's Gate decided to drag it out for so long.
I can't imagine what that might be, though. I've been more or less following exactly where my journal has told me to go - to the mines of Nishakel, to investigate the iron shortage. And once in the mines, I didn't feel particularly underleveled. It's filled almost exclusively with kobolds, the weakest enemies in the monster manual (they are 1/2 hit die creatures), so if I were higher level, it would be gratuitous overkill.
Yet seven freaking hours at level one. It's starting to wear on me. I chose to play a magic user because I wanted to have fun with higher level spells. Even if I don't technically need them yet, it's still getting a little dull not having any new geegaws to play with. Though, actually, now that I think about, these kobolds have still managed to kill me often enough that maybe I do need more power (or at least more than 4 hp). I'd go somewhere else to grind, but there's no way I'm finding anything more survivable than kobolds.
Maybe I should have pursued more sidequests. They're a bit harder to find than in other rpgs, because most of the npcs look a lot alike, and many are generic "commoners," "guards," or "nobles."There is no easy way to tell at a glance who is an important, named character (also, for some reason Baldur's Gate does not especially honor the standard rpg conventions - at least half the people I meet will complain about me barging into their houses uninvited - it's silly, but their opprobrium had made me reluctant to do too much exploring).
It also doesn't help that the biggest, most obvious sidequests seem to come with the baggage of extra party members - finding Dynaheir attracts Minsc and his miniature giant space hamster, tracking down certain bandits involves getting entangled with Dorn, the blackguard. And while I don't really object to these guys, the maximum party size is 6, and thus getting anyone new would involve losing someone who's already earned half a level's worth of xp.
So, while I'm sure I've passed up a few easy xp gets, I'm also sure that there's not really a better place for me to be than the mines. There, at least, I know I can beat the majority of the enemies (though I don't know why I bother, the kobolds give me something like 2 xp apiece). I once decided to explore off the beaten path a little, in an area called High Hedge. I was able to beat the small band of gnolls I encountered, but then, without warning, I ran into a flesh golem! Why put such a high level creature so close to the beginning of the game? It's just a tpk time-bomb resting in area adjacent to the game's first town.
It's probably an old-school, hardcore thing I don't understand. Like seeding the various inns with assassins who can potentially wipe a whole level one party (my fight with Neira, the level 4 warrior, was a complete farce). Or giving the boss of the first dungeon a paralysis spell that can take out all of my front-line fighters, rendering my mages (who, if you recall, only have four fucking hit points), vulnerable to being ripped apart by skeletons (the disadvantage of being an illusionist crops up here).
That being said, I'm not ready to give up quite yet. I'm hoping that I'm just in the middle of a particularly weak portion of the game, and if I can make it out of this slump, I'll find an area with slightly tougher monsters who will raise my rate of xp gain to something acceptable, and that the hit points from new levels will make the game less luck-driven, and that a wider selection of spells will give me more options to deal with the occasional difficult encounter.
It's not a perfect plan, but it's the best I have for now. If things don't get better soon, I may have to start a new character and follow some advice I read on the forums - avoid recruiting a party until after I complete a bunch of easy fetch-quests, then, when others join my party, they'll automatically scale to my higher level (I can't do this now because quest xp splits evenly amongst your party).
Low level AD&D is definitely an acquired taste, which kind of makes me curious why the makers of Baldur's Gate decided to drag it out for so long.
Monday, November 3, 2014
Baldur's Gate: Enhanced Edition - 5/20 hours
It's an odd thing, starting a new rpg. They always present you with a variety of choices for your character, some of which can have a dramatic effect on how you experience the game. This leads, inevitably, to a certain amount of choice paralysis. What's the best way to play? Will choosing a particular class close off a significant portion of the game's content? What will I most enjoy?
So, it's practically a law of nature that I will play the opening hours of any rpg at least twice, and potentially as many as a dozen times. And that's more or less what I've been doing for the past three hours. I started a new character, Margaritte the Kensai, and went through the opening of the game a second time.
Margaritte is a much stronger character than Trent, primarily because fighters are better at low level than mages and also because I spent an hour or so rerolling her stats so as to get an optimum character (this is not quite as ridiculous as it sounds, because I was watching tv at the time). Though the difference in strength was noticeable, it hasn't made a huge difference yet. Trent stayed at the back of the group, and thus in both cases, it's been my NPC companions who have been getting repeatedly killed.
Keeping everyone alive is mostly a matter of luck and reloading whenever my luck fails. The really deadly fights didn't start until the town of Beregost, which had at least two major brawls. A young woman named Neera was being attacked by "magic bandits" who turned out to be the notorious red wizards of Thay. They wanted to study her anomalous and reckless magic powers (i.e. wild magic, the specialty I toyed with before choosing to be an illusionist).
In the fray, Xzar got killed, leaving me the choice of reloading and trying again or simply accepting the loss and recruiting Neera in his place. It's tricky, because I don't like losing a character, but I wouldn't have been able to keep both, due to the party cap, and the trade was a mage for a mage. And seeing as how Xzar was evil and Neera was neutral, it was really a better fit anyway.
The other big brawl was with Silke, actress extraordinaire. She wanted some bodyguards because she was being threatened, but the it turns out she was lying in order to assassinate her business partners. Being "good," I wanted no part of this, so I took her out. This took me about a half dozen reloads to beat, and when I got through it, I got the opportunity to recruit a new character - Garrik, the bard. I decided that he would be a good replacement for Montaron. It kind of bugs me that I won't be able to finish Montaron's quest, but he was evil, so I'm fairly sure it wasn't something I'd have wanted to do anyway.
I think I will stick with Trent. I rolled his stats honestly, and I really like magic. However, I will keep Margaritte as a backup character, just in case I get too frustrated to continue.
So, it's practically a law of nature that I will play the opening hours of any rpg at least twice, and potentially as many as a dozen times. And that's more or less what I've been doing for the past three hours. I started a new character, Margaritte the Kensai, and went through the opening of the game a second time.
Margaritte is a much stronger character than Trent, primarily because fighters are better at low level than mages and also because I spent an hour or so rerolling her stats so as to get an optimum character (this is not quite as ridiculous as it sounds, because I was watching tv at the time). Though the difference in strength was noticeable, it hasn't made a huge difference yet. Trent stayed at the back of the group, and thus in both cases, it's been my NPC companions who have been getting repeatedly killed.
Keeping everyone alive is mostly a matter of luck and reloading whenever my luck fails. The really deadly fights didn't start until the town of Beregost, which had at least two major brawls. A young woman named Neera was being attacked by "magic bandits" who turned out to be the notorious red wizards of Thay. They wanted to study her anomalous and reckless magic powers (i.e. wild magic, the specialty I toyed with before choosing to be an illusionist).
In the fray, Xzar got killed, leaving me the choice of reloading and trying again or simply accepting the loss and recruiting Neera in his place. It's tricky, because I don't like losing a character, but I wouldn't have been able to keep both, due to the party cap, and the trade was a mage for a mage. And seeing as how Xzar was evil and Neera was neutral, it was really a better fit anyway.
The other big brawl was with Silke, actress extraordinaire. She wanted some bodyguards because she was being threatened, but the it turns out she was lying in order to assassinate her business partners. Being "good," I wanted no part of this, so I took her out. This took me about a half dozen reloads to beat, and when I got through it, I got the opportunity to recruit a new character - Garrik, the bard. I decided that he would be a good replacement for Montaron. It kind of bugs me that I won't be able to finish Montaron's quest, but he was evil, so I'm fairly sure it wasn't something I'd have wanted to do anyway.
I think I will stick with Trent. I rolled his stats honestly, and I really like magic. However, I will keep Margaritte as a backup character, just in case I get too frustrated to continue.
Subscribe to:
Posts (Atom)