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On October 08 2010 23:59 myopia wrote: So GOG has gotten Baldur's Gate 1 + expansion and all of Icewindale recently. I haven't played them. If you were to choose between BG and IWD, which is better and why? (if I do choose to check out BG I'll wait until they've got the sequel up) Easily BG.
Icewind Dale is exactly like BG but with a shitty story and no Npc. It has some good fights and beautiful musics but that's pretty much all. BG on the other hand has way more content + you can follow with BG2 ( awesome game too ).
But yea wait for BG2 to get the BGT mod and run BG1 with BG2 engine
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On October 08 2010 07:06 Biff The Understudy wrote:Show nested quote +On October 06 2010 08:40 SF-Fork wrote: so... is kuroisian the acid kensai from Big picture actually killable? I've managed to run away from him twice already, but I am really considering just giving up my celestial fury...
Do you want a tip to kill this bastard? You trap to death the tavern with the stairs where you find Baron Ployer (don't know the name in English). Sleep, trap again, sleep trap again. Trap both levels of the tavern. Then, when Kuroisan appears, you mass invisibility except for one character with haste, and you lead him through the 546436 traps you have settled. GG Kuroisan. Not very subtle, not very loyal, but screw that, after all, this mod is not very subtle nor loyal neither. Trap abuse solves everything.
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Russian Federation1401 Posts
On October 09 2010 00:16 Dfgj wrote:Show nested quote +On October 08 2010 07:06 Biff The Understudy wrote:On October 06 2010 08:40 SF-Fork wrote: so... is kuroisian the acid kensai from Big picture actually killable? I've managed to run away from him twice already, but I am really considering just giving up my celestial fury...
Do you want a tip to kill this bastard? You trap to death the tavern with the stairs where you find Baron Ployer (don't know the name in English). Sleep, trap again, sleep trap again. Trap both levels of the tavern. Then, when Kuroisan appears, you mass invisibility except for one character with haste, and you lead him through the 546436 traps you have settled. GG Kuroisan. Not very subtle, not very loyal, but screw that, after all, this mod is not very subtle nor loyal neither. Trap abuse solves everything.
I've kind of lost him in Mae'Var's guild. He is there always, so I've decided to come back after spellhold. I've read he has an imba katana, and maybe I shouldn't double wield that + the celestial fury for the balance of the game
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On October 09 2010 00:33 SF-Fork wrote:Show nested quote +On October 09 2010 00:16 Dfgj wrote:On October 08 2010 07:06 Biff The Understudy wrote:On October 06 2010 08:40 SF-Fork wrote: so... is kuroisian the acid kensai from Big picture actually killable? I've managed to run away from him twice already, but I am really considering just giving up my celestial fury...
Do you want a tip to kill this bastard? You trap to death the tavern with the stairs where you find Baron Ployer (don't know the name in English). Sleep, trap again, sleep trap again. Trap both levels of the tavern. Then, when Kuroisan appears, you mass invisibility except for one character with haste, and you lead him through the 546436 traps you have settled. GG Kuroisan. Not very subtle, not very loyal, but screw that, after all, this mod is not very subtle nor loyal neither. Trap abuse solves everything. I've kind of lost him in Mae'Var's guild. He is there always, so I've decided to come back after spellhold. I've read he has an imba katana, and maybe I shouldn't double wield that + the celestial fury for the balance of the game
Good idea.
I tried out acid katana plus fury combo before. It only took me like 10 reloads and using couple traps for once in my life to get it. But to my credit, I never ran away.
WAY imba. My kensai/mage kills EVERYTHING WAY too fast
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I played very little BG2 cause I thought the learning curve was very steep even on easy. I've played plenty of NWN2 and never found that game very hard in terms of gameplay. However BG2 seems like it's very a different ballgame.
Any tips for someone new wanting to play this game since it gets so many props for being a great game?
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On October 09 2010 04:24 Advocado wrote: I played very little BG2 cause I thought the learning curve was very steep even on easy. I've played plenty of NWN2 and never found that game very hard in terms of gameplay. However BG2 seems like it's very a different ballgame.
Any tips for someone new wanting to play this game since it gets so many props for being a great game?
BG2's class system is not hard to understand. But it's not difficult to imagine that something such as a multi-class or dual class character would confuse a newcomer.
My advice, you don't need to mess with the mods or special character classes at all. Baldur's Gate is like Half Life, it's perfectly fine to play as it is. I recommend that you just take a simple character class like a Fighter, Mage, Thief, Paladin, etc and play from there on normal difficulty.
You will learn as you explore. I didn't read a manual when I first played it either. Just play as it is and feel free to raise the difficulty bar as you get used to the system.
Some advices: for resistance against spells or special effects like stun, you can see your resistance stats on the character screen as "saving throws". The lower the number associated with that saving throw, the better.
Mage and Clerics have different spells. Clerics gain spells automatically while Mages need to obtain a scroll of a spell and memorize it first. You can only use a certain number of spells before you have to rest to regain them.
I never played NWN2, but it shouldn't be difficult to learn. From the reviews I read, BG2 scores way higher than NWN2
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nwn2 is pretty bad. it had a ton of bugs as most of obsidian games, and the story is pretty dull. too much weak enemies to plow trough (like dragon age or the first nwn). I understand it somehow for icewind dale (both are basicly hack&slash) and nwn but being a story driven game like dragon age and nwn2 it's just too tedious to play. I played trough the nwn1 campaign, and I was pretty happy at the end because the story is not something they emphasised.
imho, that's the field where dragon age fails the most. repetitive console gameplay.
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9069 Posts
Imo NWN wasnt really difficult, thats not the right word, you will eventually beat the game even if you are doing some idiotic build. The problem is that there are a lot of spots and situations in the game, especially in the first half, in which you are just going to die, regardless of your build saves, skills or whatever. It was bloody annoying. I've played BG2 long ago, and I can recall some similar situations, but the feeling dominates for NWN. Sometimes the game made no sense to me.
And yeah, I'm with the general opinion that NWN 2 was really terrible.
On October 07 2010 07:18 travis wrote: whats ur guys opinion on NWN: hordes of the underdark
personally i loved that game
I love it, its my all time favorite RPG
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United States47024 Posts
On October 09 2010 04:34 dukethegold wrote:Show nested quote +On October 09 2010 04:24 Advocado wrote: I played very little BG2 cause I thought the learning curve was very steep even on easy. I've played plenty of NWN2 and never found that game very hard in terms of gameplay. However BG2 seems like it's very a different ballgame.
Any tips for someone new wanting to play this game since it gets so many props for being a great game? BG2's class system is not hard to understand. But it's not difficult to imagine that something such as a multi-class or dual class character would confuse a newcomer. My advice, you don't need to mess with the mods or special character classes at all. Baldur's Gate is like Half Life, it's perfectly fine to play as it is. I recommend that you just take a simple character class like a Fighter, Mage, Thief, Paladin, etc and play from there on normal difficulty. You will learn as you explore. I didn't read a manual when I first played it either. Just play as it is and feel free to raise the difficulty bar as you get used to the system. Some advices: for resistance against spells or special effects like stun, you can see your resistance stats on the character screen as "saving throws". The lower the number associated with that saving throw, the better. Mage and Clerics have different spells. Clerics gain spells automatically while Mages need to obtain a scroll of a spell and memorize it first. You can only use a certain number of spells before you have to rest to regain them. I never played NWN2, but it shouldn't be difficult to learn. From the reviews I read, BG2 scores way higher than NWN2 NWN2 uses 3rd Edition D&D (well, 3.5 technically), while BG2 uses 2nd Edition. A lot of basic mechanics carry over (spell learning/memorization, what each class does, etc.), certain mechanics are awkward off of having a 3rd Edition background (e.g. THAC0 and AC being lower-is-better). It is a game I'd recommend reading the manual for, because 2nd Edition D&D is something where if you make assumptions about it, you can get boned in the long run.
The same is true of well-designed 3rd edition games (of which I don't consider the base game of NWN2 to be). In general, 3rd Edition is more complicated than 2nd Edition, but NWN2 had shit for encounter design, whereas a lot of encounters in BG2 are quite unforgiving, even on normal difficulty settings.
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On October 09 2010 08:28 matko5 wrote: nwn2 is pretty bad. it had a ton of bugs as most of obsidian games, and the story is pretty dull. too much weak enemies to plow trough (like dragon age or the first nwn). I understand it somehow for icewind dale (both are basicly hack&slash) and nwn but being a story driven game like dragon age and nwn2 it's just too tedious to play. I played trough the nwn1 campaign, and I was pretty happy at the end because the story is not something they emphasised.
imho, that's the field where dragon age fails the most. repetitive console gameplay.
I actually liked nwn2 single player way more than vanilla nwn. With the exception of Hordes of the Underdark the story was almost non-existent. Nwn2 on the other hand was a classic example of Obsidian biting off more than they could chew. They aimed for an ambitous single player experience and ended up with a solid but generic storyline, a couple memorable characters, and an unevenly paced game with a crapload of bugs. some things were brilliant, like the demons subplot, the stronghold, and the trial sections, where as some things like, having to kill all those fucking orcs, and rocks fall everyone dies, just slowed the game down to crawl. At the end of the day I'll take an ambitious, partial failure over cultists in orange pajamas and time travelling lizards. The expansion was legitimately awesome though, and the best thing to come out of crpg land since BGII.
Back to BG though. Reading and replying in this thread made me go and start up another playthough. My original BG1 discs barely work due to me keeping them in their original 5 discs leaflet container since 1998 or whatever. Had to download TotSC cause I lost that one. I definitely recommend the fixpack and tweakpack from G3 as a bare minimum as far as mods go, especially the level cap remover as you can hit 161k exp before you even get through the expansion and the final chapter. SCS is rough for first time players, especially if you let BG1 mages use stoneskin.
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I just installed bg2 on my laptop, windows 7. damn it runs smooooooooooooooth.
questions for the knowledgeable: 1. bg1 states that my system is not in english so it cannot run, anyone encounter that problem? 2. can i play planescape torment with the widescreen mod? i tried to install it on bg1, couldn't do it.
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On October 09 2010 08:49 Aquafresh wrote: ...and time travelling lizards.
That was an awesome quest :D
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United States47024 Posts
On October 09 2010 08:49 Aquafresh wrote: I actually liked nwn2 single player way more than vanilla nwn. With the exception of Hordes of the Underdark the story was almost non-existent. Nwn2 on the other hand was a classic example of Obsidian biting off more than they could chew. They aimed for an ambitous single player experience and ended up with a solid but generic storyline, a couple memorable characters, and an unevenly paced game with a crapload of bugs. some things were brilliant, like the demons subplot, the stronghold, and the trial sections, where as some things like, having to kill all those fucking orcs, and rocks fall everyone dies, just slowed the game down to crawl. At the end of the day I'll take an ambitious, partial failure over cultists in orange pajamas and time travelling lizards. The expansion was legitimately awesome though, and the best thing to come out of crpg land since BGII. You sort of have to take NWN1 for what it was: a game that was essentially tacked on top of a solid editor and module-making experience. And for that, it was fine. The game itself was mediocre, but some of the modules that came out of the community for it were phenomenal (I am at least somewhat biased, as I have several friends who were fairly deep in the module-design community for NWN1).
And as far as the bolded part, I assume you're referring to Mask of the Betrayer for NWN2 (and if not, I'm going to say that MotB trumps HotU by FAR for being the better expansion). While I would not be that ambitious in saying how good it is, I will say that the story experience of MotB is good enough to remind you that some of the people who worked on PS:T are still at Obsidian.
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On October 09 2010 09:00 TheYango wrote:Show nested quote +On October 09 2010 08:49 Aquafresh wrote: I actually liked nwn2 single player way more than vanilla nwn. With the exception of Hordes of the Underdark the story was almost non-existent. Nwn2 on the other hand was a classic example of Obsidian biting off more than they could chew. They aimed for an ambitous single player experience and ended up with a solid but generic storyline, a couple memorable characters, and an unevenly paced game with a crapload of bugs. some things were brilliant, like the demons subplot, the stronghold, and the trial sections, where as some things like, having to kill all those fucking orcs, and rocks fall everyone dies, just slowed the game down to crawl. At the end of the day I'll take an ambitious, partial failure over cultists in orange pajamas and time travelling lizards. The expansion was legitimately awesome though, and the best thing to come out of crpg land since BGII. You sort of have to take NWN1 for what it was: a game that was essentially tacked on top of a solid editor and module-making experience. And for that, it was fine. The game itself was mediocre, but some of the modules that came out of the community for it were phenomenal (I am at least somewhat biased, as I have several friends who were fairly deep in the module-design community for NWN1). And as far as the bolded part, I assume you're referring to Mask of the Betrayer for NWN2 (and if not, I'm going to say that MotB trumps HotU by FAR for being the better expansion). While I would not be that ambitious in saying how good it is, I will say that the story experience of MotB is good enough to remind you that some of the people who worked on PS:T are still at Obsidian.
Yeah I was speaking strictly from a single player perspective, the timing of the release was not great for such a game because it was just before the MMO craze, and it was announced right when Bioware/Black Isle were being praised for PS:T, Fallout, and the BG series. I required too much effort to get the great multiplayer experience at the time, and the single player just wasn't there. I was referring to MotB, I can see how that was unclear. Even though best since BG2 is probably hyperbole, it was really damn good and worth checking out for people that got frustrated with vanilla NWN2.
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Mask of the Betrayer was excellent. Most rpgs where you have good/evil choices, the evil choice usually just means you're being a witless bully. No, in Mask of the Betrayer, there're legitimate reasons why you're being so selfish and destructive. It is very well thought out and very little of the robbing old ladies of their jewelry.
I can see how the "special mechanic" might've made the game too intense for casual players, but I appreciated the urgency and the fact that I couldn't feasibly regain all my high level spells at no cost.
Back to the brilliance that is the Baldur's Gate series. I really recommend playing without a guide. I did that the first time I played BG1 and most of BG2 until I got stuck, but it's worth it. Both games make side-quests interesting. Especially in the case of BG2, you'll never know if that merchant who has a minor problem will eventually turn into a massive dungeon crawl with a dragon orchestrating a wicked plot. Side-quests in BG2 are more interesting than most main-quests in other RPGs.
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On October 09 2010 00:16 Dfgj wrote:Show nested quote +On October 08 2010 07:06 Biff The Understudy wrote:On October 06 2010 08:40 SF-Fork wrote: so... is kuroisian the acid kensai from Big picture actually killable? I've managed to run away from him twice already, but I am really considering just giving up my celestial fury...
Do you want a tip to kill this bastard? You trap to death the tavern with the stairs where you find Baron Ployer (don't know the name in English). Sleep, trap again, sleep trap again. Trap both levels of the tavern. Then, when Kuroisan appears, you mass invisibility except for one character with haste, and you lead him through the 546436 traps you have settled. GG Kuroisan. Not very subtle, not very loyal, but screw that, after all, this mod is not very subtle nor loyal neither. Trap abuse solves everything. Not Illich, believe me.
But really Kuroisan is a beast. Unless you have a super hih level party, I don't see any other way to kill him.
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I tried to play Neverwinter Nights 2, but the game was so overly complicated, the control scheme was horribly clunky, and the story so drab I could barely make it through the tutorial.
Installing BG2 now. I played it briefly years and years ago, but it was at a friend's house. I recall the game being fascinating at the time.
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On October 11 2010 02:27 Biff The Understudy wrote:Show nested quote +On October 09 2010 00:16 Dfgj wrote:On October 08 2010 07:06 Biff The Understudy wrote:On October 06 2010 08:40 SF-Fork wrote: so... is kuroisian the acid kensai from Big picture actually killable? I've managed to run away from him twice already, but I am really considering just giving up my celestial fury...
Do you want a tip to kill this bastard? You trap to death the tavern with the stairs where you find Baron Ployer (don't know the name in English). Sleep, trap again, sleep trap again. Trap both levels of the tavern. Then, when Kuroisan appears, you mass invisibility except for one character with haste, and you lead him through the 546436 traps you have settled. GG Kuroisan. Not very subtle, not very loyal, but screw that, after all, this mod is not very subtle nor loyal neither. Trap abuse solves everything. Not Illich, believe me. But really Kuroisan is a beast. Unless you have a super hih level party, I don't see any other way to kill him. Possibly just read protection from magic on him and beat him up?
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Monks are so ridiculous...definitely my favorite class in BG2. 3% magic resistance per level after level 14...hit level 30 in TOB, magic does 10% to you. Not to mention your THACO, hits per round, and AC are off the charts (with no armor). Unfortunately they're a bit of a pain to level until you hit about 18 or so.
EDIT: AND your run speed is 15% faster than everyone else's...and you're resistant to poison and disease...and you get a special ability that can instantaneously kill mobs...need I go on o.O
EDIT2: Concerning hard bosses...I remember Kangaxx the Demilich absolutely murdering my party until I learned to get protection from abjuration scrolls to prevent instamazedeath on my main character :D
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Russian Federation1401 Posts
On October 11 2010 06:56 mierin wrote:Monks are so ridiculous...definitely my favorite class in BG2. 3% magic resistance per level after level 14...hit level 30 in TOB, magic does 10% to you. Not to mention your THACO, hits per round, and AC are off the charts (with no armor). Unfortunately they're a bit of a pain to level until you hit about 18 or so. EDIT: AND your run speed is 15% faster than everyone else's...and you're resistant to poison and disease...and you get a special ability that can instantaneously kill mobs...need I go on o.O EDIT2: Concerning hard bosses...I remember Kangaxx the Demilich absolutely murdering my party until I learned to get protection from abjuration scrolls to prevent instamazedeath on my main character :D
I thought kangaxx was pretty easy. I just used a protection from magic scroll on Keldorn with Carsomyr and 1vs1'd him.
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