So after finishing KOTOR, I've been looking for another RPG to play. Since currently I only have a laptop with an graphics card that sucks, and no upgrade in sight for quite some time I tend to play games on my iPad.

I'm tempted to get Baldur's Gate Especial Edition for my iPad (I hope it's ok talking about this EE here), but I've read it's a very hard game. That discourages me a bit, in the sense that, is it too hard that I'll get frustrated/bored and stop playing? Or just hard enough to keep it challenging and interesting?

Is there a guide that will help me?

Thank you.

If I had a decent computer I would probably lean to Mass Effect, since I believe is and easier transition from Kotor. I wanted to play Kotor 2 (but again, no PC to play it with, and they haven't brought it to iPad, unfortunately).

You're making me more tempted with the novice description, would you say I would get the same feel as Kotor, in the sense of leveling up as I play through the story/quest/side-quest? Or will I need to grind to continue? (One of the reasons I have difficulty getting into RPG's, is grinding, for example, I really enjoy the story of Final Fantasy X and currently have 60 to 70 clocked in, but am at the point I need to grind to level up and get better weapons. This has led me to not picking up the game in months.)

When I mentioned a guide was because of two reasons. One was that I keep reading the game is too difficult and non-forgiving, so I was anticipating getting frustrated/bored and stop playing. Two, I didn't want to miss side-quest, NPC/party members, storylines, or good items.

Any more opinions, suggestions?

BG has a lot of similarities as KOTOR. If you liked KOTOR, I think you'll love BG. Of course, it's fantasy vs sci-fi. So if you like KOTOR and you like swords and sworceries, you'll like it.

Instead of over-the-shoulder, it's top-down isometric tactical.

BG1 is a great place to start, but it won't be until BG2 to get some of those engrossing story/character points (much like KOTOR, characters will interrupt you to tell more of their story. It works well.)

Have fun with it!

It's fine to talk about the enhanced editions here, although given that this is the forum for the originals and there's...controversy over whether the originals or the EEs are better (something I'm not going to get into here: there are plenty of other threads discussing the issue), it's perhaps inevitable that the prevailing opinion here is that the originals are superior. The opinion may well be right; I've never played the EEs, so am in no position to give an opinion.

As for the game itself: it's not hard in the Dark Souls "you have to play perfectly or you'll die" sense, although there are some fights which are very tough. Most of the game has a reasonable degree of challenge without being too hard. There's a difficulty slider if you find the game too hard/easy anyway.

The biggest reason it's considered difficult to get into nowadays is because it uses the Dungeons and Dragons second edition rules, which were in common use then but are no longer generally used, either for pen and paper roleplaying (which has moved on to later dnd editions) or computer RPGs (which began making their own simpler rulesets, perhaps because computer games were getting a wider audience, so less of their players knew systems like dnd). Second edition dnd has some rather...counterintuitive quirks, and it's a good idea to know them before you start the game. Fortunately, it's fairly easy to learn those quirks, and once you have the system is fairly simple. Remember that it was designed to be played by people with pencils and dice rather than computers, so it's not going to be too complex.

I would recommend reading through this guide before getting the games. It's a general rules guide for all the dnd 2e games, so doesn't contain any spoilers for BG. The game itself contains quite an extensive tutorial in how to actually play the game, so once you understand the rules you shouldn't find the game too difficult to understand. As an added bonus, you'll also have learnt to play planescape: torment and icewind dale 1, as they use the same engine and ruleset. I wouldn't recommend following a guide for the actual gameplay: you'll ruin the experience.

Before you buy the game on an ipad, you may wish to consider the mods available for the computer version. They're a little complex to install (you run a setup program which opens a command box, and keypresses tell the installer what to install), but there's a lot of things available, which you won't get if you buy the ipad version AFAIK. Fixpacks, the "unfinished business" mods which add content which Bioware had to cut due to time constraints, mods to improve the AI or add new content...even a mod which lets you play the whole of BG1 in the BG2 engine. If you still prefer the convenience of the ipad version, then ok, but I thought I'd mention the benefits of buying it on PC.

Edit: You made a post while I was writing mine. I'd be surprised if even a poor computer nowadays couldn't run Baldur's Gate, given its age. In fact, I've been playing Icewind Dale on a several-years-old laptop which wasn't bought for gaming in the first place, and having no problems with things like lag. You shouldn't need to grind during the game, and grinding is pretty inefficient anyway since most enemies don't respawn and a lot of xp comes from quests. In my playthrough of the two games, I only had to grind at one point. The only reason I had to grind at all was because I stubbornly refused to get rid of one of my party members to get another thief to find traps while my main thief was dual classing, a process in which you lose access to class abilities for a time in exchange for an eventually more powerful character. The game is rather unforgiving of starting with a bad character build, but that's something which you should be able to avoid by using the guide I linked above. Once you start playing, it's fairly forgiving, and you can always reload if something goes wrong. Without a guide, you probably will miss out on some side quests and items, but it doesn't really matter - the game is designed so you don't have to explore and pick up everything to win. Just think of the things you missed as extra content you might find in another playthrough.

There are a few things which you should keep in mind, though. You should definitely turn on most of the autopause options as soon as you start playing: that'll make the game pause as soon as something important happens, making it much less about reflexes and more about tactics.

If you look at the various tables in the guide I linked, you may notice that ability scores of about 8-14 tend to do very little, good or bad. For that reason, if you have two ability scores of equal importance to your character, a score of 18 in one and 10 in the other is almost invariably better than a score of 14 in both.

There are a couple of ways of getting levels in multiple classes: multiclassing and dual classing. Not all options you're allowed to try work well as multiclasses, and not all work well as dual classes. If you plan to make a dual class character, you should make that decision at character creation rather than later.

Finally, have several saves in different save slots. That way, if something goes wrong and you decide you need to change something you previously did, or you hit a bug which corrupts your save, or something, you have something to go back to. That's possibly the most important piece of advice in my entire post.

KOTOR 1 is more alike to Mass Effect rather than Baldur's Gate. The thing about KOTOR 1's side quests is most of them are repetitive. I didn't do much of them if I remember correctly (I played it on the iPad too and I'm still waiting on KOTOR 2 which by the way has less interesting storyline than 1 and is overall not as good).

BG side-quests aren't repetitive and offer good rewards like experience, the best armor, weapons, and items in the game. You get most of your experience from side-quests so grinding is optional. I was in love with the game so much I wanted to put the extra thirty minutes to getting a couple levels before I did the next plot mission (I think I was still in Chapter 2). Unfortunately, I did use a guide to make sure I find all the NPCs and locations that offer these quests. The thing is, I did all of them! That's probably why I gave up 30 hours in... Damn it. So, I am a hypocrite in that regard. It's good that you want to do everything and in the end, it's worth it.

The good thing about BG is the progression. You don't need to worry about getting the best weapons if you do all the side-content and explore. The only overwhelming part is the number of spell scrolls because you'll need to read the very in-depth description of what it does. That's why I always played a fighter, but you'll still have mages and clerics as companions you need to control.

Setting the difficulty to novice doesn't decrease the experience points you get like you would in the original version and the feeling of challenge is somewhat there. You could start on novice and move up to normal if you finding it too "easy". On normal, the challenge is quite evident but fun. Unfortunately, there will always be that one NPC or creature that kicks your ass on it, so just revert back to novice.

For me, I'm in love with story and characters above all else because that kept me going. The combat, in time, surprisingly became fun. If you like Bioware's RPGs, this is the mother that sprouted every other RPG in terms of dialogue, story, and characters.

I finally decided that I'll replay BG1 to the end (a lot of alcohol needed). If you find that you really like the game, know that BG2 is x50 better with things like party banter, romance, story, characters, content and you feeling like you're better than everyone else, like the whatever kingdom or world the game takes place in is in the palm of your hands (heh).

Do all the content, reach the experience cap, get the tomes that increase your abilities, and carry over to BG2.

There are a hundred more good things I can talk about. Every concern your addressed shouldn't affect you. Take your time to learn and invest.

I recommend this guy who seems to know what he's talking about and has played the series many times over: http://www.youtube.com/playlist?list=PL4g_Nh4yhk-9811bh_zGbKxnqCMD8zwOX The videos are tutorials on mostly everything you need to know about the EE from the graphic user interface to what the hell THAC0 means.

Although I loved KOTOR 1 even with the romance with Bastilla bugging out before the ending (I was pissed off), Baldur's Gate does everything better minus the combat which is clearly outdated. The iPad, I find with the touch screen capability makes it more fun in comparison to the PC. In fact, I think one of the reason I stopped halfway through KOTOR 2 was because of it being on PC, and also the uninteresting storyline.

As for Mass Effect, play it last as you'll appreciate everything about the game because everything about it is excellent, including the combat and game engine which changes each game and makes it that much more re-playable. I've played all three games like four times each. Consider it a reward for completing both Baldur's Gate games.

If you can... Mwuhahahahahahhaaahaha aa...a a.. *cough* *cough*.

@pi4t My laptop can play Baldur's Gate without problem, I have Planescape Torment from GOG (although I have yet to play it (sacrilege I know)), and it plays just fine. The reason I was leaning to the iPad version was because of the portability. Since I have an iPad, I have never carried my laptop any where. And since they say they corrected bugs and added new content, I thought that also meant the content the mods re-add.

As far as I know, they don't add the "unfinished business" the mod re-adds. What the EEs add is some new things invented by the developers of the EE: a couple of extra NPCs who can join your party*, one or two new areas, a separate gamemode involving fighting a gauntlet of battles, etc. How well the content fits thematically with the rest of the game has been called into question. Obviously, the EEs don't add anything that most of the mods can offer either, and I would imagine there's no way to gain access to these things on the ipad version. If in your situation the portability is better than the customisability, then go ahead and buy the ipad version, though. Ultimately, it isn't that important what form you play the two games in: they're still great games.

*There's a limit of 6 people in a party, so don't interpret that as meaning it makes the game easier

This is correct. As part of their (Overhaul) contract they were not allowed to alter the original content.

I can't imagine doing BG combat without a mouse and without keyboard-shortcuts, that just sounds awful. Maybe I´m playing differently, but fighting, for me, involves a million mouseclicks and sweeps a minute, going through the menues, selecting the characters, just every-single-thing. Maybe if you are very patient..

Some people say they prefer the touch screen. I don't have an opinion, as I said, my only comparison would be Kotor, which translated quite nicely to the iPad.

I can't image playing BG without the spacebar! If people think the game is too hard on a tablet, that is probably the primary reason.

When I read about the difficulty it was of the game not, the iPad version.

Thanks, I have been trying to find some opinions on this. At least one review compared the BG to the Kotor version for the iPad, praising the latter for it´s superior optimization for touchscreen-control.

I had never played AD&D in any form what so ever before I first played Baldur's Gate in '99. I found it very easy to get into and learn. The tutorial is pretty thorough in the first section.