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Baldur's Gate seriesSo far I like BG better than BG2(34 posts)(34 posts)
(34 posts)
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This is my favourite topic
Posted April 26, 2012
I'm with FAButzke, walking around the wilderness on the off chance I might find something is tedious. Some of my problems with BG no doubt spring from having played BG2 first.

For instance, after seeing the likes of Crom Faeyr, Carsomyr and Blackrazor, the weapons in BG can seem lackluster. Going from BG2 classes, kits and half-orcs to BG's is also rough. No romances and greatly decreased NPC talk too.

One thing that I think is really cool about BG2 that I don't think would change if I had played BG first is how well some classes come into their own.
Posted April 26, 2012
Story of BG2 was vastly superior to BG1, but I enjoyed the setting and exploration of BG1 far more. BG1 is fairly bright, almost happy, where as BG2 is dark and run down. Exploration can be tedious, but at the same time, I'm an 'area clearer' so I really enjoyed exploring every in of an area, then having areas adjacent to it open up on the map. I really don't like to have to get a quest to have an area show up on the map.
Posted April 26, 2012
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FAButzke: -The "exploring" part everyone praises is boring to me.
I don't like roaming around looking for things that may be there may not be there. I feel I'm wasting my time everytime a game does that (like the Mako part on ME1. It was fun for the first five times, than I just wanted to go back to the normandy).
Brilliant way to phrase it.

I *love* the side areas, and little nuggets of 'gold' you find in them.

I *hate8 the sheer amount of time I have to spend walking around hoping to *find* a nugget in a given area.

Another reason I love BG2 over BG1 is in-party chatter. Not just random 'swords and steel, the stuff of legends! Right boo?' from Minsc, or Jaheira's ever-snooty 'maybe this party doesn't need as much help as I thought...'. Yes, those are great character moments, but... that's all they are: moments. Moments that repeat and repeat, without really *developing* character. You do see *some* such conversations, but I honestly have no clue how they're triggered, and you don't see *as many* of them as you do in BG2.

There is *nothing* like having Aerie and Jaheira getting catty over your affections to help bring the characters to life (and, damnit ladies, can't you just get *along*?), or perhaps it's Jan shoving another (hilarious) turnup story down your gullet. Lets not ever, ever forget the fun involved in having that rat-bastard Haer'dalis stealing Aerie out from under you, either!

BG has *many* points in it's favor, but it also has many, *many* flaws.
Post edited April 26, 2012 by Rilbue
Posted April 27, 2012
One of the main reasons i prefer 2 over 1 is the removal of having to explore about 20 copy and pasted grassland areas for stuff, not to mention better party banter, more spells, better locations, better story, better fights, better characters, better graphics, better...everything

i still like BG1 but just having to spend hours exploring those grassy areas....ugh

I would not mind exploring if they canged it up a bit, maybe some desert areas, icey areas etc with a few more quests...that'd make it 10x better
Post edited April 27, 2012 by pingu53
Posted April 27, 2012
I suspect that BG:EE will add in many of the desirable traits from BG2 and thus render much of this conversation moot. We already know classes and races are being expanded, chances are so is dialogue.
Posted May 01, 2012
Number one thing I don't like in BG2: I just finished a hard quest for one of my party members, and I walk to another area, and already I'm being pestered that I have to go meet someone for a different party member, who I already completed the primary quest for. And then I'm going to the location to follow up on the request, and I'm literally besieged by people walking up to me and wanting me to do more and more quests. Where's the freedom?

Number two thing: Where's the fun of exploration? I have to find people that will mark new locations on the map for me. Can't I just explore and find stuff to do for myself?

To the number one problem, I decided to fix that by playing three PCs and then picking three NPCs and swapping them for others at my whim, that way the amount of interruptions are limited, and I can balance my party better by having three roles filled by my three custom characters.

Other than this stuff, it's still a great game. But I always find myself running back to BG1 because of the amazing freedom, although the last few parts of the game are kind of tedious - the maze at the end couldn't be more annoying. How long did they test this game for pathfinding? I don't understand why anyone would even go into the Firewine Ruins. Not much a reward to that one.
Posted May 01, 2012
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Bimlanders: Number one thing I don't like in BG2: I just finished a hard quest for one of my party members, and I walk to another area, and already I'm being pestered that I have to go meet someone for a different party member, who I already completed the primary quest for. And then I'm going to the location to follow up on the request, and I'm literally besieged by people walking up to me and wanting me to do more and more quests. Where's the freedom?
Most quests aren't time limited though, so you can do them at your leisure. I agree that it gets to be somewhat overwhelming, though.

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Bimlanders: Number two thing: Where's the fun of exploration? I have to find people that will mark new locations on the map for me. Can't I just explore and find stuff to do for myself?
One of the reasons I like BG 1 better is due to the freer roaming than available due to the more restricted access to BG2's maps/areas.

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Bimlanders: To the number one problem, I decided to fix that by playing three PCs and then picking three NPCs and swapping them for others at my whim, that way the amount of interruptions are limited, and I can balance my party better by having three roles filled by my three custom characters.
Something I do quite often as well. But, then again, I do that in BG1 too...

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Bimlanders: Other than this stuff, it's still a great game. But I always find myself running back to BG1 because of the amazing freedom, although the last few parts of the game are kind of tedious - the maze at the end couldn't be more annoying. How long did they test this game for pathfinding? I don't understand why anyone would even go into the Firewine Ruins. Not much a reward to that one.
Re Firewine Ruins: I usually end up making my party sit still except for a tank and a thief (to get the traps out of the way). Other than two battles there, you can get by quite handily with only two characters exploring. When it comes to the battles where you need more backup I just bring the others up one by one (admittedly, this is metagaming, as I'm preparing for a battle that hasn't even triggered yet. But I find it helps keep my sanity).

Overall I prefer BG1 as well. I tend to prefer lower level play though. Once characters reach high levels and get tons of spells and abilities, I find games get to be more tedious. But that just me, maybe.
Post edited May 01, 2012 by Coelocanth
Posted May 01, 2012
Re: pathfinding: that too is one of the things that gets improved by playing BG 1 in the BG 2 engine (Tutu or BGTrilogy). Firewine Ruins is still a bit anoying, but not nearly as bad as in the vanilla BG1 engine.
Posted May 01, 2012
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DubConqueror: Re: pathfinding: that too is one of the things that gets improved by playing BG 1 in the BG 2 engine (Tutu or BGTrilogy). Firewine Ruins is still a bit anoying, but not nearly as bad as in the vanilla BG1 engine.
I honestly don't notice much of a difference. I just finished a run through BG1 last night (modded using the BGT, so using the BG2 engine), and Firewine Ruins aside, I still found there were plenty of areas where the pathfinding was bad, characters got stuck on rocks, they didn't have sense enough to walk around an object in their way when I clicked on a chest/cabinet/table, and they wanted to take the long route to get from point A to point B.

Granted, I've played it the last 3 or 4 times in the BG2 engine, so maybe I'm not remembering just how bad the original pathfinding was.
Posted May 02, 2012
I didn't notice an improvement from BG1 to BG2 pathfinding either.
In BG1 I have the suspicion that the labyrinths were made on purpose to challenge the player with the non-working pathfinding and resulting chaos if you don't progress step by step.
Posted May 02, 2012
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kmonster: I didn't notice an improvement from BG1 to BG2 pathfinding either.
I remember editing the INI to improve the pathfinding in BG1 back in the day (1999), as mentioned in the readme.txt (that no one ever reads these days), and I do recall it making a difference. You could tell because on a slower computer, it took a second or two longer for the characters to decide where to move after you clicked. :D LOL. Not quite the desired difference then, and they still got stuck sometimes.

I just noticed I have not even tried out the "Enhanced Pathfinding" option in the BG2 config program. Does it work any better?
Post edited May 02, 2012 by anamorphic
Posted May 02, 2012
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kmonster: I didn't notice an improvement from BG1 to BG2 pathfinding either.
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anamorphic: I remember editing the INI to improve the pathfinding in BG1 back in the day (1999), as mentioned in the readme.txt (that no one ever reads these days), and I do recall it making a difference. You could tell because on a slower computer, it took a second or two longer for the characters to decide where to move after you clicked. :D LOL. Not quite the desired difference then, and they still got stuck sometimes.

I just noticed I have not even tried out the "Enhanced Pathfinding" option in the BG2 config program. Does it work any better?
It helps by telling the npcs to 'recalculate' their path every few steps, letting them fix themselves if they're going the wrong way.
Posted May 02, 2012
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Coelocanth: Granted, I've played it the last 3 or 4 times in the BG2 engine, so maybe I'm not remembering just how bad the original pathfinding was.
The pathfinding in BG2 is actually almost identical to BG1, it just has more nodes and characters will update their paths more often. The big thing is that characters can "nudge" each other (and creatures too, sometimes) out of the way. This makes them less likely to get caught on the corners of their boxes, and it makes navigating narrow passages MUCH easier. They'll still get caught on world objects on the map occasionally, but they won't get constantly caught on each other so much.
Posted May 12, 2012
Both are amazing games, but yes, BG1 is way better than BG2 for that reasons, i remember i liked much more when i played, even if BG2 offers you "more power" on level/spells/etc... BG1 is much better game because it´s freedoom.
Posted November 17, 2017
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Bimlanders: Number one thing I don't like in BG2: I just finished a hard quest for one of my party members, and I walk to another area, and already I'm being pestered that I have to go meet someone for a different party member, who I already completed the primary quest for. And then I'm going to the location to follow up on the request, and I'm literally besieged by people walking up to me and wanting me to do more and more quests. Where's the freedom?

Number two thing: Where's the fun of exploration? I have to find people that will mark new locations on the map for me. Can't I just explore and find stuff to do for myself?

To the number one problem, I decided to fix that by playing three PCs and then picking three NPCs and swapping them for others at my whim, that way the amount of interruptions are limited, and I can balance my party better by having three roles filled by my three custom characters.

Other than this stuff, it's still a great game. But I always find myself running back to BG1 because of the amazing freedom, although the last few parts of the game are kind of tedious - the maze at the end couldn't be more annoying. How long did they test this game for pathfinding? I don't understand why anyone would even go into the Firewine Ruins. Not much a reward to that one.
My opinion, BG1 was the better game story, music and art style wise. But when it comes down to programming and graphics, BG2 has the upperhand

But my opinion is that BG1 is better than BG2
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Baldur's Gate seriesSo far I like BG better than BG2(34 posts)(34 posts)
(34 posts)