(To Darvond, since I couldn't figure out how to quote you and only you): I'm sure I wouldn't. LOL. My current favorite in the genre is Warcraft 3 precisely because the effective range of the siege units is short enough that you need to have an adequate screening force protecting them, or they can be found and destroyed very easily.

I'm reminded of the game Arc the Lad 2, where one of the party members (Hemo-Ji) has an attack called Chongara Bomb, which attacks all enemies on the battlefield. That ability, while not that strong, is still capable of breaking game balance:
* Often, there's enough distance at the start of the battle that it takes several rounds for melee combat to start, and even spells (except Chongara Bomb) have limited range, so they can't reach all the way across the map.
* The skill does cost MP, but if you import a save from Arc the Lad 1 that has obtained all the Romancing Stones, you can get an item in AtL2 that reduces that MP cost to 0.

Other SRPGs with attacks that ignore range limits can also be broken. See Final Fantasy Tactics (Math Skill) for an example of this; what matters isn't how far the enemy is from the player, but rather whether the enemies level is divisible by 4 (for example, there's other parameters and other divisors you can use).

Edit: Worth noting that these two cases favor the plaver. AtL2 has no enemies that use that particualr attack, and FFT's AI is incapable of making good use of Math Skill.

I love RPGs. It's my favorite genre, but the one thing that always annoys me a bit that may seem strange to other people is that I really don't like those unattended strategically placed boxes of loot just laying about for me to help myself to. This is even worse when the game in question has a rogue class or even a thieves guild, which means all these unattended boxes exist in a world where they should have been stripped clean before I even found them.

Doom ruined PC gaming

I don't like Baldur's Gate and the other Infinity engine D&D RPGs that followed. They may be great as interactive D&D stories, but as games they kinda suck. They are everything bad about D&D with very little of what makes it fun. And the combat isn't even turn based, which is just a baffling and terrible way to handle D&D combat in game otherwise detrimentaly faithful to the tabletop ruleset.

Go on.
I think I saw someone play an Infinity Engine game. It looked...unfun. Trap finding basically was what, stand near something and hope it turns blue? And then casting spells, well here's prismatic spray going in all directions, hope you can figure out this which projectile sprite is going in this weird isometric box!

I don't like these games either, with combat being the main reason.

BG2 also has a problem where, depending on who is in your party, the game sometimes pushes you into quests, some of which have time limits, when you're trying to do other things. I would prefer for quests to either be player initiated or triggered immediately as the result of something player initiated, rather than having another character initiate conversation with the PC.

I think those games would have been better without traps. (It also doesn't help that BG2 has a lack of recruitable thieves.)

Another opinion I have: Overhead tile-based views (like in most 2D JRPGs prior to the N64/PSX/Saturn generation) are better than isometric.

Speaking of which: If the Nintendo 64 had had a decent selection of JRPGs (it doesn't), they would have been better than the ones on the PSX, because the PSX encouraged the devs to waste space with non-interactive FMV cutscenes, which you can't do as much on the N64.

Red.

The Infinity engine D&D combat system is very good. The combat can be paused at any given time. Making it fluid and fast, while being tactical and fairly complex, without being annoying and stressful. I can´t bear real time strategy combat games. And this comes from someone who doesn´t like the D&D rules much.



Looking at the companion list in gamebanshee, the classic version of BG2 has 4 thiefs out of 16 recruitable companions: Imoen, Yoshimo, Nalia, Jan Jansen.

More than enough.

Fun movie. The sequel not so much.

I've no idea why you brought it up though.

Darvond asked which color turned traps into when detected. :p

Ah, that makes sense :D You quoted a whole string of posts there, and his in its entirety, so I didn't realise what that was about.

The forum doesn´t make it easy. I didn´t bother to try to bold the question either, to be honest. I keep it simple as to prevent the forum from exploding or something. :D

Baldur's Gate 2 SPOILERS ahead:

Unfortunately, that list is misleading:
* Imoen and Nalia have both dual-classed away from thief to mage. This means they can't level up the thief class, so their thief abilities do not ever improve.
* Jan Jansen is a multi-class thief/illusionist. So, his thief abilities will improve, but not as fast as a single class thief.
* That then leaves Yoshimo, who is a single class thief, albeit with a kit. The problem, however, is that (and why I put a spoiler warning on this post) he betrays you mid-game and then plot dies. If you wait until after that point to recruit him, he will be dead and won't be recruitable there either. Hence, Yoshimo doesn't count because he is not usable for the rest of the game.

As a result, no the game does not provide any good thief options; there's no single-class thief who is usable in the later part of the game.

The combat pausing destroys any fluidity the combat might have, and it doesn't provide the rhythm that turn-based combat provides.

Also, at low levels combat isn't that fast, as a character can swing for 6 seconds and the game will make only one attack roll for that character. (This is also a case of misleading animations.)

There's other problems with this battle system, but I have to go now.

Imoen and Nalia can detect traps and deactivate them without any problem. Locks too. They don´t need to level up unless you want a thief specialized in stabbing enemies from behind. You were talking about traps, so my point stands.

Same with Jan Jansen. In fact, I feel like the character wastes losts of XP´s in his thief class. Those XP´s would be much more useful spent in his wizard class instead.

Related to SPOILERS

Yoshimo counts because you can keep him for the majority of the main campaign. Then, you rescue Imoen, who is as good as any thief can be, unless, again, you want a thief who can stab enemies.

NO MORE nothing related to SPOILERS

And if you want a character to stab enemies and deal good damage, you can recruit Valygar. Not my thing, by the way.

So, yes. Whatever you might want, you are well covered.

About the combat.

There are lots of combats in the game. If the combat were turn based, the game would be boring and endless. With the pause button, you can make the combat part of the game as fast or thorough as you might need. No need to pause against low difficulty enemies. But you can pause the game as many times as you need to be able to give orders to your characters when fighting against boss enemies or groups of enemies with wizards.

At low levels a simple puny bear is a boss fight. :D Put the bear to sleep and problem solved. XD

In BG2, such a thing doesn´t happen if characters are decently built and equiped.