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General discussion (archive)Baldur's Gate Enhanced official website is online: (209 posts)(209 posts)
(209 posts)
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This is my favourite topic
Posted July 29, 2012
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orcishgamer: Well, I'm not gonna lie, I am pissed about that. But I did complete it, including Nightmare Harvester on XBox 360 (I don't think I did any nightmare stuff on PC). Everyone said how hard it was... yeah I died a couple times because he actually wasn't a snooze fest, then I reallocated my skills (slightly under, but close to level 25, mind you) and, I shit you not, was able to kill him in 10 hits. I did this with my rogue, which is considered the hardest class with which to beat him. I did not do this with any crazy Awakening gear.

Verdict: Not hard, not tactical. On my semi-healing mage I could seriously let my teammates fight 75% percent of the game for me, cast 2 heal spells and slouch in my chair... Never mind the stupid overpowered Earthquake + Cloudkill (whatever they call it in DA:O) spell combo. Shit like that is why people can solo all parts of DA:O on Nightmare with a mage (when the game forces you to have a companion you set them to passive).
The Harvester took me frikking ages. But I heard that the difficulty on the PC is higher than on consoles. Can't find proof right now however.
Posted July 29, 2012
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Catoblepas: and I don't think it's fair to say that the game is objectively worse without nostalgia goggles.
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StingingVelvet: Good thing I never said that then.
Yes, you have.

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Jaime: Completely serious this time, the Infinity Engine is still far and away the best engine for a a tactical RPG I've ever seen. I don't know how convenient it is for developers, creating the beautiful, hand-drawn backdrops might take a lot of time, for example, but for me as a player, the depth it offers, while still allowing for easy, complete control of the battlefield, is unparalleled. Dragon Age, the spiritual successor of Baldur's Gate, for instance, falls short in both regards.
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StingingVelvet: I think there is some nostalgia or a comfortableness factor going on there. Dragon Age is very much superior in look and playability for me, in pretty much every way.
You dismiss the preference of others for BG over DA to nostalgia. and accused Jaime of not being objective in the post I was replying to. Your opinion is abundently clear.
Posted July 29, 2012
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keeveek: In DA:O ? Freeze the fuckers, flame the fuckers (it makes a combo), attack them with swords, repeat. You couldn't even make a different mage or warrior mostly, because upgrading your character was so vastly limited.

There was even a video on YT somewhere, where one guy finished the game only using flame/freeze combo through entire game.
There's no freeze/flame combo. There are 4 fire spells (flame blast, fireball, fire weapons and inferno), and 4 frost spells (cone of cold, winter's grasp, ice weapons and blizzard), and none of them interact in a combo. I KNOW this because I just finished the game as a mage.

And you're definably wrong, you CAN make very different mages and warriors (warriors less so). You can opt for a debuffer mage, a support mage, a nuker mage, a melee arcane warrior or a healer, at the very least.

HOWEVER! Yes, DA: O is a very easy game, even on nightmare difficulty.

BG 1 was hard, I'll agree (tactical? Not really, imo). BG2? Not really. I destroyed most of the game as a dual classed kensai/mage who basically plowed thru everything. The only "hard" part was when I was a "low level mage" during the period where I was "leveling" my mage levels to go over the fighter levels. Note that this was w/o playing throne of bhaal, just shadows of amn, I got bored of ToB everytime after 1/2 an hour of slogging through it.

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SimonG: . But I heard that the difficulty on the PC is higher than on consoles. Can't find proof right now however.
Its harder, I think it was mentioned on the wiki that quite a lot of items were superior on the console versions (the wiki has 2 stats on the items, the lower value one was the PC version's stats). Tomes also gave 1 extra attribute point.
Post edited July 29, 2012 by ycl260779
Posted July 29, 2012
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keeveek: In DA:O ? Freeze the fuckers, flame the fuckers (it makes a combo), attack them with swords, repeat. You couldn't even make a different mage or warrior mostly, because upgrading your character was so vastly limited.

There was even a video on YT somewhere, where one guy finished the game only using flame/freeze combo through entire game.
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ycl260779: There's no freeze/flame combo. There are 4 fire spells (flame blast, fireball, fire weapons and inferno), and 4 frost spells (cone of cold, winter's grasp, ice weapons and blizzard), and none of them interact in a combo. I KNOW this because I just finished the game as a mage.

And you're definably wrong, you CAN make very different mages and warriors (warriors less so). You can opt for a debuffer mage, a support mage, a nuker mage, a melee arcane warrior or a healer, at the very least.

HOWEVER! Yes, DA: O is a very easy game, even on nightmare difficulty.

BG 1 was hard, I'll agree (tactical? Not really, imo). BG2? Not really. I destroyed most of the game as a dual classed kensai/mage who basically plowed thru everything. The only "hard" part was when I was a "low level mage" during the period where I was "leveling" my mage levels to go over the fighter levels. Note that this was w/o playing throne of bhaal, just shadows of amn, I got bored of ToB everytime after 1/2 an hour of slogging through it.

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SimonG: . But I heard that the difficulty on the PC is higher than on consoles. Can't find proof right now however.
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ycl260779: Its harder, I think it was mentioned on the wiki that quite a lot of items were superior on the console versions (the wiki has 2 stats on the items, the lower value one was the PC version's stats). Tomes also gave 1 extra attribute point.
Kensai/Mage is one of the more powergamey builds, IMO. If you choose a powergamey build, you shouldn't be suprised when you plow through content. I played as a fighter/mage and it was significantly harder. At any rate, it has been noted that powergaming in DA can lead to mages trivially Soloing the game. Doing that in BG is brutally difficult. Considering you have a lot more factors to consider with the wider variety of character classes and abilities, and larger party size I would definately consider BG to be more tactical.

Also considering multiple classes were rolled into three core classes, I would hope that they have multiple builds, but lets keep in mind the sort of variety that would occur if say, clerics and mages were rolled into one class in a BG game, and how many options the resulting class would have.
Post edited July 29, 2012 by Catoblepas
Posted July 29, 2012
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ycl260779: There's no freeze/flame combo. There are 4 fire spells (flame blast, fireball, fire weapons and inferno), and 4 frost spells (cone of cold, winter's grasp, ice weapons and blizzard), and none of them interact in a combo. I KNOW this because I just finished the game as a mage.
Ok, so it was Grease + Fire , sorry.

and Fire + Thunder made some firestorm, yes? or Blizzard + Thunderstorm, whatever, I played DA:O long time ago...

[url=http://dragonage.wikia.com/wiki/Codex_entry:_Storm_of_the_Century]http://dragonage.wikia.com/wiki/Codex_entry:_Storm_of_the_Century[/url]

you could win the game with that combo...
Post edited July 29, 2012 by keeveek
Posted July 29, 2012
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keeveek: Ok, so it was Grease + Fire , sorry.

and Fire + Thunder made some firestorm, yes? or Blizzard + Thunderstorm, whatever, I played DA:O long time ago...
There's also Freeze + Shatter. That one's nasty.
Posted July 29, 2012
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keeveek: [url=http://dragonage.wikia.com/wiki/Codex_entry:_Storm_of_the_Century]http://dragonage.wikia.com/wiki/Codex_entry:_Storm_of_the_Century[/url]

you could win the game with that combo...
Considering friendly fire is ON in the PC version, this can pretty much wipe out your party in the progress ...
Posted July 29, 2012
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SimonG: Considering friendly fire is ON in the PC version, this can pretty much wipe out your party in the progress ...
In open areas - cast it from distance.
in closed areas - cast it from one room to another (i know it's kinda exploit, but hell, you could also spam fireballs in Baldur's Gate ;p)+

by the way, it was quite easy to program your team AI to GTFO from blast radious automatically.

Abilities in AI scripting were amazing in DA:O
Post edited July 29, 2012 by keeveek
Posted July 29, 2012
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keeveek: In DA:O ? Freeze the fuckers, flame the fuckers (it makes a combo), attack them with swords, repeat. You couldn't even make a different mage or warrior mostly, because upgrading your character was so vastly limited.

There was even a video on YT somewhere, where one guy finished the game only using flame/freeze combo through entire game.
Well... I'm not the kind of guy that ruins his game by repeatedly using one overpowered approach :-P The only "tactic" in BG laid in preparation, and more often than not, "preparation" meant getting killed, loading a game, and going in again. That's most certainly not combat tactics, that's ... ... ... A very advanced form of predicting future.
Posted July 29, 2012
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Nergal01: The Mage-Templar conflict was interesting as a concept, but, again, I felt that the execution left a lot to be desired. Both sides were equally unattractive, with almost all Templars coming across as a bunch of fascists, whereas way too many mages would either turn out to be blood mages in secret or would just resort to blood magic at the first sign of trouble. It's too simplistic to be truly engaging, IMO, so the choice offered at the end didn't mean anything to me.
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SimonG: That is actually what I found interesting. There was no "good side" (or bad side). Black on grey morality at best. You had the bad fascist who were basically from the beginning made out to be the bad guys. Only to find out during the cause of the game how evil magic can really be and how uncontrollable it is. So those Gestapo stand ins actually have a point. No siding with them is of course a whole different decision.

Additionally the game is very dark, which I generally like in writing. The game was basically one player punch after another. No matter how hard you tried, everything was falling apart left and right.
Actually this is why I have come to the conclusion that Bioware can't write dark fantasy, they fall for the same trap dark fantasy fanfiction writers fall for, which is the belief that dark fantasy = everyone is nasty and evil. Instead, you need 'White Knights' as well as 'Black Knights' on both sides in order to show WHY people go along with it and to make you care for them so that they don't become Faceless Evil Faction (TM) and you care when they die. When everyone's scum, no one cares, and that's the failing of most Dark Fantasy fanfiction authors and that's the failing of Bioware. Of course, such a setting could be done, but it is incredibly difficult and Bioware are not up to the task.

Dark Fantasy should be about hard choices, what do you sacrifice in order to save what you believe in, etc. When you have no choice in the matter, then it ceases to matter and that's the problem: whatever you do the same things will always play out in a Bioware game, and that's why I have ceased to look for C&C in a Bioware game.
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keeveek: In DA:O ? Freeze the fuckers, flame the fuckers (it makes a combo), attack them with swords, repeat. You couldn't even make a different mage or warrior mostly, because upgrading your character was so vastly limited.

There was even a video on YT somewhere, where one guy finished the game only using flame/freeze combo through entire game.
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Fenixp: Well... I'm not the kind of guy that ruins his game by repeatedly using one overpowered approach :-P The only "tactic" in BG laid in preparation, and more often than not, "preparation" meant getting killed, loading a game, and going in again. That's most certainly not combat tactics, that's ... ... ... A very advanced form of predicting future.
Honestly, I played through DAO on hard on PC twice and still don't know what tactics I used beyond just brute-forcing it. BG did require me to think, but I also tried to limit my use of resting so maybe that helped somewhat. I'll agree with you that no game should force a player to re-load in order to have pre-knowledge of the situation.
Post edited July 29, 2012 by FlintlockJazz
Posted July 29, 2012
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FlintlockJazz: Dark Fantasy should be about hard choices, what do you sacrifice in order to save what you believe in, etc. When you have no choice in the matter, then it ceases to matter and that's the problem: whatever you do the same things will always play out in a Bioware game, and that's why I have ceased to look for C&C in a Bioware game.
I think that works pretty well in DA. Up until Act 3 that is. They should have put that game on hold or made a proper ending DLC. But I still liked it, the whole "in the middle of things you can't control". And I personally don't think you need "White Knights" to cheer for in a dark fantasy. Everybody has his pros and cons, just stick with what you think is the best.

And I think DA:O was dead on about hard choices. Especially Orzammer was pretty much the choice Fallout 1 makers originally wanted with Junktown. And the option of the Kingsmeet, were you had to let one of your companions go. None of the DA games really had "the best" endings. For everything you gained, you needed to give up something else.
Posted July 29, 2012
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Catoblepas: You dismiss the preference of others for BG over DA to nostalgia. and accused Jaime of not being objective in the post I was replying to. Your opinion is abundently clear.
I said there is a nostalgia FACTOR. I criticized him for saying nostalgia is not a factor AT ALL. Big difference between those statements and saying DA:O is objectively a better game.
Posted July 29, 2012
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StingingVelvet: and saying DA:O is objectively a better game.
I would say that. Any day of the week ;-P. But I really don't like AD&D, the infinity engine and high fantasy, so that might make me a bit biased. ;-)

And I never finished BG 2, so I can't say much about that.
Posted July 29, 2012
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Fenixp: Well... I'm not the kind of guy that ruins his game by repeatedly using one overpowered approach :-P The only "tactic" in BG laid in preparation, and more often than not, "preparation" meant getting killed, loading a game, and going in again. That's most certainly not combat tactics, that's ... ... ... A very advanced form of predicting future.
In this case, clearly Jagged Alliance 2 has no tactics. I quick saved and quick loaded this game like gazillion times. Much more often than in BG2.
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StingingVelvet: and saying DA:O is objectively a better game.
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SimonG: I would say that. Any day of the week ;-P.
Tomato soup is objectively a better soup than chicken soup.

Task for you: find an error in that sentence. I made it easier for you. :-)
Post edited July 29, 2012 by keeveek
Posted July 29, 2012
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keeveek: In this case, clearly Jagged Alliance 2 has no tactics. I quick saved and quick loaded this game like gazillion times. Much more often than in BG2.
So the Iron Man mode in JA 2 is simply there for what? Vanity?

I'm not the best tactics game player, but I know of people who have played through JA 2 with never reloading a save because of a bad outcome. Only because we can't do it, doesn't mean it can't be done.
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This is my favourite topic
Community
General discussion (archive)Baldur's Gate Enhanced official website is online: (209 posts)(209 posts)
(209 posts)