Baldur's Gate 1/2, Icewind Dale 1/2, Planescape Torment - Which one of these do you like the most?

For me it's between BG2 and P:T

My favourite is Baldur's Gate - 1998 version. The game has so many options with regards to how you can play:
- a lot of choices for making a character
- a lot of choices for party composition
- freedom to explore most of the game from the start
There is a fine balance between classes and story/combat ratio. I've been able to complete the game with: 2 bards, 2 thieves, a fighter and fighter/druid, and I enjoyed the experience (currently I'm playing with: 3 clerics, a fighter/thief, a ranger and a bard). There's also a great attention to detail that add to the overall atmosphere: artifacts description, inn gossip, loading screens, the stone gui. I enjoy the low level AD&D experience, wandering through wilderness, the memorable NPCs, the storyline regarding both the main character and the antagonist, but also the iron crisis. In general, I really like how the game looks, how it sounds and how it feels.

Planescape: Torment has a special place in my heart and is a close second favourite out of the Infinity engine games.

Very interesting. Not to deviate from the topic, but what is it that makes you favor the original over EE?

Spoken from someone who has never played the original, only EE.

Also, do you think Baldur's Gate 2 is an inferior game, or do you simply prefer BG1?



Oh, i would just add that imho BG1's soundtrack is better than 2's. Not by much, but it is. The exploring the plains theme is wonderful.

BG1

BG2 has some good points like romance though

I tend to omit Baldur's Gate 2 when talking about BG series, IE games, or cRPGs in general. The reason is that I know that I'm the minority and I don't want the discussion to turn into unpleasant argument, because someone prefers one title to the other.

I would like to apologise in advance for my opinions. I know that most people will disagree.

So, yeah I don't like BG2 - I was disappointed from my first experience when it came out. I wanted to give the game a fair chance, but in the end I had to force myself to complete it. Things I don't like about the game:
- character animations are mirrored (when they turn from right to left, they swap items in their hands) and they look worse than BG1.
- the artstyle: items, gui, portraits and locations. Some of these just look weird, or have really low quality.
- romances: never liked them, don't like them in most games. Planescape: Torment has shown a subtler and better written approach.
- very limited party composition options. NPCs have elaborate quests, but I find most of them unlikeable (Imoen is emo now, Jaheira is a milf, Minsc is a headache generator with all that yelling, Jan Jansen makes me cringe and so on).
- very unbalanced classes. Arcane casters rule the game so much it's not even funny, the rest of the classes feel like innecessary baggage. In BG1 archers are very powerful, but you are still fine without them. In BG2 I don't know if you actually can complete the game without a mage or a sorcerer.
- lack of freedom, the game is much more linear.
- There's something off with the writing and the lore. Artifacts get like two sentences, there's a focus on emotions and feelings in the storyline. The antagonist is just annoying and feels like an angry teenager.

I think I will stop here with BG2. Is it a bad game in my opinion? Of course not, but I prefer other cRPGs.

As for EE, it unfortunately uses BG2 engine and carry all the machanics that I don't like. They also changed the gui, the cinematics, character animations etc. Besides, I will never support Beamdog for insulting the playerbase and lying to me personally.

EDIT sorry nvm i am going to reply again in a few hours

For me, the one that would be my favorite is Icewind Dale, mainly because it doesn't have many of the problems that the Baldur's Gate games have. Unlike BG1, you aren't stuck at a low level for too long (leveling up to level 2 before leaving the starting town is realistically possible), and unlike BG2, you aren't constantly interrupted by timed quests when you're trying to do other things, like manage your inventory and shop.

With that said, it still has some problems, like the fact that real time with pause combat just isn't that good, the fact that all movement relies on pathfinding (can't control your characters with the arrow keys), and that traps just aren't a good game mechanic (outside of troll games, which this game is clearly not). * Character animations are a non-factor for me in judging games.
* Artstyle is again a non-factor.
* Romances: There isn't enough choice in them, and the options are not inclusive enough. Male characters have 3 choices, but they're all female. Female characters have only 1 choice, a male character. To me, I would rather have no romance at all than only have straight romance.
* Class balance: This can be an issue (although it is fun being able to use spells like Chain Contingency that I haven't seen in any other CRPG, and Project Image reminds me of Romancing SaGa's rather fun Phantom Warrior spell, complete with the ability to copy consumables and use them without using up the real ones). One thing BG2 does well, however, is that every single multi-class combp has some neat synergy that you don't get with either class individually.
* Lack of freedom: There's actually a lot to do here. The problem I have, however, is that the game will start timed quests for you, and that gets rather frustrating and stressful, especially when I'm just trying to manage my inventory.

(With that said, I'd argue that it's still not as bad as Final Fantasy 7, and even that is still far better than, say, the NES version of Ultima 5 or Hoshi wo Miru Hito. Note, however, that the issues with those games are entirely different than the ones with the Baldur's Gate series.)

Edit: I find that IE combat is more enjoyable if I disable the ally AI; this is especially true if using a bard in Icewind Dale (with Heart of Winter installed).

So you are agreeing with him that BG2 is flawed?



It's 01:38 am here, so i am a little slow, but i can't remember that many timed quests in BG2. There's Baron Ployer's curse on Jaheira, there's the quest with Anomen and his dad... Otherwise not much?

Again i am a little slow rn.

The Ranger's stronghold quest is timed, and not obviously so, you can easily miss out on your stronghold.

That said, BG1 wasn't a real sales success on release, it became more popular after the success of BG2.
I think there are many reasons that BG2 is vastly more popular than BG1, though asking such questions on a forum like this always brings out the vocal minority.

Other issues with IE games:
* The weapon proficiency system is poor, as it serves to limit the player's options rather than expand them, and the decision is essentially blind when you're playing for the first time, as you don't know what interesting weapons you'll find in the game. Note that this issue is present in BG1 and IWD1, but is more serious in BG2. If a game is going to have weapon proficiencies, I would prefer it to be handled like Final Fantasy 2, where you can become good with a new weapon type by using it enough, even if you're near the end of the game.
* The whole THAC0/AC mechanic, and the fact that mechanics focus on it rather than damage amounts, is one flaw in every (A)D&D based game out there. At low levels, this mechanic results in attacks missing often enough to be frustrating, especially when you get a game over because the enemy got lucky and you didn't. At high levels, the lack of damage increases at level up makes battles take a while, and it's almost impossible to get the precise balance that the system requires to work; after a certain point, either attacks hit 95% of the time or only 5%. Since armor only affects AC (chance to avoid an attack), it becomes useless at that point, and in the 5% accuracy case, you reach the point where only attacks that don't use an attack roll are useful. When one of the key stats that can be manipulated is useless, you know that game balance is no longer present. (The high level D&D games, like Throne of Bhaal and Pools of Darkness, seem to be balanced so that attacks have 95% accuracy.) (Note that IWD2 still has this mechanic, but different numbers are used and THAC0 is now called "attack bonus". The mechanics are equivalent and still suffer the same issue.)
* I may have mentioned this before, but BG1 sticks you at a low level for far too long, only augmenting the problems with low level AD&D combat.
* Too many abilities need specific counters. When I was playing BG1, a quest led to my level 1 party fighting an enemy that used Improved Invisibility, which is clearly not fair at that point. (In fact, I'm thinking that maybe invisibility isn't the best mechanic, and that maybe the game might have been better without it.)
* BG1's level cap is low, to the point where single class characters will only grow a single digit number of times in the game. In other words, one of the bes parts of RPGs happens way too rarely.

With regards to THAC0 and AC I was trying a long time ago in BG1 to change the item stats and rebalance them so that the armor would provide more damage reduction instead of armor class. My inspiration came from Fallout and escpecially the metal armor in that game. I wanted to redesign the parts of armor to have different purposes and the same with the weapons. Unfortunately my modding skills were too low for that to succeed, but maybe one day it would be fun to come back to it.

P:T for me - it really hit a tune with me.

Both Wasteland and Dragon Wars took the approach where armor provides damage reduction rather than evasion.

Dragon Wars has a separate stat that handles evasion; as far as I can tell, Wasteland doesn't seem to have any stat that helps you evade ranged attacks (and I've done some testing of this). I note that both these games are balanced so that your attacks hit most of the time if you're decently skilled (except for melee in Wasteland, but there you can at least get multiple attacks).

Planescape: Torment still holds the title of my all-time favourite RPG. No other RPG before or since has managed to usurp the crown, though some have come close. It remains to be seen if Cyberpunk 2077 can finally manage it. ;)

I doubt that it can based on my first couple of days. Not the same level of strorytelling / screenwriting. Also far away from the philosophical depth of P:T.

Unless an Indie developer does something amazing, you will not see a similar game.