I haven't finished PoE cuz things ln life got in the way. And now I'm thinking I should just begin a new PoE game and buy the DLC for it and go from scratch rather than loading my old game with my kind of wimpy looking Wizard. But Wasteland 2, Pillars of Eternity, and Shadowrun are the only isometric RPGs I've ever played. I heard you can even create your biographies in IWD which is a simple simple nerdy thing that I really loved about WL2. So I was thinking I should maybe get IWD instead of the White March DLC for PoE. What do y'all think? Is IWD a classic to good to pass? Or should I get the White March instead? I considered Baldur's Gate but the I research i did found that they loaded the game up with feminist pro-gay content that spoiled the games. I don't know how true that is, I know folks sure did overreact to those Tropes vs Women vids, but there are so many games to play I decided to skip the homoerotic BG for either IWD or PoE. How do IWD and PoE compare?

Mostly bullshit about the Baldur's Gate added content. There's three or four new avoidable NPCs. There might be some of the stuff you're referring to in the expansion (Siege of Dragonspear), but it's entirely skippable (you don't even have to install it) and wasn't part of the original trilogy. Even if that wasn't the case the originals are still available as extras when you buy the enhanced editions.

You should not skip a PC gaming classic over silly concerns like that. The Baldur's Gate trilogy in its entirety (Baldur's Gate I+II+ToB) is a much much better experience than either of your alternatives.

Not that Icewind Dale isn't an excellent game and White March isn't a good experience, in contrast to the Baldur's Gate trilogy they're VERY poor choices.

Choose Icewind Dale over White March though. It's a full game vs a small expansion.

IWD is pure Pen&Paper dungeon crawling. If you are like me and enjoy the dungeon crawling and battle aspects the most in Pen&Paper / cRPGs, then Icewind Dale is the best choice for you.

If you are more heavy on the role-playing and talking to tons of NPCs part, then Baldur's Gate might be the better choice. I could never really get much into Baldur's Gate myself, it just felt like too much stuff to read, so I quickly gave up on it.

Pillars of Eternity, especially White March is a mix of both IWD and Baldur's Gate. You get your village with lots of talk and quests and decisions, but you also have your nice and long dungeons for dungeon crawling.

I wouldn't call the expansion small, it's basically 20 hours playtime per part. Baldur's Gate is just too big. =p

Yet another example of why it's a horrible decision to not be able to buy the original Baldur's Gate games anymore. But if you really want it, even the buggy new games, then you can buy that, and just download the originals instead. It does come with the EE versions, so if you do buy that, you may as well play the best and working version, which is the original games. None of that new crap they introduced in the EEs either, which you mentioned above.

Don't have the PoE expansions myself yet, so can't comment on those, but you're probably better off buying IWD instead. You get a full game that way, and it's a really good game. It's much more heavy on combat than the BG games, so if you love dungeon crawling and sometimes chaotic combat against heaps and heaps of foes, then this should be right up your alley. It also has some absolutely gorgeous locations, and I think it knocks out Baldur's Gate when it comes to atmosphere and even music.

If you're into power-gaming, it's a good choice as well, because you can design all your 6 party members from scratch. Takes time ofc, but means you get the exact characters you want, with the classes you want, attributes you want, and so on.

BG1+BG2 are fantastic games though, so if you haven't played them yet then I probably recommend that the most. Just make sure you go with the original games instead.

Yeah, I keep seeing that in forum posts. That BGEEs have a bunch of bugs. I thought most of those comments were a little old so i didn't know if all that was still an issue. That seems like such a tragedy. The story really is important to me, but the roleplaying element is maybe equally so. The thing is I'd rather just not deal with mods because I'm pretty basic with computers. I'll probably go with IWD for after I finish Vampire Masquerade.

Several people told me that they've fixed Baldur's Gate EE by now. It was only buggy the first few months after release.

Eh, while the EEs had some bugs, the tons of bugs complaint was partially to do with an attack campaign against the game over its controversial content. It was needless to say, way way overstated. It was also more focused on the Siege of Dragonspear expansion than the base game.

Last two times I played the enhanced edition of the first game I didn't run into any bugs.

The second game? Playing through the enhanced edition was the first time I've played through Baldur's Gate II without having to also use a save game editor to fix the script variables that game keeps messing up. It was the most bug free experience I've had with Baldur's Gate II.

I don't play EE versions of BG (even though I own them) but it seems that the new versions (2.0 and higher) are quite buggy again. You can get more info about BG:EE on the Baldur's Gate forum.

And it is not true that people complain about EE just because of the political correctness.I simply find it a poor copy of the original. Again, just go to the BG forum to see all the complains about the EE versions that people have (not the expansion which is separate issue).

I always suggest playing the original versions rather than the EE versions.

What about IceWind Dale vs Temple of Elemental Evil? Which game is better? Seems like both are the shit when it comes to combat. How do you think those two compare?

I don't know which game is better (though I do note that ToEE is said to be buggier, if that's (not) your thing). However, I can mention one critical difference between the two games:

IWD has the same gameplay style of PoE, where actions happen in real time, but there's the option of pausing the game and issuing commands, as well as options to automatically pause the game when certain events (like a character being severely injured) happen.

ToEE, on the other hand, has tactical turn based combat. Each battle participant takes turns, and when it's the turn of one of your characters, time stops to give you a chance to tell the character what to do. For example, if you decide to have a character cast a fireball, you have all the time in the world to choose where it will explode (and the game even visually indicates the radius of the explosion, so it's easier to get it to hit just enemies). This gives the combat a slower, more tactical, feel.

It's worth noting that the old Gold Box (Forgotten Realms Collection 2, Krynn series) and the Dark Sun games are also turn-based in a similar manner, and the Pencil and Paper game on which these games are based is also turn-based, so these games are more faithful to P&P.

I personally prefer the turn-based combat of ToEE and the Gold Box games.

ToEE is pure D&D combat. It emulates the D&D combat system the best of all games in existence, but doesn't have much story and it's a buggy hell. There is a huge fan-made mod that fixes most of its problems.

I'm not really a fan of mods myself, so I'd probably put IWD above it since it works just fine without mod.

1: There was an attack campaign on the game and quite a few bug reports were because of that, not because of genuine players running into bugs that actually impeded their experience in any way.

2: Many of the bug reports were specifically for the expansion, not the base game.

3: 2.0 was a major update, it's bound to have some new bugs. They're at 2.3 now and most of the bugs have been fixed. If you can deal with the many inconveniences of the original (and there are definitely a lot of people who can't), then definitely go for it. Playing the original game as intended first and saving modded/enhanced versions for later reruns is definitely a very good way to go. Good thing is, if you buy the enhanced edition from GoG you get both versions. If you're worried about bugs in Baldur's Gate Enhanced Edition, Temple of Elemental Evil is not for you.

I'm into Cloakwood, going through a dungeon looking for Davearon or sometihng like that, of the Iron Throne I think its called. I'm really enjoying BG1. It captures a sense of adventure in a Tolkein kind of way so well. Yet, I can't say the plot has really grabbed hold of me. I always hear the sequel is where it gets really good. Its certainly been a lot of fun, but it hasn't shown me why its better than Pillars of Eternity. In fact, and this is not to aggravate the die hards, its made me want to replay PoE again really badly. I really enjoy their statistics. But I wish we could write all the character biographies like in Wasteland 2 and Icewind Dale. And I haven't seen any gay stuff yet either by the way. I did have a woman cook in this Iron mine ask me if my party was going to shag her though. Should I be offended? Or is it only gay stuff that is enraging?

The sequel is a lot better, but the first game is still pretty good and you shouldn't spoil it by playing the sequel first.

Gay stuff, if it is encountered, should not offend any reasonable person, so there is no reason to be offended by that. In fact, I am more offended by you complaining about "feminist pro-gay content" like it's a bad thing.