I always thought BG2 was a good example of the difference between graphics and visuals...the graphics look dated now, but the environments are so detailed in a way that adds authenticity, so the game actually looks better to me than many that came after it.
BG1 and 2 still look great if you get TUTU and widescreen mods. The hand painted areas look better than any 3D rpg made before 2005.
People say stuff like this a lot, but the areas aren't hand-painted. They were pre-rendered in 3D and the snapshots were taken and used for the areas.
The same goes for all the character sprites. They're animated 3D models turned into sprites.
The point is, the backgrounds were made from 3D models that weren't anywhere near renderable in a 3d game engine. I bet it's the same models the cutscenes were made from, which looked amazing at the time.
I didn't know TOTSC buffed Sarevok. No wonder I could never beat him.
Yeah, I wouldn't have noticed if it weren't for "CLUACONSOLE: DrizztDefends()" or however it went :P.
Seriously though I'd say they buffed him almost too much. I mean he's beatable, but
Again, you don't need to cheese it though so it's "holy shit that was an epic battle" rather than "it's about fucking time I got this bullshit over with".
edit: In fact he's a pussycat compared to the
post-Durlag's Tower demon boss in the cult cellar. I swear to god I don't know how you're supposed to deal with that "ahaha I shall now randomly turn one of your party members into a goddamn zombie thus perma-killing them" spell without continually reloading and hope your party wins all its save vs. spells/polymorph/death.
I didn't know TOTSC buffed Sarevok. No wonder I could never beat him.
Yeah, I wouldn't have noticed if it weren't for "CLUACONSOLE: DrizztDefends()" or however it went :P.
Seriously though I'd say they buffed him almost too much. I mean he's beatable, but
Again, you don't need to cheese it though so it's "holy shit that was an epic battle" rather than "it's about fucking time I got this bullshit over with".
edit: In fact he's a pussycat compared to the
post-Durlag's Tower demon boss in the cult cellar. I swear to god I don't know how you're supposed to deal with that "ahaha I shall now randomly turn one of your party members into a goddamn zombie thus perma-killing them" spell without continually reloading and hope your party wins all its save vs. spells/polymorph/death.
About that spoiler:
I *think* that spell is gaze-based, but I'm not 100% sure. I was able to shake it off with Dispel Magic, the key was killing him before he could recast. About the only reliable way was to have somebody memorize that spell about 3-4 times, keep them back out of silence range, and swamp the thing with summons while the rest of the party killed the cultists. Follow up with cloudkill for the finish.
Pretty much everything else I tried didn't end well
BethrynUnhappiness is MandatoryRegistered Userregular
edited December 2009
I see Lilarcor equippred Jutranjo. Good man.
(I think I also see Daystar, Dragonhelm, and I think that is essentially +2 Full Plate with some random extra stat armour, and maybe an anti-Blunt girdle?)
Either use the forcedirectdrawemulation (or whatever its called) setting in the application compatibility toolkit or get this patch, though the patch doesn't give you the performance improvements of disabling hardware acceleration.
That should get the game to work without 3D acceleration, no idea why 3D acceleration is failing.
I didn't know TOTSC buffed Sarevok. No wonder I could never beat him.
Yeah, I wouldn't have noticed if it weren't for "CLUACONSOLE: DrizztDefends()" or however it went :P.
Seriously though I'd say they buffed him almost too much. I mean he's beatable, but
Again, you don't need to cheese it though so it's "holy shit that was an epic battle" rather than "it's about fucking time I got this bullshit over with".
edit: In fact he's a pussycat compared to the
post-Durlag's Tower demon boss in the cult cellar. I swear to god I don't know how you're supposed to deal with that "ahaha I shall now randomly turn one of your party members into a goddamn zombie thus perma-killing them" spell without continually reloading and hope your party wins all its save vs. spells/polymorph/death.
About that spoiler:
I *think* that spell is gaze-based, but I'm not 100% sure. I was able to shake it off with Dispel Magic, the key was killing him before he could recast. About the only reliable way was to have somebody memorize that spell about 3-4 times, keep them back out of silence range, and swamp the thing with summons while the rest of the party killed the cultists. Follow up with cloudkill for the finish.
Pretty much everything else I tried didn't end well
You are correct, but I found it impossible to evade that, so I just turned the difficulty down so I didn't have to deal with permadeath. Only my paladin and Dynaheir survived.
I beat Sarevok with about 20 uses of the summon monster wand, I don't think there's any other way to do it.
I always thought BG2 was a good example of the difference between graphics and visuals...the graphics look dated now, but the environments are so detailed in a way that adds authenticity, so the game actually looks better to me than many that came after it.
BG1 and 2 still look great if you get TUTU and widescreen mods. The hand painted areas look better than any 3D rpg made before 2005.
People say stuff like this a lot, but the areas aren't hand-painted. They were pre-rendered in 3D and the snapshots were taken and used for the areas.
The same goes for all the character sprites. They're animated 3D models turned into sprites.
it still looks better than anything that was made before Oblivion. And I knew about the character sprites.
So it turns out you can buy a DVD with every Baldur's Gate game on it for like ten pounds.
So that's what I did.
That's cheap at twice the price, considering how many hours of enjoyment they'll provide.
I'm guessing i've played through BG2 and ToB over 20 times, give or take.
I still find little bits of entertaining new material/dialogue every single time I play.
I enjoyed PS:T, BG1, and IWD I/II a lot, but none of them seem to have the monumental replay potential that BG2 has.
zhen_rogue on
0
AegisFear My DanceOvershot Toronto, Landed in OttawaRegistered Userregular
edited December 2009
Few days ago, since it's christmas break and I'm bored, I decided to reinstall BG2 and attempt an Ironman run of it. I have had to amend this into allowing restarts after certain batshit-stupid incidents (namely, the game deciding to spawn 8 guards and 2 wizards on me when I took some gold of a table of an empty room) and I'm not sure whether I should also allow myself to restart if the only guy that dies is my main character (mainly due to instances of sheer AI disdain for the main PC).
It has made the game somewhat more terrifying, partially since I hardly ever play with a rogue (hi traps!) and forgetting there are golems rather early on and I only have 1 guy that can currently damage them. Though I haven't run this party before, I think that: Main (Undead Hunter Paladin), Korgan, Edwin, Viconia, Valgyar, & Jaheira (to be replaced possibly by Haer'Dalis), will be interesting. Might remove Jaheria/Haer'Dalis for Imoen if traps start kicking my ass.
man playing without a thief is just silliness. At least pick up one of the mage/thieves and pump up their find traps.
Also yeah, one of the more annoying things about playing through this again is that I've forgotten the particulars of a bunch of the sidequests and such, so I don't have a feel for which ones my party really isn't ready to do yet. The thespians and their stupid planar prison really kicked me in the junk
Eat it You Nasty Pig. on
hold your head high soldier, it ain't over yet
that's why we call it the struggle, you're supposed to sweat
0
AegisFear My DanceOvershot Toronto, Landed in OttawaRegistered Userregular
edited December 2009
I never could get the hang of backstabs, so I've found thieves useless. That plus the fact that none of the thieves can get an open lock score above 95 (minus Yoshimo, but he can fall in a hole) unless I make it as my main PC, which runs into the first problem. And I have a cleric, so I can just cast Find Traps and summon monsters on them. The only time I've ever used them is a side effect of having Imoen around as a mage.
Lord Firkraag's quest is a good starter I think, as is the d'arnas(sp?) hold. I forget what opens up tradesmeet but that's about medium level I think and so is the planer sphere.
Lord Firkraag's quest is a good starter I think, as is the d'arnas(sp?) hold. I forget what opens up tradesmeet but that's about medium level I think and so is the planer sphere.
I'm avoiding Firkraag's quest, mostly because my normal run of the place involves always killing the
dragon
Which normally involved 30-50 reloads.
Starting with Korgan's sidequest, Jaheira's curse, the rival thieves guild, Aerie's rescue, and then Planar Sphere is actually fairly easygoing.
Well, except Planar Sphere. The halflings always kick my ass and they decided to ignore everyone and kill my main PC. I think I might reload there because bullshit.
I never could get the hang of backstabs, so I've found thieves useless. That plus the fact that none of the thieves can get an open lock score above 95 (minus Yoshimo, but he can fall in a hole) unless I make it as my main PC, which runs into the first problem. And I have a cleric, so I can just cast Find Traps and summon monsters on them. The only time I've ever used them is a side effect of having Imoen around as a mage.
Enter the swashbuckler.
You give up the backstab modifier... for a leveling bonus to your AC, the ability to take three ranks in two-weapon fighting style, and you still get to boost the shit out of find traps/pick locks/set traps.
Swashbuckler is my #1 choice for a BG2 main character.
30-50 reloads.
You've reminded me of my one major complaint with IE games. No forgiveness.
Well part of the issue is that if you do him first, you're significantly underleveled compared to what he is. Which means I'm relying on incredibly lucky...things he does not killing people outright, praying my summons live and hurt him, and hope for lucky crits.
My next playthrough will probably be as a swashbuckler.
I always like playing rogues, but I played a vanilla one in my first ever playthrough and found backstab to be too much hassle to set up for too little reward usually.
Edit: Is swashbuckler/mage viable? I'm thinking I could build something with all the cheese of a kensai/mage, a little less damage, and thief skills.
30-50 reloads.
You've reminded me of my one major complaint with IE games. No forgiveness.
Well part of the issue is that if you do him first, you're significantly underleveled compared to what he is. Which means I'm relying on incredibly lucky...things he does not killing people outright, praying my summons live and hurt him, and hope for lucky crits.
True, though I distinctly remember the first couple combats in BG1 being unavoidable and completely retarded.
The mage out front of the tavern? Yuck.
I think you can talk your way out of it but still.
Almost every combat in the games has a random chance for your party to be completely destroyed, or at the very least permanently lose a member. I was OCD with saving and loading in those games and it hurt the experience considerably.
Still love them, but they're hard games to show off when that's so predominantly noticeable.
"Hey newbie try this game it's a classic!"
*death*
"Load the save!"
"Oh you didn't make a save? Well walk back to that part and save first"
*death*
*load*
*death*
*load*
*CRITICAL*
"Cool you won, now there's some dialogue you better save!"
the only issue would be that dualing out of swashbuckler so early would mean not really taking advantage of it's bonuses (primarily the AC), and the thief skills might wind up not being all that useful given how much of them you get at level 8 or whatever thieves start at. And thief doesn't open up as many fun weapon choices as kensai does.
Eat it You Nasty Pig. on
hold your head high soldier, it ain't over yet
that's why we call it the struggle, you're supposed to sweat
and yeah, the main reason I hate playing under core rules and higher is the silly permadeath thing. There's probably a mod that removes it that would've saved me a reload here and there, but oh well.
Eat it You Nasty Pig. on
hold your head high soldier, it ain't over yet
that's why we call it the struggle, you're supposed to sweat
0
AegisFear My DanceOvershot Toronto, Landed in OttawaRegistered Userregular
edited December 2009
Fuck those Planar Sphere Halflings
Finally killed them. Main issue was that goddamn mage that had spell protections. Oh and Viconia deciding to stop casting True Sight that I had ordered her to, thus making him untargettable by Edwin.
Still ended up with my main mazed, half the party confused and half dead. Thank god for Korgan making his save against disintegration.
This thread is evil, it made me pick up my solo monk game and take him clear to the elven city. Monks are such cheese, killing dragons with a single blow, took the drow city apart with my bare hands... then, OHAI Demogorgon. I just.cant.hack.Demogorgon and its driving me up the wall.
I'd always found it more of a pain to revive a fallen member than to just reload, but I did try to make a run through without abusing it and lost a fair amount of party members. It resulted in my main character and those that survived being much tougher than usual. I had a party of three I think and they kicked ass, but everyone else was fucking DEAD.
Pretty amusing but I didn't end up finishing the game.
Stigma on
0
AegisFear My DanceOvershot Toronto, Landed in OttawaRegistered Userregular
I'd always found it more of a pain to revive a fallen member than to just reload, but I did try to make a run through without abusing it and lost a fair amount of party members. It resulted in my main character and those that survived being much tougher than usual. I had a party of three I think and they kicked ass, but everyone else was fucking DEAD.
Pretty amusing but I didn't end up finishing the game.
This is what I'm hoping for as I usually do the same. Having to play with reviving party members and dealing with permadead PCs and rejigging my party is going to be interesting.
the only issue would be that dualing out of swashbuckler so early would mean not really taking advantage of it's bonuses (primarily the AC), and the thief skills might wind up not being all that useful given how much of them you get at level 8 or whatever thieves start at. And thief doesn't open up as many fun weapon choices as kensai does.
When I did my kensai/mage one I dualed at 12 or 13 - I don't remember, whichever one gives you the extra to-hit bonus - and kicked everyone out of my party and kept learning and unlearning spells for xp.
I might just go straight swashbuckler though.
What do monks get that's cool? I've never played one.
I'd always found it more of a pain to revive a fallen member than to just reload, but I did try to make a run through without abusing it and lost a fair amount of party members. It resulted in my main character and those that survived being much tougher than usual. I had a party of three I think and they kicked ass, but everyone else was fucking DEAD.
Pretty amusing but I didn't end up finishing the game.
This is what I'm hoping for as I usually do the same. Having to play with reviving party members and dealing with permadead PCs and rejigging my party is going to be interesting.
It's funny how it plays out sometimes. You have someone down and it takes awhile to revive them so they miss out on experience and end up weaker, leading to them being gibbed down the line. Only the strong survive!
It'd be rather epic if by the end the only person alive was the main character and you go up against the final boss with the blood of your friends leaving terrible terrible memories. Poor Imoen died almost immediately, hahaha.
do party members not receive XP if they're not in the party? This is going to be tedious...
the party mechanic is very outdated from today. there is no camp. There is no easily shifted party. Your party is the people you take with you. You can get people to wait in their place, but your party is the people you take with you all the time. When they're dead they don't get XP.
There in effect is no party outside of the active one.
do party members not receive XP if they're not in the party? This is going to be tedious...
You have 6 part slots and never have to take anyone along to do anything outside of short, personal sidequests that won't even trigger if the character hasn't been with you for a while so you aren't going to be swapping characters much.
Posts
The point is, the backgrounds were made from 3D models that weren't anywhere near renderable in a 3d game engine. I bet it's the same models the cutscenes were made from, which looked amazing at the time.
Steam Support is the worst. Seriously, the worst
Yeah, I wouldn't have noticed if it weren't for "CLUACONSOLE: DrizztDefends()" or however it went :P.
Seriously though I'd say they buffed him almost too much. I mean he's beatable, but
Again, you don't need to cheese it though so it's "holy shit that was an epic battle" rather than "it's about fucking time I got this bullshit over with".
edit: In fact he's a pussycat compared to the
About that spoiler:
Pretty much everything else I tried didn't end well
(I think I also see Daystar, Dragonhelm, and I think that is essentially +2 Full Plate with some random extra stat armour, and maybe an anti-Blunt girdle?)
That should get the game to work without 3D acceleration, no idea why 3D acceleration is failing.
I beat Sarevok with about 20 uses of the summon monster wand, I don't think there's any other way to do it.
it still looks better than anything that was made before Oblivion. And I knew about the character sprites.
So that's what I did.
That's the best thing you could ever do with ten pounds in your entire life
and that's counting blowjobs.
Was this like 5 years ago or.
I don't see how this can happen and you're posting here now.
It is like saying "Hey guys I just bought this X3 game and played it for like 10 minutes"
That's cheap at twice the price, considering how many hours of enjoyment they'll provide.
I'm guessing i've played through BG2 and ToB over 20 times, give or take.
I still find little bits of entertaining new material/dialogue every single time I play.
I enjoyed PS:T, BG1, and IWD I/II a lot, but none of them seem to have the monumental replay potential that BG2 has.
It has made the game somewhat more terrifying, partially since I hardly ever play with a rogue (hi traps!) and forgetting there are golems rather early on and I only have 1 guy that can currently damage them. Though I haven't run this party before, I think that: Main (Undead Hunter Paladin), Korgan, Edwin, Viconia, Valgyar, & Jaheira (to be replaced possibly by Haer'Dalis), will be interesting. Might remove Jaheria/Haer'Dalis for Imoen if traps start kicking my ass.
Currently DMing: None
Characters
[5e] Dural Melairkyn - AC 18 | HP 40 | Melee +5/1d8+3 | Spell +4/DC 12
Also yeah, one of the more annoying things about playing through this again is that I've forgotten the particulars of a bunch of the sidequests and such, so I don't have a feel for which ones my party really isn't ready to do yet. The thespians and their stupid planar prison really kicked me in the junk
that's why we call it the struggle, you're supposed to sweat
Currently DMing: None
Characters
[5e] Dural Melairkyn - AC 18 | HP 40 | Melee +5/1d8+3 | Spell +4/DC 12
I'm avoiding Firkraag's quest, mostly because my normal run of the place involves always killing the
Which normally involved 30-50 reloads.
Starting with Korgan's sidequest, Jaheira's curse, the rival thieves guild, Aerie's rescue, and then Planar Sphere is actually fairly easygoing.
Well, except Planar Sphere. The halflings always kick my ass and they decided to ignore everyone and kill my main PC. I think I might reload there because bullshit.
Currently DMing: None
Characters
[5e] Dural Melairkyn - AC 18 | HP 40 | Melee +5/1d8+3 | Spell +4/DC 12
You've reminded me of my one major complaint with IE games. No forgiveness.
Enter the swashbuckler.
You give up the backstab modifier... for a leveling bonus to your AC, the ability to take three ranks in two-weapon fighting style, and you still get to boost the shit out of find traps/pick locks/set traps.
Swashbuckler is my #1 choice for a BG2 main character.
that's why we call it the struggle, you're supposed to sweat
Well part of the issue is that if you do him first, you're significantly underleveled compared to what he is. Which means I'm relying on incredibly lucky...things he does not killing people outright, praying my summons live and hurt him, and hope for lucky crits.
Currently DMing: None
Characters
[5e] Dural Melairkyn - AC 18 | HP 40 | Melee +5/1d8+3 | Spell +4/DC 12
I always like playing rogues, but I played a vanilla one in my first ever playthrough and found backstab to be too much hassle to set up for too little reward usually.
Edit: Is swashbuckler/mage viable? I'm thinking I could build something with all the cheese of a kensai/mage, a little less damage, and thief skills.
True, though I distinctly remember the first couple combats in BG1 being unavoidable and completely retarded.
The mage out front of the tavern? Yuck.
I think you can talk your way out of it but still.
Almost every combat in the games has a random chance for your party to be completely destroyed, or at the very least permanently lose a member. I was OCD with saving and loading in those games and it hurt the experience considerably.
Still love them, but they're hard games to show off when that's so predominantly noticeable.
"Hey newbie try this game it's a classic!"
*death*
"Load the save!"
"Oh you didn't make a save? Well walk back to that part and save first"
*death*
*load*
*death*
*load*
*CRITICAL*
"Cool you won, now there's some dialogue you better save!"
that's why we call it the struggle, you're supposed to sweat
that's why we call it the struggle, you're supposed to sweat
Finally killed them. Main issue was that goddamn mage that had spell protections. Oh and Viconia deciding to stop casting True Sight that I had ordered her to, thus making him untargettable by Edwin.
Still ended up with my main mazed, half the party confused and half dead. Thank god for Korgan making his save against disintegration.
Currently DMing: None
Characters
[5e] Dural Melairkyn - AC 18 | HP 40 | Melee +5/1d8+3 | Spell +4/DC 12
Pretty amusing but I didn't end up finishing the game.
This is what I'm hoping for as I usually do the same. Having to play with reviving party members and dealing with permadead PCs and rejigging my party is going to be interesting.
Currently DMing: None
Characters
[5e] Dural Melairkyn - AC 18 | HP 40 | Melee +5/1d8+3 | Spell +4/DC 12
When I did my kensai/mage one I dualed at 12 or 13 - I don't remember, whichever one gives you the extra to-hit bonus - and kicked everyone out of my party and kept learning and unlearning spells for xp.
I might just go straight swashbuckler though.
What do monks get that's cool? I've never played one.
It's funny how it plays out sometimes. You have someone down and it takes awhile to revive them so they miss out on experience and end up weaker, leading to them being gibbed down the line. Only the strong survive!
It'd be rather epic if by the end the only person alive was the main character and you go up against the final boss with the blood of your friends leaving terrible terrible memories. Poor Imoen died almost immediately, hahaha.
that's why we call it the struggle, you're supposed to sweat
She just died to magic missile. All the missiles beat her 65% magic resistance. Gah!
Currently DMing: None
Characters
[5e] Dural Melairkyn - AC 18 | HP 40 | Melee +5/1d8+3 | Spell +4/DC 12
the party mechanic is very outdated from today. there is no camp. There is no easily shifted party. Your party is the people you take with you. You can get people to wait in their place, but your party is the people you take with you all the time. When they're dead they don't get XP.
There in effect is no party outside of the active one.
You have 6 part slots and never have to take anyone along to do anything outside of short, personal sidequests that won't even trigger if the character hasn't been with you for a while so you aren't going to be swapping characters much.
Steam Profile
3DS: 3454-0268-5595 Battle.net: SteelAngel#1772
This is funny. I forgot Tolgerias shows up at the lower Planar Sphere level.
Enter Room > Contingencies Trigger > Horrid Wilting > Finger of Death = Dead Party
Currently DMing: None
Characters
[5e] Dural Melairkyn - AC 18 | HP 40 | Melee +5/1d8+3 | Spell +4/DC 12