Baldurwinter's Dragondale of Elemental Evil II
Crimson King
Registered User regular
Registered User regular
I just picked up a collection of 8 D&D games, plus expansion packs, for a grand total of thirty bucks. In this game-starved hellhole of a country (Australia), this redefines bargain. I have but one question - which should I play first?
The pack includes;
Neverwinter Nights and expansion packs. I already own NWN, actually, and have played a reasonable portion of it, but the expansion packs are new to me.
Baldur's Gate 1 & 2, plus expansion packs.
Icewind Dale 1 & 2, plus expansion packs.
Dragonshard
Demon Stone
Temple of Elemental Evil.
So advise me. Which ones are the best? Which should I play first? Should I play Baldur's Gate 1 before 2, or is 2 just better? Same question, but with Icewind Dale? What the hell is Demon Stone? How much does it suck that I didn't also get Planescape? And anything else you feel needs to be said. Any help is appreciated.
The pack includes;
Neverwinter Nights and expansion packs. I already own NWN, actually, and have played a reasonable portion of it, but the expansion packs are new to me.
Baldur's Gate 1 & 2, plus expansion packs.
Icewind Dale 1 & 2, plus expansion packs.
Dragonshard
Demon Stone
Temple of Elemental Evil.
So advise me. Which ones are the best? Which should I play first? Should I play Baldur's Gate 1 before 2, or is 2 just better? Same question, but with Icewind Dale? What the hell is Demon Stone? How much does it suck that I didn't also get Planescape? And anything else you feel needs to be said. Any help is appreciated.
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I don't think any of the others can top that experience.
Basically, it lets you play BG 1 with BG 2's engine, which means higher resolutions and more classes to play with.
They are by far the best games in that pack. ToEE has better, more faithful combat, Icewind Dale has more interesting and challenging combat, and NWN expansions are okay, for the most part, but none of them do everything as well as the BG games do.
Demon Stone and Dragonshard aren't even RPGs, though. I did enjoy Demon Stone for what it's worth, but it's still a straight beat 'em up. I never played Dragonshard but I've read it wasn't that great.
Finish (if you have the saved game file) or re-play the NWN original campaign before you play the two expansions. The expansions are so much better you won't get the same enjoyment out of the OC afterwards. But the OC isn't as bad as some people say, and it's worth playing. In any event, the expansions are both great.
> turn on light
Good start to the day. Pity it's going to be the worst one of your life. The light is now on.
Baldurs Gate 2 with it's expansion wasn't a game...it was a fucking life experience.
The Transformers Fandom: Consistantly bitching about something or another since 1984.
http://www.nuklearpower.com/2009/03/28/warbot_001/ - "WARBOT In Accounting"
"Do you still think I'm beautiful without my wings?"
No Aerie, I think you're a fucking annoying bitch who won't shut the hell up about yourself, you attention seeking whore. If you were this annoying it's no fucking surprise that someone cut of your wings, and I'm half tempted to stick some on you, just so I can cut them off again...
"...Of course"
Hey, you're right, that is just like real life.
The Transformers Fandom: Consistantly bitching about something or another since 1984.
http://www.nuklearpower.com/2009/03/28/warbot_001/ - "WARBOT In Accounting"
Life without having played ID in their entirety would be similarly empty, but don't you dare touch 2 until you're done with BG1,2 and ID 1. The engine stands a good chance of turning you off the others despite their inherent awesome. BG2 is big on powerful mages, ID is big on huge armies. I preferred IDs combat, myself.
Now, ToEE would have been six kinds of cool, but somehow it didn't quite manage it. If you can get over the general feeling of "Something is wrong, here" you can get a glimpse at a really snazzy combat system.
Moments like "I've got a guy with a chain whip and a pikeman standing behind an armored dwarf poking out bugbear eyes.", "That bandit just got stabbed in the kidney by my halfling and the priest with the sharp, spikey mace pounded his face in while he was writhing on the ground in too much pain to scream." and "My ranger got swallowed by a giant toad, but its cool 'cause he just cut his way out in a spray of blood and vicera." aplenty.
-And when you've played BG2 for the tenth or twentieth time, go download one of those incredibly huge character mods and do it again. And maybe one of the unofficial expansions, those were cool too.
-Planescape. Get it. It doesn't matter who you have to kill, get that game and play it.
My brother's playing Dragonshard right now, and he seems to be enjoying it, but then he's a whore for anything remotely RTSy. And I've just downloaded the Tutu mod for Baldur's Gate, since that seemed to be a pretty unanimous choice. Time to get my Gate on.
To be fair, she improved somewhat in the expansion.
STEAM
http://www.atari.com/dragonshard/
The first D&D RTS experience?
Lies
ToEE is like the most bittersweet game ever. It has one of the best, most deep combat systems in any CRPG ever made, but there is very little *game* in the package, plus it's buggy as hell. There are some fan patches out there, but they don't really elevate the quality of the non-combat sections that much. Man, I wish someone would do something with that engine; it's too good to go to waste like this.
BALDUR'S GATE 1 AND 2
White FC: 0819 3350 1787
The. Best. Thing.
Its ruined so many games for me, the exception being Planescape: Torment
Does the expansion only change the end game, or is it something I would play with on a first time through. I still have my BG2 discs and think I probably ought to give it a second shot.
Throne of Bhaal adds three new chapters after the end of Shadows of Amn. It also adds a new dungeon that can be accessed in SoA or ToB, and some interface improvements.
You're lucky to find such a collection, by the way. Very nice indeed.
(Optional, ha, only crazy people don't go there. The loot. THE LOOT.)
White FC: 0819 3350 1787
A thousand times yes. I really liked ToEE. It felt like I had much more control over the combat then other RPG before or since. And I was lucky, it only crashed once per play session, not every few minutes.
Troika - great ideas, piss poor programming. May they rest in peace.
Anyhoo. Play BG. Play the first one first, though. It's still a game full of win and in order to get the entire story, you'll need to play through 1 before 2.
Throw away Demon Stone and Dragonshard. They're terrible.
I loved the graphics in ToEE. I
Baldur's Gate games are tedious and slow. They show promise at first but then you find a vacuum where your time should be.
EDIT: How can I get my BG2 to actually run on XP without looking like ass?
HOTU was alright, but even then. It's still shlock.
Now player made content, THERE you can find some good stuff for NWN...
White FC: 0819 3350 1787
Then play Temple of Elemental Evil. It's relatively short, but well done with the fan patch.
Now it's time to go through the Baldur's Gate saga. It will take a long time, but you've gotten a few short games out of the way first.
If you still love the Infinity Engine, play Icewind Dale for more of the same mechanics, but less character development and story.
Elaborate? I don't think there are any XP compatibility issues. Make sure you have it fully patched, I guess, and crank up the resolution as high as possible.
Yeah there's shouldn't be issues. When you run the config program I think you have to check a box to "Unlock experimental resolutions" or something like that before choosing the highest resolution (probably 1280). If you have a widescreen monitor, there is a fan-made widescreen patch out there, but I don't know much about it since I don't use a widescreen monitor.
I don't remember what it's called off the top of my head but it was pretty easy to find with Google IIRC.
The issue is there are big squares of the screen separated by a one pixel wide border, so it looks like tic-tac-toe. And the font gets all blurry.
I've played lots of BG2 on XP and I've never seen or heard of that. Disabling 3D acceleration has been known to fix odd video glitches, though.
I had the same problem myself. I think its caused by widescreen monitors. At least I never noticed the problem until I upgraded to widescreen.
There is a way to fix it, but I cannot remember what it was.
http://www.co8.org/forum/
Not only have those guys added a mugload of original content to the game (the original only let you go to level 10, they've pushed the cap to 20 with fully implemented spells and feats, etc) but they're almost finished with a complete Borderlands on the Keep mod that looks amazing.
Oh man. OH MAN OH MAN. You have officially given me Insane-Crazy BG Fever. I must play through again. And it's going to be totally ridiculous trying to do so in the midst of my current runs of Lost Odyssey, Vampire Bloodlines, and ToEE.
There is not enough time, I tell you.