Crispy said:
Thank you, Zed, for attemptimg to incline the thread, Exmit please GTFO and good post by The Wizard.
Agreed that BG anything is overrated and can only appeal to the D&D faggot (like me) in order to achieve anything beyond meh credit rating as a CRPG.
But, OP, can you elaborate on what you found tedious in the game? I'm almost certain you're referring to the combat in which case you'll get one million and one dissertations on how to excel in it, how to beat it like a red-headed stepchild and, occasionally, by someone like me, how to simply adapt to and mildly enjoy it
The combat is the worst part but IWD and BG1 had the same combat in the same engine yet managed it well enough for what it was. I am used to the inching along and all the cheese required. In a game where the mace, club and morningstar is treated as weapons worlds apart I am not averse to a degree of exploit.
I can take bad combat if there is something better and more important to hold onto, but I can find nothing in BG2 to enjoy. The story is just dreadful, the dialogue is either unremarkable or crinch-worthy and the graphics may be nice but that is really the last thing that matters in any game.
The opening is heavy on the cliché lines and faux mystery. At first I could take it; fuck it, I thought, a bit camp but nothing neccessarily wrong with that, and BG1 didn't have a good opening either. However it just goes on and on and for no reason. The opening complex gives you two pieces of information: Either Imoen or Irenicus is the main character and not you, and Imoen probably reminds Irenicus of his dead lover, but it goes on for way too long to supply only this information as to what in goodness christ the story is. You are then dumped outside and for a second you feel the game might be leaving the station. You explore about a bit, dive into a tent full of terrible dialogue that hosts a call-back to the first game and you start to get suspicious but go on, maybe getting out of that first area will get the ball running.
On entering the slums (the only place you can go to at first) you are immediately greeted by a man who refuses to tell you anything or inform you of anything or even so much as hint to anything besides the fact that the main character is an irreversible idiot and an asshole despite alignment or attribute seeing as how instead of going off to find something out on your own you agree to collect an outrageous sum of 20k for a stranger who starts all sentences by saying 'Coo'. I like to think he's a shapeshifted creature who cannot help himself from uttering some vestige of a strange language but I really doubt my hopes of him being anything but a man who says 'coo' are justified.
So instead of finding anything out about the whereabouts of Imoen and Irenicus you run around collecting money. You are directed to the Inn where you will find quests, as is the way of things, and amongst a host of nonsense there is a man who will pay you 10k to kill trolls, because he is rich and generous, making the whole 'collect 20k' bit, that you would think is a device to send you off into the wider world for grand, explorative, money-seeking adventure, a bloody farce.
I recall that when I fired up the aforementioned Betrayal at Krondor and Albion (I believe I was playing another game at the time and was curious for the look and openings of these games, never could juggle more than one game at a time) there was instantly something to hold onto, something to make you want to go on and see what could be done and what the game and its story was about.
Seems a bit fatuous to get into just why the combat is bad since it has been echoed so many times over and seems to largely conists of whether you like all that buffing or not, but the core of it, to me, mind, is that not only is my entire character sheet and inventory there for combat reasons, but the combat itself consists either of the trash-mob trudge or surprise death followed by reload, oftentimes sleep, and then mass buffing to counter what killed you. So the entire RPG element is for combat, and the combat is a dreadfuly tedious experience with or without the many exploits and power-gaming builds.
I do appreciate the reply Crispy, and I believe I'll give it another go as a mage, and rather than make my own party (I was hoping that making a party of four on my own would make me care for something in the game) I'll look deeper into the NPC's, a sexual innuendo indeed.
Surf Solar said:
By no means I would call the game "a piece of shit", but in my humble opinion, it is just not that good and very overrated.
Fair enough, crass hyperbole on my part to be sure. Space Siege is a piece of shit, and comparing anything to Space Siege is to hyperbolize, I hope. I did call BG2 a decent game closely followed by calling it 'anything but a piece of shit'; incongruous and hyperbolic all in one stroke.
