I'm at the end of my rope on this one: BG2.

[Flubby]

If you not like Skyrim come out in 11:11:11. I have forum here about to be sticked. We can discuss there.

 

[bussinrounds]

If you not like Skyrim come out in 11:11:11. I have forum here about to be sticked. We can discuss there.

 

[sgc_meltdown]

It's like a friendly conversational prosper

 

[DwarvenFood]

user reported as Retarded.

 

[SCO]

Guys, my install is going to be a small abomination.

Installing Sword Coast Stratagems, the mod that allows cleric spells in the mage spellbook, the mod that refreshes spells after (a configurable, that i set to 300s) time, going in as a FMT solo (or possibly two).

Let me see death and destruction.

Contingencies hitting ass and leg, oh god itz Abi Dalzim's Horrid Wilting

 

[TNO]

Bros, a question.

SCS looks good, but I forgot to include it in my bigworld install. Can I stick it in half way through a game (with BW setup or similar) or will it horribly mess everything up?

 

[FatCat]

Bros, a question.

SCS looks good, but I forgot to include it in my bigworld install. Can I stick it in half way through a game (with BW setup or similar) or will it horribly mess everything up?

It shouldn't , but backup just in case.

 

[SCO]

Started again

Figured out that if i didn't install the tactics version the megamod wouldn't install the tougher fights.

 

[octavius]

Started again

Figured out that if i didn't install the tactics version the megamod wouldn't install the tougher fights.

Ugh, that Tactics mod is horribly unbalanced. Only part of it that I really liked was Torgal and his trolls.
Worst part was the Kuo Tuans. Even a regular Kuo Tuan grunt is tougher than any of your party members, with their mad missiles skillz and paralyzing attacks.

 

[Grunker]

SCS is vastly surperior to Tactics.

 

[SCO]

Oh allright, i deleted it from the currently running installation

 

[almondblight]

...but it seems we are having rather similar experiences with BG and IWD (I ended up enjoying IWD quite a lot though for the first hour or five I was fairly perturbed) and if you are now starting to see something in it and are enjoying it then it is a safe bet that it'll only get better from there on.

Yeah, it took me a while to put my finger on it, but it really seems like IWD is just overall designed better (OK, I know this has been said many times...). You really get a sense of different areas that are populated by different creatures...the tombs that are full of the undead, the dragon cave full of lizard men, the Yuan Ti temple, the shadow creatures in the abandoned elven tower (the hand?). By contrast, in BG, when I got the quest to kill the ogres, I just wandered around the countryside killing whatever ogres I came across. I really had no sense of when I had accomplished the quest, and it was just meandering on open planes. There are ogres, hobgoblins, gibberlings, xtals (?), bandits, gnolls, undead and others, and they just all seem to be hanging out in the wilderness without much reason. The quests so far have just been meander through wilderness that looks the same, and kill whatever random monster pops up.

Contrast this with Exile III. The first mission you get is to take care of the goblin fort near the base. Outside, there are patrols of guards on the main roads. When you get closer to the base, there are more and more goblins, as well as signs that they have put up. You can go through the front door, but then you're in a situation where their archers fire at you from inside the fort, which can really mess up your party. If you explore around outside more, you can find your way into the trash shoot, and then sneak in to the kitchen, where you can then take out the fort from the inside.

In IWD and Exile, the world makes more sense. Enemies feel like they are where they are for a reason. BG (at least so far) feels more like Diablo, where they threw a bunch of monsters all over the place because they would be fun to kill.

Oh, and the encounters in IWD and Exile is just more interesting, too. I think the only two fights so far where I had to think about tactics have been the Necromancer Cleric (Bassilus) and the Wizard at the friendly arm in, both of which were admittedly fun. But I don't recall myself having to change up my tactics and try new things nearly as much as I did with IWD.

 

[octavius]

I think the only two fights so far where I had to think about tactics have been the Necromancer Cleric (Bassilus) and the Wizard at the friendly arm in, both of which were admittedly fun. But I don't recall myself having to change up my tactics and try new things nearly as much as I did with IWD.

Install Sword Coast Stratagems if yoo want more interesting and challenging combat. Seriosuly, that mod is a masterpiece.
If you do, let me know how you fare against the Red Wizards (if Edwin is not with you).

 

[Micormic]

Stop spamming bullshit in RPG Discussion Exmit. Fuck off to GD where you belong, shittiest poster on the codex motherfucker. Reported your spam and I hope you get permabanned.

As for BG2, the strengths are
1) NPCs and NPC interaction.
2) Some pretty epics battles (dragons, liches etc. "lol they r ez" well if you figure them out of course they are, nerd).
3) Class specializations, the amount of NPCs and two pretty distinct ways to play through a pretty big portion of the game gives good re-playability.
4) Some really nice side-quests and NPC quests.
5) Music and voice acting.

The story is so-so but better than the average DnD story I suppose. Some dungeons have tedious design, some are better.

Overall my favorite RPG.

1) Where? Who? So far all NPC's have been either generic or perturbing.
2) Coo! Having played BG1 I do doubt any battle will find me finding it epic in due to lack of challenge, but fair enough, here for the story after all and sometimes there is story in a battle.
3)I have no idea what this means, class specializations in the NPC's, in me? I know there is a cavalier out there (or was it an inquisitor?) which is pretty specific, in either case I do not see how this matters as statistics have nothing to do outside combat and meticulous trap detection.
4)The only one I've heard of as universally appreciated is this Firkraag fellow, or however it was spelled.
5)Music is the standard fantasy fare and voice acting is irrelevant in any game that features it in minority, in minority voice acting is little but flare which is nice but ultimately as useless as fancying up the graphics from BG1.

I do feel overly critical, what am I going on here besides hearsay? I'll go on with the game however reluctantly, I have not been supplied with a reason for this game being anything but tedium and drag so I suppose I'll have to investigate much further. Though I see no reason why in this our glorious 21th century no one has yet to give me their explicit reasons for liking the game, we live in the age of deconstruction for goodness sake (though I dare omit Terpsichore and Varn from this outcry).

ur a nerd lmao

 

[LoPan]

almondblight,

Shame to say I entirely agree, and I suppose I'll have to try this Exile III sometime soon, or the first Exile and then continue on from there. Never played one of Jeff's games so I don't know how much he puts into sequel continuity i.e. if it's just the same world or if the stories heavily correlate, intersect or continue on each other.

I do find that having difficult or challenging battles is not nearly as important as having ones that are interesting, and especially those made interesting by context and execution such as that goblin fort reads to be. BG1 has a few of these and they come in more as the game goes on but on the whole the game is arguably lacking in that regard. I say arguably because a degree of taste is to be expected to take to matter; for instance, I fucking hate dragons--never met an interesting one in a game, but I do enjoy fighting the undead under almost any circumstance and thankfully, to my recollection, BG1 is barren of all draconic malarky.

I can't for the life of me recall a quest as confusing as the ogres ever happening again, and I hope my memory serves me well on that one because that Ogre Killing quest really does throw your sense of propriety through a loop.

 

[almondblight]

I haven't played Exile III in a while, but I remember it having really good exploration and pretty decent encounter design. Let me know what you think. I rarely felt that there were just random monsters thrown out there, like I feel with the gibberlings or xtals in Baldur's Gate. Overhead tile based games also seem to do environmental interaction better, so you have more things like spells that can collapse weak walls in the game, stumbling through hidden walls, opening opening and closing gates to help you out.

The overland map also really helped to give Exile a feeling of exploration, where you'd occasionally come across crypts you could loot - but that might cause the dead to rise and fight you, or find a peaceful part of the swamp where you could pick reagents for alchemy, stumble across some remote farmhouses that would sell you food, or run into a party of Nephilim being attacked, and given the chance to help them.

Just got to the gnoll fortress. That...was awful. Is there no design at all in this game? They pretty much just decided to make a map that's exactly the same as other wilderness maps, but with a fortress painted background, and 75% more gnolls. I mean, really. They don't try to close the gate, or throw rocks at me from higher up, or poor hot oil on my party. No one calls the guards to tell them that someone is coming through, slaughtering everyone. You can't even go inside, so there's no sense that the gnolls where even using the place. It's just wander around the map and kill the groups of 3-5 gnolls that are standing around waiting for you to kill them. I can't even think of any ways that map could have been less impressive, because there's, well, nothing there.

Install Sword Coast Stratagems if yoo want more interesting and challenging combat. Seriosuly, that mod is a masterpiece.
If you do, let me know how you fare against the Red Wizards (if Edwin is not with you).

Damn, that mod does look good, but I'm playing this game with Cider on my Mac so I don't think I can. I also can't make the whole party, since you can only do that by going through the multiplayer setup, for some reason.

 

[CappenVarra]

I might be mistaken, but it seems nobody mentioned the best single element of both Baldur's Gate games: they allow you to kill Drizzit and loot his corpse. If there ever was a character that could use a good killing or two, it's that abortion of Salvatore's...

 

[octavius]

I might be mistaken, but it seems nobody mentioned the best single element of both Baldur's Gate games: they allow you to kill Drizzit and loot his corpse. If there ever was a character that could use a good killing or two, it's that abortion of Salvatore's...

When my party met him he needed help killing some gnolls.
Later we killed some guys who could kill Drizzt with both their hands on their backs.
Drizzt is so overrated. :D

 

[LoPan]

almondblight,

You're making me seriously question why I liked BG1. The only thing I can recall really liking was the main story, but only after I knew the full of it. I liked BG1 combat when I exploited it and broke the system (always did enjoy trying to understand a system so that I could break it over the brain knee) and I despised every single NPC besides Xzar and Montaron (I had that fucking Illusionist gnome in my party, makes your ears bleed and your heart go cold--I'm telling you, kill him on site) who died early. Seems to me now the only difference between BG1 and BG2 is that BG2 is BG1 but as a dungeon crawler with a story made of dirt and "epic" and the exact same combat problems and worse NPC's. Not to put down your effort and time.

That strategems thing does sound interesting though, I believe I'll look into it with the passion and fury of a thousand suns and with a congealed and limpid memory bank I'll try to remember where I heard that phrase, and if I got it wrong.

 

[Mastermind]

To concise: Why is BG2 considered anything but a piece of shit

Because "Codex is so hurr durr edgy" , some really dislike it others pretend to do so only to be accepted .
It's a great RPG.

P.S Exmit is a faggot.

But why? I understand we all have different tastes in these and all matters and that is more than entirely acceptable, but I consider BG2 an intolerable piece of shit; then again, I once enjoyed Oblivion and now I cannot stand it for the life of me so clearly these things are are variable to experience and reason. I cannot find anything redeemable in BG2, and I wonder what people find in it that I do not.

You can't like pizza if you hate cheese.

But I like the cheese, or the pizza, whatever part of this metaphor or simile is which and what I enjoy the IE engine and the rulseset, even the combat with its many strange flaws and exploits; however, in BG2 combat ends up being either against trash-mobs or hard fights resolved by a nigh mandatory reload followed by mass-buffing. It his mainly a dungeon crawl, which I am not averse to, that chiefly involves buffing which, with the lenient resting system, quickly turns tedious. So what is in this game that makes people like it or recall their time with it fondly, for I see nothing in it what so ever; poor combat, terrible story. Though the story part is hardly fair, really, I have not played through it, but what I have heard and experienced (fuck you, Imoen, fuck you.) the game is hardly promising. BG1 had a slow start but BG2 is just ludicrous, at this point surely there should be something to catch my interest in the story but all it has supplied me is several reasons to fuck off and do something else.

I barely used any buffing in BG2 so I have no idea what the fuck you're talking about.

Also, story is great, and so is the villain. Hard to believe Bioware made it.

 

[SCO]

Didn't realize ascension for BGT was in Big Picture. Didn't install that as the AI components looked like they might conflict with scs. Ah well, next time.

BG modding really needs something like mlox. This heap of arbitrary sequence rules lead to moronic duplication of code as modders do "packs" to facilitate their favorite installs.

A stable topological sort of components would sort that foolishness and as a bonus, give more flexibility than the Big World Project.

It could even be faster if weidu invocations were merged when possible.

No, BWS doesn't work for that, it depends on the fixed order imposed by the BWP maintainers, this would be more like a replacement for BWP after all the hacks it has are moved to BWFixpack (and a downloader too, why the hell not).

 

[LoPan]

I got heavy lag when trying out SCS and looking for any other mod or any way to fix that lag is a field of confusion mines. Modding Baldur's Gate is probably worth the hassle but goodness me what a hassle it is. Knowing what is good and what isn't and what is compatible with what and what is too hard, just right or a game breaker requires an inordinate amount of widely scattered reading of questionable relevancies, or so my experience has so far been with trying to mod BG1.

 

[octavius]

I got heavy lag when trying out SCS and looking for any other mod or any way to fix that lag is a field of confusion mines. Modding Baldur's Gate is probably worth the hassle but goodness me what a hassle it is. Knowing what is good and what isn't and what is compatible with what and what is too hard, just right or a game breaker requires an inordinate amount of widely scattered reading of questionable relevancies, or so my experience has so far been with trying to mod BG1.

Unlike Oblivion, Baldur's Gate doesn't really need many mods. Hell, BG 2 doesn't really need any mods, but I wouldn't play it without SCS 2.

BG 1 only needs EasyTutu or BGT, SCS and BG1 NPC Project, IMO.

Keep it simple and stick to a few quality mods is my advice.

 

[Johannes]

Didn't realize ascension for BGT was in Big Picture. Didn't install that as the AI components looked like they might conflict with scs. Ah well, next time.

If you install SCS after Ascension it's fine, SCS even has custom AI stuff for some Ascension bosses if I remember the SCS readme right.


Maybe try this LoPan, it helped my performance a lot after modding
http://www.shsforums.net/index.php?auto ... owfile=741

 

[LoPan]

almodblight made me doubt the merit of BG1 and attempting, for who knows how many times now, to play BG2 I recall the solid encounter design of Icewind Dale and came to wonder just how this is done properly.

Hearing of the strategems seemed interesting enough and since I had already played BG1 all virgin and vanilla I thought it could be good fun, especially with the TuTu, I can say what I will about BG2 but it is graphically pretty.

That is it though, all I am running is EasyTuTu and SCS, yet lag and corruption is ruining the land, to make a truly awful paraphrase.


I am installing that biffing mod though, see what it can do for me.