At which experience levels does the game seem most enjoyable?
franco
Member Posts: 507
The game feels very different when your playing at low or high experience point levels. I guess they can be referred to as low, medium, high and very high.
1.What levels do you enjoy most playing at and why?
2. If a new game was to be designed with the BG engine with the BGEE modifications, would you want it to start at level 1 or carry on beyond the levels that will be reached in BG2EE?
1.What levels do you enjoy most playing at and why?
2. If a new game was to be designed with the BG engine with the BGEE modifications, would you want it to start at level 1 or carry on beyond the levels that will be reached in BG2EE?
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But I really do enjoy a wide range, well to a point. Above 15 or so starts feeling silly to me.
I very much like starting at level 1. First level characters are fragile, but earning those first couple levels is a blast and always feels momentous. I wouldn't trade that for anything.
I do enjoy all the other levels as well, ofcourse, but as soon as you have enough hitpoints to survive a crit hit, the adrenalin level goes down.
Now that said, I do have some fun with ToB, it just isn't my favorite part of the game.
I would really enjoy Bg3 to start at level 1 than by the the end of the game your somewhere between 16 and 20.
I have only completed ToB once and am not sure if that is because of the silliness of ridiculously high levels or not. I remember playing Secret of the Silver blades and finding that the most satisfying of the Gold Box games. I also remember hating Pools of Darkness because then it became just stupid with how tough things had to be just to be fun.
At the end of the day, I love playing mages. They really don't become powerful and useful in a wide variety of circumstances until they get into the 10s. So based on that, my 'Favorite' would probably be 10-18 or so. I think that getting to 20 is reasonable but it should be the very VERY end of the game and only in service of facing the 'Ultimate' baddie.
At high level magic is too important, at low level it is useless. In the middle you can use a variety of tactics which makes the fight more fun
6 12
High Tier:
2 3 5 10 11
Mid Tier:
1 4 7 8 13 14
Low Tier
9 15 16
Shit Tier:
17+
But I get your point. You tend to breathe a sigh of relief that your characters can't be killed with one blow once they've gone up to lvl 2.
At level 1 too much stuff can one-hit you and isn't fun (I don't mind one-hit kills but it should be manageable which it isn't at level 1).
After 6 it becomes too much of hack & slash, with the occasional good encounter.
and the guys riff about "yeah, the first 110 levels were a grind, but now that I'm 117th level vampire fighter I can look back on all the hard work and think to myself, you're the ultimate one."
That said...
1) I much prefer levels 1 - 9~12. You're fresh out of training, and ready to utilize your skills to change the world! Obstacles are real. Death is a thing that happens, and you have to be lucky to avoid it, at first. Magical items? A great boon. The Town Sheriff? He's a seasoned veteran who fought in a war against the goblins, but in the World of Abstractions, he's a 2nd level Fighter, and he needs your help. What could give him pause?
Once you've struggled enough, and if you're one of the lucky ones, you can become even more powerful than the Sheriff. After many long months and years of trials, you become feared or respected enough that you can get some land and followers, maybe! People want to live in this land, because you've got what it takes to protect them; most monsters fear you, but most of them know that working together, they can take you down and get a name for themselves as the ones that took the Dagorlad the Troll-Slayer, or whatever, down. But just the same, you might be attracting some small degree of cosmic attention, or otherwise attracting attention that you really might not want to attract...those orcs you helped the elves drive out of their forests? They were after an old artifact that would help their High Priest ressurect the demi-god of their race and fulfill some prophecy or the other.
After something like one of the more powerful outsiders is given pause by you, that's when I start going "Hah! Right.". Then again, it's all in how the story is told, with me.
2) Ehh, start me out at level 1, please. I don't want to roflstomp things like Pale Night, or something without even a True Name...
I do appreciate the scaling of difficulty in BG2 for its level 7-20-something play to require lots of magic items. And I can have fun playing SoA.
ToB is to me ridiculous, but that's just my own taste, and I respect if others find it a blast to play, well, literally, a demi-god. I can see how the tactical challenges of that high level play can be fun for others. Just not my cup of tea.
And this is not to say that over the years I haven't enjoyed many a BGT game. There's something satisfying about taking a character through the entire saga.
But I will always prefer the level 1-9 play of BG1 to BG2. (Level 1-7 unmodded or with just SCS, level 1-9 with lots of mods installed.) Reasons why it's fun have already been well stated in this thread.
* This has recently been reinforced to me by playing a BG:EE game where I'm roleplaying all the characters (very in-depth) and using a deck of playing cards and a dice roller to determine a lot of things that I would otherwise ordinarily meta-game by rote (here). I've come across far less magic items that way. So then when you get a magical item it really means a lot. I like a lot of variety to my gaming, so I wouldn't want to do this all the time. But I'm really enjoying it.