Could ToB have turned out differently, gameplay wise? **Rant**

milanm

After replaying the game for the first time in 4 years, i can't help but feel underwhelmed by ToB once again. After all the interest storytelling in SoA, the Irenicus chase, the locations, gathering parts of powerful weapons throughout the game and finally forging them, it's simply perfect to me, wouldn't change a thing. But then i hit lv18 on my kensai/mage i got to pick my first HLA and the first giant flaw appeared, and i wasn't even close to ToB, the lv10 mage spells. They are so blatantly stronger than lv9, yet they occupy the same spell slots, effectively removing lv9 spells from the game, except Time Stop that is. Why was this done in this way i'll never comprehend. There should have been some downside to 10s, maybe being able to memorize only 1 or something, anything but this. But then i realized, 7 slots on all my clerics/druids are also filled with Quest spells! Storms, Energy Blades, Greater Summoning... Again, same problem! So i finish SoA, jump into ToB and the slapstick storytelling begins. Go there, murder that dude, go there, murder this other dude... To some extent, i can forgive this, it's the "end times", Bhaalspawn are converging, it's all about destruction and mayhem, but it doesn't mean that there shouldn't be at least a few interesting quests in there, the change is extreme compared to SoA. Then come the items, the game showers you with +4, +5 and even +6 weapons on every turn, after spending 3/4 of SoA finding parts and forging only 5 weapons, you're running back to Cespenar every few minutes to forge you a new +5 killer, after only two +5s in SoA. This just makes me lose all attachment to any weapon. The character progression also stops, for fighting types especially once thac0 clocks at 0, and honesty, how many Critical Strikes can i use before i rest... Clerics, Druids and Mages still get a few spell slots now and then, but since they have no special ability HLA's, they take all spells in the first few levels. Again, i realize ToB is all about high level fights and being a demi-god, but i feel the devs could have accomplished this in a different way, making that progression a little more interesting. Sometimes, i wonder what ToB would look like if it was more like SoA, i can't picture it really, but i have feeling it could have been amazing...

ryuken87

I agree for the most part, but several level 9 mage spells other than Timestop are still *really* good e.g. Chain Contingency, Wish (ok it's a ToB addition but not a HLA), Shapechange, Imprisonment. There are some spells which don't get much love at all e.g. Meteor Swarm, but nobody picks that over the aforementioned spells anyway.

xzar_monty

What you are saying is true, but as someone who has well over 20 years of experience with PnP RPGs, the same happens there as well. Once your characters reach a certain level, things cannot help but become dull. If you don't give them worthy opponents, they'll just wipe out everyone. If you do give them worthy opponents, you're going to be thinking: "Hang on, what kind of world are we in? Where could anyone plausibly meet such opponents on such a regular basis? This doesn't make any sense."

But still, ToB could have been much better, on that I agree. Still, it's not as blatantly railroaded and lacking in personality as the NWN games.

egon

I agree, the whole story of ToB is much more linear and boring than that of SoA. Remember though, that when they first came out SoA was a game of it's own on four CDs. ToB was just a one-CD expansion made to complete the Bhaalspawn Saga.

Still, compared to SoA, it's rather bland and they should have done something about it for the EE.

xzar_monty

@egon: They had no legal permission to do that.

egon

Why not? They were obviously allowed to include new NPCs, new areas, new quests, new dialog and pretty much everything else needed. Why not add the option of being able to chose in which order you meet certain Bhaalspawn, or include a new are with a subquest that gives you a powerful item to be used against someone or a sidequest where you have to pilot the BMU to defend a village of gnomes or whatever?

FinneousPJ

I agree. In terms of high level adventures, I think ToB is way worse than NWN: HotU and NWN2: MotB.

Arcanis

@egon They where not allowed to change any content. They where only allowed to add stuff -and only if the add-ons don't change the original story.

elminster

egon said:

Why not? They were obviously allowed to include new NPCs, new areas, new quests, new dialog and pretty much everything else needed

None of what you listed involved editing original content. Where they have edited original content it has been pretty minor, but generally speaking based on what the developers have written under their contract they are pretty restricted with what they can touch. Changing when you can meet (or fight) Balthazar or (especially) Yaga-Shura would change the flow of ToB's storyline.

shawne

@FinneousPJ: To be fair, both HotU and MotB have similar problems in providing suitable challenges for epic-level characters; my HotU Sorceress destroyed practically the entire invading army at the end of chapter 2 by herself. It's a bit different in MotB because the Spirit-Eater mechanism is equally challenging no matter your class/level, but a level 30 Fighter/Blackguard can still slice through just about anything (well, except for that damned Telthor Badger).

kaffekoppen

Then again, NWN to the "average" player was a completely different thing. Those who really care about the game went to great lengths to optimize their characters. I remember having the most fun with my kukri master, but that was a seriously cheesy character. I think perhaps the cheesiest thing was if you added just one paladin level at the right time, you'd get ridiculous bonuses, so many of the power builds did just that.

I also know people who don't play RPGs without really wanting to think about optimizing any builds. It's completely valid to play like that (in fact, I think that's often how the designers think we're going to play) and it ups the difficulty considerably and also make some parts of the BG saga very tough.

AnotherLife

I think it's all about power creep during BG2. At the end you're just waayy too powerful. That's the cost of importing saves.

nano

Yep, even BG2 is a bit too high level IMO. I think BG1 has the best gameplay and the most freedom. I like the challenge of BG2 though. And despite ToB's faults, I still enjoyed it. It's more like one long boss fight than an entire game (which it isn't, really, it's the end of BG2).

jackjack

Given the proper amount of development time, I'd like to think it could've been better, but high level combat has always been more boring than the alternative, in my opinion.

milanm

I think there was some talk back in the day that ToB was supposed to be a separate game, BG3 presumably, i'm guessing it would have gotten a lot more attention that way. Still, as one poster mentioned, it does help to look at it as one long high level boss fight, it's not far from the truth. One thing that still irks the hell out of me, there are beastly items dropping on every 3rd monster in Watcher's Keep, then you finally find the almighty Prince of Demons, kill him, and he drops... nothing at all! For a Keep full of godlike gear, i expected more from killing the final boss. Seeing as how they added the Unholy Reaver on level 4, putting in some special reward for slaying the Demogorgon would be nice. AD&D enthusiasts should pitch in here, i don't have much knowledge outside the games, what are some of the most powerful weapons that Demogorgon could have in his possession? Maybe a BG2's version of Myrkul's Wrath or something? Would be nice to have something just for the sense of accomplishment. All in all, this critique was geared towards the original ToB, i know Beamdog couldn't do anything to remedy any of it's flaws, i appreciate their effort, love all the things added, hoping they will find a way to improve the game further, even if nothing is added anymore, i still consider it a fine job.

FinneousPJ

@milanm The Demogorgon was way too easy as well, I think it took about 1-2 rounds of critical strike from CHARNAME and GWWA from Dorn and Sarevok to kill it.

milanm

Are the mods that up the difficulty of Demogorgon and Balthazar encounters from the Bioware designer compatible with EE? I remember Demo being pretty bad ass in that one, he would just spawn a bunch of henchmen to overwhelm your party in a few rounds.

AcridSyphilis

if you are talking about ascension there's some people working on getting that compatible with TOB. It is currently a WiP