Nice thread indeed, but it makes me feel really old
I have been playing Baldur's Gate since its first release, and I'm still hooked to it. Back then, internet was still something new, only available at public libraries and unviversities. I had been an avid AD&D dungeon master for several years by then, and recently saved up enough to buy my own Pentium with 120 MHz... Amazing! Certainly amazing considering my favorite game up till then was The Bard's Tale on my Commodore64. In other words, compared to that Baldur's Gate was mindblowing in size, graphical detail, and inclusion of AD&D core rules. It was digitalised heaven on 5 (!) CDs... Not 5 floppy drives, but huge CDs. Looking back on things, I don't exactly miss all the disk swapping involved with moving between areas.
I don't remember a lot about those first years of playing the game. It was hard, I started over numerous times to experience multiple classes, and only slew Sarevok maybe twice. It is probably hard to convey how tough this game can be if you cannot look up anything at all on the internet. The only resources available to get you through were the game manual, and your own knowledge of AD&D. No cheats, mods, walkthroughs, item lists, etc... Reaching the city usually was a goal by itself, the result of many hours of gaming. I also bought TotSC, but I can't remember if I actually finished Durlag's Tower prior to buying the enhanced edition years later. I also got BG2, and I remember being very pleased you did end up in the city immediately, without having to play for weeks. One of the strongest aspects of the game is the freedom to decide what to do and when to do it as player. This is also the reason why I didn't finish ToB until later aquiring it in enhanced edition. The story feels too linear somehow. Maybe the only single person offline game which equaled BG in this aspect was Planescape Torment. Needless to say, all those games ate way too much of my time, but on the other hand I wouldn't have wanted to miss the experience.
Now with the enhanced editions and the vast resources of the internet at hand, the games have offered me new challenges and experiences. I have to say I rather love having them available. Nowadays my preferred way of gaming is on the iPad. I'm currently patiently waiting for the bugs to get squashed so Beamdog can start porting over v2.x and SoD.
I played Diablo before, and when I saw a trailer for BG I was sure that it will be similar. I had no idea what D&D was, it was just a cool looking game. When I first started, I was shocked how bad the game is. I mean...no mana? only 1 spell per day? Wow this game sucks!
But there was something else, the environment, the graphics, the class differences...I don't know was it just me being cheap and fearing I would waste 5 CD's (and I'm ashamed to admit: they were pirate copies ), but the game started to grow on me. I must have restarted the game 20 times, with different classes, until I was confident enough I understand the game mechanics enough to play "for real". My first class was a ranger, because... heavy armor + bow? So noob, much confidence, many skill!
At that point I was hooked, so as soon as I finished the game(like, literally when the end sequence finished), I restarted the game, but this time with a mage (high was my confidence...). As it would be, this mage was with me in BG1, then ToSC, then BG2, and then ToB. Every spell, every item, every XP earned on that character has a story for me, a time and a place for it, and a real life memory associated. "Remember Staff of magi?" "Sure, I got that the night before I went to holidays with my late uncle"
Never has a game held me for 18 years, I have finished the saga countless times and every character I played with has a special place.
I could never play any other RPG's because they all lacked the depth of BG. (with exception of Fallout and Fallout 2, best RPG's ever...you should do Fallout EE next, Fallout 3/4 suck )
When I heard they were making BG:EE I was thrilled, and went straight into "Shut up and take my money!" mode, the mode I will keep being in as long as you keep this saga alive(*khm* BG3 *khm*)
I remember it well. I was in seventh grade. I was at a boy-girl party in Kimmy Robinsons basement. It was a time when boys and girls started getting interested in eachother. It was widely known that during this party there was going to be kissing. We were going to play seven minutes in heaven, a variant of spin the bottle where instead of a simple kiss you were shoved in a closet for seven minutes with a girl.
I didn't belong there. I was shy and awkward. I was only there because I made a good sidekick, and my friend was invited and very enthusiastic about going. He made me come with him. I was so nervous. She had Doritos in a bowl and since my parents never bought them I just practically ate the whole thing. My friend wouldn't eat them because he didn't want his breath to stink. He knew what was up.
Anyway, the time came and I was paired with Kimmy. She led my to her father's home office; a dark little room on the far side of the basement. There was a leather couch on one wall. The kind of bachelor's couch that gets banished to some dank corner of a married man's house. Well worn; a crumpled blanket slung over the side for the nights when the husband gets banished as well.
On the other wall was his computer. A spinning box bouncing off the edges of the screen caught my eye. Noticing this, Kimmy asked me if I wanted to see. Timidly, I went with her. She urged me to touch it. My trembling hands reached out to the gentle contours of the mouse, bumping it slightly and causing the screen to flicker. In a moment i saw it in all her full glory. A scene from a sunny day in baldurs gate. Docks district. Kimmy put her hand on top of mine and showed me everything. Pointing, clicking, inventory, party selection. We talked to a few commoners before our time "in heaven" was up.
I didn't know it at the time but I had just started a new chapter in my life. I would leave boyhood behind that night, and start my journey toward man-boyhood. It wouldn't be until college that I actually played Baldur's Gate again. But then I would go all the way... to Serevok. Now, older still, after the wife and kids are asleep I revisit Baldur's Gate in some forgotten corner of my own house. I remember my youth. I remember Kimmy. I remember the promise of an open world.
My story isn't nearly as fascinating as some of the others here. I distinctly recall buying the game on the day it was released. While I can't remember if I had pre-ordered the game or not (I probably did) I do recall waiting in the store while they opened the shipping box to get me my copy of the game a few days before Christmas (iirc).
Honestly, don't remember a lot after that. I had played all the Gold Box games and loved them so was more or less familiar with AD&D. I know I started off with a Paladin. I remember the nice thick manual that I spent tons of time browsing to learn about the various stats and what does what. Boy do I miss those days of manuals like that. So much nicer to sit down with an actual manual than to read PDFs on my computer ... which they even do makes equivalent manuals like that. I knew about being able to adjust stats, but it felt too much like "cheating", so I would keep rolling into I got something I could sort of live with. The only concession I did allow myself was to switch 2 stats. I never did finish the game at that early point. I think the furthest I ever got was to Baldur's Gate ... after many reloads and dying to the various assassins, etc., and I think it was just too big for me and my interest turned to something else. It is extremely rare for me to actually finish a new game. Part of that is a problem of being a perfectionist and I get into the game and realize I haven't done things optimally and soon I'm restarting. I'm trying to get over that, but it's quite the mountain to overcome.
I do recall my amazement upon wandering around the area of Beregost for a while when Khalid and Jaheira got into a fight with Xzar and Montaron. Pretty sure Khalid and Jaheira kicked their butts. Oh well ... at least gave me room for Garrick and Branwen.
Years later, I came back to it and re-started ... I always have to re-start. That may have been around the time of BG2. Not only did I finally complete the game, but I completed it close to 10 times with various characters: paladin, ranger, fighter, cleric-mage, invoker, druid, bard ... maybe a couple others. I also finished BG2 once, with my cleric-mage which despite my fondness for paladins is my favorite character due to all the spells. Odd that I've never beaten the game with a thief. Will need to do that at some point. I've never beaten the ToB part of the game.
'Course, then with all the mods popping up, I got really interested in those. I spend tons more time actually fiddling with mods than I do playing the game. Last couple weeks, got the bug again and I'm back to using Big World Setup (absolutely amazing if you want to fiddle with lots of mods) to create a super-modded game that I'm going to play all the way through the series. Starting with ... a paladin of course. I think I finally sort of have the mod situation "perfect" ... ... until I find the next "bug" that I have created.
Still have my original 5-disk set of BG. Have bought the game tons of times including all the original releases, and now all the GOG versions and even BG:EE on Steam. Also the original releases of IWD as well as the GOG and EE versions. Have beaten IWD once as well, but not IWD2. Have just also fired up a modded IWD:EE game to play with the IWD NPC mod.
So, not sure which will win out for the first to really get started. I am looking forward to finally getting all the way through ToB however. Already have started firing up an install for BGT to include some of the big mods such as Dark Side of the Sword Coast and The Darkest Day.
Still plenty more game left for me. The newer games can wait their turn.
Must have been about 16, playing Diablo 1 to excess, when a friend's older brother installed bg1, starting it was more complicated, but good. I was interested, but the game was not yet available here in Europe, big brother had imported discs. Another friend of us, whose dad was some computer expert with pro equipment had a CD burner that back then was terribly expensive and unreliable (and required a SCSI interface!) ... Friend's grand idea was to order the original English edition from "his aunt in America" (blessed land of the nerds), burn copies for all of us, refunding his invest with that deal ... Well thought, but English was not what we wanted to play and the disks took weeks to come over the Atlantic ... When they arrived we others had bought the German version from store, already gathering the party before venturing forth, when cd burner friend was waiting for the orders to come in that never came :-). He's a computer expert in America now though - happy end!
Same as with the Lord of the Rings: With the second part of the trilogy first and while still very slightly under the recommended age of 12.
I felt, back then, genuinely uncomfortable about the "chunking" that occurred in both (which I switched of in BG II; thus discovering the exploit that enabled preserving enemy equipment even after shattering frozen foes, or disintegrating them).
And both titles, "The two Towers" and "Shadow of Amn" have something else in common, in that they fortified my bond to fantasy in gaming, movies and literature. My first gaming experiences before that were with Final Fantasy VII/VIII/IX and, while also very pleasant (VII over IX over VIII, for me) not as important as what BG did for my pop-cultural preferences.
It is debt which I can never repay and has lead me to wonderful worlds, since then.
So my first exposure to Baldur's Gate was Shadows of Amn. I played that all the way through, and then took the same character through Throne of Bhaal.
During all that, I picked up Baldur's Gate and I clashed a bit with the profusion of explorable areas and how easy it was to wander off the path and get overwhelmed at low level. I actually got pretty far into BG in at least one playthrough but I think my impression of the game suffered because I played SoA first.
I haven't played multiple playthroughs like many of the people here, but I have been a fan of infinity engine games since Planescape: Torment. Right now I've got a BG playthrough I intend to fully finish and take through SoD, SoA, and ToB.
I started playing Baldur's Gate... About a month ago to be exact. I bought it on Tablet, realized that I have a hard time walking through doors and decided to rebuy the series (I don't do incomplete series if I can help it) on Steam. I had the D&D 3rd edition core rulebooks so I had a rough idea about how the game worked, and I felt the need to try and treat the game like I would when I attempted to play with my brother and sister, so I limted myself to three rerolls and I played what I felt was my favorite class, the Druid.
So, I went through Candlekeep and thought that for a game that reviewers said was the most satisfyingly difficult game, it was pretty easy. Then again, I also had an expectation that the game was gonna be harder as I played FF games before and so I always expect the beginning easy. So I decided to incorporate Ironman mode in the run... no knowledge or anything. Because Ironman is fun.
So I watched the Prologue cutscene and figured the bad guy was a bad guy and I was gonna kill him because he messed with me twice. That's not really balanced as my druid thought, as it should have been my turn.
So, got Imoen... chased her off (I think her voice is... eugh... loud for the sake of a better word) and went to investigate the place with rocks (trying to avoid spoilers here). Then I went further north and found a guy wanting to jump off a cliff, told him to do it and somehow he has faith in me (tbh I was pretty much laughing at the absurdity of the situation to actually care) and didn't jump.
Then I met a bear and figured I would become friends with the bear...
Then I made my second character who is a cleric. Kinda did the same thing but with less bear and more caution and reading of what the spells actually do and so far I just killed Chapter 2's Epic Baddy of Epicness... mainly because he exploded because of a backstab.
So about 1.5 months ago, I wrote out a huge novel of my first play throughs of Baldur's gate, and now since I finally got a day off I think its time to reminisce on my first few experiences with BG 2 ( sine I said one day I would do this)
so as I said before, when I first starting playing BG I had to go over to my neighbour's house to play it, and after a few months of playing BG I was finally starting to get the hang of BG, I was starting to learn the mechanics better, I finally found out what dexterity and constitution actually did and I may have even figured out that charisma can actually affect npc interaction ( although not 100 % sure if I knew about the CHA thing)
anyway one day my neighbour said hey; I have BG2 which is the sequel to BG want to give it a try? So I thought; hell yeah, if BG is this great BG2 must be friggin' awesome, so I started a game
first thing I noticed was how clean it looked, since bg2 ran at a higher res, it looked better from that, second I noticed that the game was a lot better at explaining what things did ( like upon character creation this is lots of info of whats going on)
so first, I went through the races and noticed there was an addition: the half-orc, and when I read about his stats allocation, I was blown away at how awesome that was, because in BG1 especially to have 19 STR and 19 CON is pretty overwhelming to have on a character, and since I loved the idea of being a powerful warrior in games the huge STR and CON was a great fit
next, I looked up at the classes, and I was blown away with the improvement of them, not only were there 3 added classes from the first game ( barbarian, monk, sorcerer) all the other base classes all had class kits, and I was in class heaven, I couldn't believe all of the cool options that were available, and I read through them all, and just from that, I was starting to get more interest in BG2 despite the fact that I haven't even finished making my character, just reading in on the class descriptions was showing me how epic this game was going to be, so with all that being said, I believe I went with some sort of fighter, don't remember if it was just a normal fighter or if I went with berserker, now although I remember way in the early days playing a barbarian ( and more of that to come shortly) this next paragraph makes me believe that I had to have been a fighter of some sort
so now, it was weapon proficiency time, and holy crap, was it different, not only did they change it so that if you want proficiencies in a weapon, it has to be in the actual weapon you want to use ( compared to BG's weapon category system) so first I saw that you could place grand mastery into a weapon right off the get go ( since I had 6 proficiency points to start with) and I was like; whooooooa this is friggin' baddass, high mastery already? ah but there was a catch though, weapon proficiency bonuses have changed in bg2 since bg1, but I didn't realize that until I was in the actual game, so here I thought I was butt kicking for goodness without realizing how bg2 crippled the weapon proficiency system, anyways, the next thing that caught my eye was the fighting styles, another one of those tidbits that really got me more involved into the game, and I thought the addition of fighting styles was just superb, the ones that really caught my eye where the single weapon and two handed weapon fighting style ( I missed the two weapon fighting style because I never knew I could dual wield until later) and what I saw was that if you had proficiency in these fighting styles you could score critical hits on a 19, and I though; oh my god, my guy is going to be beast mode, 19 STR, scoring critical hits on a 19, this is the promised land, so with my last proficiency point, I put it on two handed weapon fighting ( at that time, I didn't really know what speed factor was per se, but the +1 to damage and increased critical sold me in on it)
so with all the epic character creation all completed it was time to start the bg2 journey
when the first cutscene started, I noticed several things, first of all the increased RES, back in those days I knew nothing of PC hardware, and by default bg2 would run at 800x600 instead of BG's 640x480, so anyways, I thought to myself: wow, this game looks smaller that BG but man does it look pretty - who would of thought that with a few more pixels it could make it look so much better-
then the voice acting on the mage in the first dungeon, it blew me away, because back in those days, video game voice acting was still pretty new, and I couldn't believe how good it was, and also the animation of the sprties, Jon looked amazing, the golem looked amazing and even the shadow thief looked pretty cool, so it was pretty neat from the beginning
then, imoen joined my team and I noticed that she had a different portrait from BG and I thought, oh wow neat, that's cool, and by the looks of it, they made her look a little bit more mature and a little less innocent looking I thought, but I thought it was pretty neat regardless, and also her class, how they had her set up I thought was bizarre; level 7 thief dual into a mage? I thought shenanigans, how could she have such a class set up? but oh well I took her in and thought it was pretty neat that she had some mage in her ( even though I would have rather had a full thief, but I made due) next I saw jaheira and minsc, I grabbed them as well and saw that they also had updated portraits and thought that was cool beans, but also I received a whooping 3000 XP each for having them join my team, and I thought; wowzer jam, the XP in this game is huge, and that was another reminder that this game was going to be epic if I was getting XP in this fashion
so anyway I going along grabbing gear and fighting a baddie or two, and then I remember coming up to the goblins thinking: wow this is neat, little goblins, why weren't these things in BG? and I thought the animation was so cool on them and I was getting pumped, next I noticed that when I starting scribing scrolls into my spell book and disarmed traps and removed locks, I was getting XP! and not only that, BUT A LOT OF IT, level x 1000 for scroll scribing? I thought this was amazing and I always got excited every time I found a scroll because I couldn't wait to get the huge increase in XP,
then the next thing I noticed was the music, the dungeon battle music I thought was the greatest game music I have ever heard, I fell in love with that music, for whatever reason it just tugs on the pleasure strings on the ears every time I heard it, and that alone almost could have been the reason why I went back to BG2 months later
anyways, on my venture, there were a couple of things I didn't like about bg2, first; the lag was real, I remember going into the library area of the first dungeon and the game lagging hard, and infact lots of the battles dropped the frame rate, and I thought? was is this game doing this so much? ( as I said back then I knew nothing about PC hardware, and back in the day believe it or not BG2 was a pretty hardware intensive game with its 8 MB video memory requirement, that's right folks, not 8 GB, but 8 MB as in megabytes of video memory, and even some 8 MB video memory cards still struggled to make BG2 not lag, and back then some of the BEST graphic cards were 16 MB, but you had to be RICH to afford one of those- just comes to show how progress in the world has come-) and the second thing I didn't like, was the animation of the armor and weapons, bg2 did a complete revamp on all the weapons and armor and I was not pleased with it, I though all the normal weapons looked broken ( especially the battle axe) and it was just weird for me to see them that way ( although ironically enough, I miss the old BG 2 animations since the EE games got rid of a lot of them)
anyway, I never finished the first dungeon, I think I played for about and hour maybe, and I believe the furthest I got was the bedroom that had the 7 traps in it ( ah when that alarm went off, that was a very unpleasant surprise when I had 2 warmongers come in on me - barely made it out alive at that one-) and then for whatever reason I either had to go home, or some such and that was my first experience with bg2
I had mixed feelings about bg2 though, I don't know if I liked it all that much, I LOVED BG and all the glory that came with the first game, but BG2 just didn't have the same magic that BG had when I first played it, but that night the thing I remembered most was the music of the first dungeon, and I thought that track was beautiful, and I always held onto that idea for a few days, and then about a week or so later my neighbour gave me the versus books strategy guide for BG2 to read, and then my head starting to spin, and the magic came back after I started reading it
first off, I say more indept about the classes, and I saw wizard slayer, and the fact that it received magic resistance, and I was blown away, remembering how hard it was to get MR in BG I thought that it was so BADASS that a class could give it to you, not only that, it was a fighter class ( which was a class that I loved) ANNNNNNNNNNNNND the huge penalty it gave mages for each time you hit them, after reading a few pages of the guide I saw that there would be many many mages, so I thought this class was god mode, and I couldn't wait to start BG2 again
and not only did I find my favourite new class, but I looked at the monster and item appendix in the back and it was almost orgasmic from what I saw, weapons and armor that reached +5, the additions of actual dragons and all the other cool looking monsters in the game, the magic of the first game starting to come back a million fold after I saw what BG2 was ready to dish out with all this cool stuff; lots of cool looking baddies, tons of new awesome powerful items, and to top it off, in the first dungeon you could get a +2 two handed sword, IN THE FIRST DUNGEON, I was more than excited, I was AMPED as hell to start again
so months later I finally got a copy of bg2 and installed it onto the new store bought PC we just got and I was ready to kick some butt with my half-orc wizard slayer wielding a two handed sword ( now that I come to think of it I believe in my very first playthrough I may have a used a long sword, not sure) anyway, so off I went and the beautiful music came back again, oh man was I getting pumped, and not only that, no lag this time, so that felt nice ( this PC could actually run bg2 at 30 fps without lag, so that was nice) so off I went kicking some serious butt, and I finally came out of the first dungeon, thinking hell yeah, time to explore the sweet bg2 world........... and then imoen gets captured..... um lol? even though I read the perfect guide, it was more of a scan of a few sections of game and what was happening ( I was more interested in the weapons and monsters part)
so imoen got captured, and I was like; oh man, I just gave her all those scrolls in her spell book, I direly need to get her back, so off on the questing I went, although I don't think I got much further than that, infact I think I restarted my game ( maybe even because of irenicus taking imoen away so I had to set up my team a bit differently)
so I made a new game, but this time I believe I made a barbarian because the d12 HP looked so cool ( now this might have been the 10th or so playtrough of bg2 at this point, but this game I remember the most, since It was the first playthrough were I got to spell hold)
so anyway, made barbarian, half-orc, two handed sword, all that good jazz, and kept my scrolls this time since I knew imoen would go away, beat the first dungeon, and then I finished the circus quest, brought aerie along, went to the slums, grabbed nalia, did her quest and then I finally had the money to start chapter 3 and if im not mistaken this was the first time that I ever go to chapter 3 ( during this time I remember one of the tool tips saying: if you wish to dual wield, just simply place a second weapon in your shield slot) and I thought, no way, you can dual wield in this game?!?!?! so I tested it out, and I saw myself dual wielding and I thought it looked badass as hell, until I saw what happned to my thac0 and I was like; um nope, cant do this, back to two handed sword
so anyways, going along chapter 3 getting HUGE XP, I couldn't believe the amount of XP this game was dishing out ( especially when I completed nalia's quest, that mammoth 45 000 xp per character almost gave me a stiffy..... anyways) and at the tale end of chapter 3 I had my first run in with vampires, I don't remember much about how I dealt with it, but I remember getting level drained and how much I HATED that mechanic, I did not like level drain at all, but I persevered and made it to chapter 4, and things REALLY starting getting interesting because I have NEVER made it this far before
now from what I can remember, I remember getting imoen back on my team, since someone did a nice little betrayal to me right before hand ( quite convenient that imoen was there to pick up the slack actually, and that betrayal just through me away, I couldn't believe the depth that this game had) and then going through the spell hold dungeon, and the sheer awe I was in, I looked so pretty, lots of cool different monsters, lots of cool puzzles that weren't boring, and just so much stuff to do, I loved that spell hold dungeon, especially from 2 killer items I found: the ring of regeneration and the flame of the north, with those 2 items I thought I was jesus incarnate, not only did I regenerate but the sword of the north not only gave MR but it also did extra damage to evil baddies, I was so jacked with all this cool gear I couldn't wait to continue kicking some bg2 but
and then I eventually found my way to irenicus and I cant quite remember if the battle was hard or not, I do believe I had a little trouble with the thieves in the end of it, and when that was done I took the saemon havarian route, and I remember desherik going hostile for some bizarre reason ( oh well more XP and items for me, to put into my new awesomely found bag of holding, this item I thought was of legend, I couldn't believe such an awesome mechanic of freeing up inventory space for all the new found goodies I have found in the spell hold dungeon)
and then I finally found my way to the sahuagin city, the thing I remember was that the battle music was pretty neat, since it was a new tune, and that is what I FINALLY hit the 1 000 000 XP mark on my character, and I would just look in awe of my character and think of how awesome he was, with over 160 HP the ring of regeneration, flame of the north, and damage resistance, I thought that my character was GOD MODE INCARNATE, but if im not mistaken that was the end of that character's journey, I don't recall if I ever made it to the underdark with that character, but I remember that being the furthest that I have ever made it with a character in SoA before, and after that, there would be many many MANY more play throuhgs, and even many MANY more play throughs of bg1, I would go back and forth ( and way back in the day I still loved bg1 more, since I had way more experience with that game, but now it seems that I have a little bit more love for bg2, since bg2 improved absolutely everything from bg1)
and alas, the years would go by with thousands of play throughs of both games, and it wasn't until about 5 or 6 years ago did I finally start slowing down from playing those games 11-12 months out of the year, down to about 5-6 months out of the year
the BG series for PC will always be my favourite games of all time, and they will always hold a special place in my heart, and if somehow or some day a bg3 ever came out ( which I kind of hope doesn't happen, I would prefer a whole new game instead of a continuation) I hope that it can give me the magic of happiness and amazement that bg1 and 2 did all those years ago
@sarevok57 , I really love your stream-of-consciousness reminiscences. I read all of it. Your excitement is contagious, my friend. Now I can't wait to play BG later today.
Sometimes stream-of-consciousness is my favorite writing technique to read as the reader. It's almost like the author is doing a Vulcan mind meld with his or her reader.
Made a mage Died to shank or carbos Made a Paladin Ruled the Sword Coast
I can't remember much of my first time sadly... I do know that for many years I was terrified of playing mages, and never a cleric(not sure why on that).
The game(BG1) was praised and highly recommended by 2 co-workers of mine... So on a mid-shift stroll thru the shopping mall, I bought myself a copy. Let's just say I called-in sick the next day, haha.
Decided to play the game with a Half-Elf Chick, Fighter/Mage/Cleric (because... why not?). Now I had basic exposition to 2.0 AD&D having played 2 campaigns, one of which as a Barbarian up to level 11, but had never DM-ed, nor did I own any books at the time about any D&D related stuff. So stats, how THAC0 worked... no Idea. In BG1, you are both a player and a DM (to some extent).
So meh, I just rolled what I thought where good stats (18/53-06-18-18-18-07), and it took a long time until I realized even with a FullPlate I had crappy armor stats. I still outlived Xzar and Khalid tho. Played a few hours, and got into that area with all the spiders... at level 2... Yeah. But nothing like reloading when failing right? Then I went to Nashkel a few level higher with good gear and wondered why Xzar/Monteron always fought with Khalid/Jaheira... Whatever, just reload again and we're all set. Found Minsc (wth is that guy on... oh wait, he's cool... and POWERFUL). Had to ditch Xzar to get Dynaeir... okay so Monteron just leaves if I do that. humm... Now where am I supposed to find a good aligned thief? Umm, I guess it's back to fetch Imohen who I left to hang on the streets near Candlekeep (why would I need thieves in my party right? Thieves sucks anyways right??).
I actually was appalled... This game ROCKED ! So much attention to details it's insane.
---- (I actually stopped my first game around the Basilisk area because I had hit the level cap of 89'000 and was not interesting keeping playing with such an XP cap on. Fortunately, friendly modders rectified that problem soon enough and I finished the game a few years later, before diving back in BG2)
The fact BG1/2 are part of my "Old games" is a testament on how good it is. But that first day of fooling around being completely lost was really fun. And finding those 18 dex bracers on the gnoll bridge (Gnoll fortress) was a real wake-up call to the fact that DEX isn't "Just only for thieves".
It was back in '99, I remember I assembled a new computer in order to play BG. At last a real AD&D 2nd Edition PC game that DELIVERED. A worthy successor to the EoB-trilogy. But also so much more! A friend of mine living in the same student collective had bought a brand new monster PC (it at LEAST was a P-166!! ) and was playing BG when he should be stuck in the reading halls at school. So was I ensnared also after a few hours of by-sitting and watching him play, so I borrowed some money from mum and purchased parts to build myself a new PC at the fraction of the cost my friend had spent. I remember I sat some 30 hours in a row at one point, had probably eyes in shapes of squares before I finally got some sleep. I finished the game the first time in about 14 days, which took about 30 liters of coke, 14 frozen pizzas and approximately 280 cigarettes. By the time BG2 was out I had entered the job market and found myself in possession of a monster PC (at LEAST a P-450!) and again entered a semi-hermit like state, though I had to attend to work, naturally. So I probably spent a month playing BG2 the first time.
Well, I was 12 at the time so my English wasn't exactly stellar. I was at a "spare time yard" (No idea what the english word is, where teenagers go after school to hang out with other teenagers, play games and talk and stuff) and one of the adults there showed me Baldur's Gate 1.
I was hooked. First roll, a paladin, and I've to this day no idea what stats she had. She insta-died fighting a gibberling though. Was named Kerrigan after the second most awesome game released in '98.
Don't remember much of my first playthrough, except that it took me months to actually get to chapter 5, when I first was let into Baldur's Gate itself. Much of that time was spent just running around the maps exploring and dying to everything. I've no idea how many characters I did or how many hours I spent before I actually killed Sarevok for the first time. But it was a lot. A loooot.
Still have no idea why I loved the game so much. I understood nothing and died to everything. Yet I loved it. Guess it was something about the endless world and my sense of exploring that did it.
Truth is, I never played Baldur's Gate. The only Infinity Engine game I played was Planescape Torment. Loved it, although only finished it the second time I played it.
I did buy Baldur's Gate at release, in large part to thank Bioware for the great support Greg Zeschuk gave me with Shattered Steel, and in part because I was already playing pen and paper 2nd Edition AD&D.
Problem was, the game didn't grab me, and I hated the screen door transparency effect, so I shelved it.
Years later I bought the game for Android, thinking that since I'm mainly playing on Android these days I might play it that way. I did play the tutorial and decided that the game was playable enough, but then wanted to choose between playing Final Fantasy 4 and BG (never played an FF game before, either), and by web advice went for FF4, simply because it's shorter. I'm still stuck on some boss fight on that, I'm way too casual these days.
So one day I will probably start BG, and I can only hope that I'll be able to get into it, but I don't play that much to get to it any time soon.
My very first experience with Baldur's Gate was when I was about 9 years old, watching my dad play Baldur's Gate 1 while sitting on the ground next to him in the computer room, hurting my neck craning it to see the monitor. I watched him play a lot games growing up, but Baldur's Gate was enthralling in a way no other was. I had a lot of opinions about what his party should be, too. Namely, I thought his party should be all pretty girls and elves. He never took my advice for some reason.
A few years later I was experimenting with other PC games. I'd tried Diablo, which scared me, and few other dungeon crawler types that failed to capture my heart. We didn't have a Nintendo, I didn't get my first GameBoy until I was about 14, so at that time my entire concept of "video games" consisted of the educational games I had that came of actually-floppy floppy disks, a free Mario game that was on our PC, and whatever Dad deigned to buy.
I was about 12 when my parents finally let me sit down and roll my first character in Baldur's Gate: Shadows of Amn. I remember exactly what she was, too: a half-elf druid. I used the standard blond elf with the green clothes as my portrait, and the kinda rude/snotty voiceset (streetwise in BG1 now I believe). Her wisdom was abysmal, her charisma was much higher than necessary, just in general her stats were absolutely abysmal. I picked my party based on who had the cutest portraits. Needless to say, that run was an absolute disaster. I never made it out of chapter two. In fact, I never beat either game until I was in high school. I was 16 when I finally made to Spellhold iirc. But I was hooked long before then.
If not for Baldur's Gate I don't think I ever would have gotten into games as a creative medium. It's a series very near and dear to my heart.
My first experience was my friend who always was playing a lot of different games was playing it one day.
Honestly, so many of those games I would be like "meh" but immediately for whatever reason just the user interface, the screen, Imoen, I don't know what it was but it immediately struck like a serious chord and I was like I have to have this game.
I think I was just a pretty big fan of D&D, but it was always hard to get people together to play it and stuff. Consequently, the idea of just having it accessible there I thought was a pretty awesome concept. It was just like "Playable D&D" and Bioware I think did a really amazing job at keeping it feeling like D&D (Having cameos by Elminster, Drizzt, etc).
It was clear to me they were big fans of it as well and they tried hard to-
Oh! I'm getting carried away sorry =-), anyway yes a friend was playing it and I went out and got it the next day or something. I can't remember when this was exactly though.
My first Baldur's Gate experience was taking a Mage all the way from Candlekeep to the end of the Throne of Bhaal. He'll always be the quintessential CHARNAME to me.
Things I learned: It's important to say no to a relationship you aren't sure about. My inability to say mean things led to me marrying Aerie. It was only when I was staring at my son as an inventory item named Quayle that I questioned where things had spiraled out of my control.
Back in 98'/99' my first character was a green dwarf with a blue beard, I really had no idea what I was doing at the time but I'm pretty sure I did manage to beat the game at one point.
I first played D&D (not AD&D) in 1979, maybe 1980. I played AD&D through high school, but in college I set aside such things because my field of study and the necessities of work took all my time (although beer, blues, basketball, and A Certain Someone seemed to be able to catch my attention from time to time).
Fast-forward to 1999. I had changed careers to software development and was working at a Baby Bell, with Y2K looming and companies throwing billable hours around like no one's business. I was spending what little free time I had working extra and learning new programming technologies gives. (I even moved to a downtown apartment so I could get an extra hour a day to bill out instead of drive.) A friend recommended the game, so I bought it and tried it. It was damn cool, but given my hourly rate, it was too expensive to play. I made a mental note to return to it when I could. In 2000 I was working on a hardcore rewrite/conversion, again pulling as many hours as I could, in a different city. I knew no one there, more or less, and one rainy Sunday morning I decided to try it. I was hooked. It was epic in scope, it was immersive, the plot was teasing and great, the characters believable, and there was humor with enough pop culture references to think the folks at MST3K may have been involved. And the release of BG2 was even greater.
Now I'm in a forced medical retirement and have such debilitating fatigue that "fatigue" isn't enough to describe it; they really need a new word. But I can pick up my my iPad and chuckle at hamsters and rangers rejoicing or hear Jan annoy a party member, and it brings a smile to this curmudgeonly old omnipresent authority figure.
First time I loaded up BG1, I thought, 'I bet everyone goes as a Fighter with a sword and a shield. Not me, ha! I'm going to be different.' So I rolled a Paladin and bought him a shiny two-handed sword, and was immensely pleased with myself.
My enormous sword broke in half whilst clobbering rats in Candlekeep. I then talked to Gorion before going back to the Inn for another one, accidentally told him I was ready to go, then got killed trying to punch a wolf to death outside Candlekeep.
After that I rolled a fighter with sword and shield. And made sure I bought more than one sword. And then died a large number of times to Tarnesh. Put the game away for a few months after that :-(
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I have been playing Baldur's Gate since its first release, and I'm still hooked to it. Back then, internet was still something new, only available at public libraries and unviversities. I had been an avid AD&D dungeon master for several years by then, and recently saved up enough to buy my own Pentium with 120 MHz... Amazing! Certainly amazing considering my favorite game up till then was The Bard's Tale on my Commodore64. In other words, compared to that Baldur's Gate was mindblowing in size, graphical detail, and inclusion of AD&D core rules. It was digitalised heaven on 5 (!) CDs... Not 5 floppy drives, but huge CDs.
Looking back on things, I don't exactly miss all the disk swapping involved with moving between areas.
I don't remember a lot about those first years of playing the game. It was hard, I started over numerous times to experience multiple classes, and only slew Sarevok maybe twice. It is probably hard to convey how tough this game can be if you cannot look up anything at all on the internet. The only resources available to get you through were the game manual, and your own knowledge of AD&D. No cheats, mods, walkthroughs, item lists, etc... Reaching the city usually was a goal by itself, the result of many hours of gaming.
I also bought TotSC, but I can't remember if I actually finished Durlag's Tower prior to buying the enhanced edition years later.
I also got BG2, and I remember being very pleased you did end up in the city immediately, without having to play for weeks. One of the strongest aspects of the game is the freedom to decide what to do and when to do it as player. This is also the reason why I didn't finish ToB until later aquiring it in enhanced edition. The story feels too linear somehow.
Maybe the only single person offline game which equaled BG in this aspect was Planescape Torment. Needless to say, all those games ate way too much of my time, but on the other hand I wouldn't have wanted to miss the experience.
Now with the enhanced editions and the vast resources of the internet at hand, the games have offered me new challenges and experiences. I have to say I rather love having them available. Nowadays my preferred way of gaming is on the iPad. I'm currently patiently waiting for the bugs to get squashed so Beamdog can start porting over v2.x and SoD.
When I first started, I was shocked how bad the game is.
I mean...no mana? only 1 spell per day? Wow this game sucks!
But there was something else, the environment, the graphics, the class differences...I don't know was it just me being cheap and fearing I would waste 5 CD's (and I'm ashamed to admit: they were pirate copies
I must have restarted the game 20 times, with different classes, until I was confident enough I understand the game mechanics enough to play "for real".
My first class was a ranger, because... heavy armor + bow? So noob, much confidence, many skill!
At that point I was hooked, so as soon as I finished the game(like, literally when the end sequence finished), I restarted the game, but this time with a mage (high was my confidence...).
As it would be, this mage was with me in BG1, then ToSC, then BG2, and then ToB. Every spell, every item, every XP earned on that character has a story for me, a time and a place for it, and a real life memory associated.
"Remember Staff of magi?"
"Sure, I got that the night before I went to holidays with my late uncle"
Never has a game held me for 18 years, I have finished the saga countless times and every character I played with has a special place.
I could never play any other RPG's because they all lacked the depth of BG.
(with exception of Fallout and Fallout 2, best RPG's ever...you should do Fallout EE next, Fallout 3/4 suck
When I heard they were making BG:EE I was thrilled, and went straight into "Shut up and take my money!" mode, the mode I will keep being in as long as you keep this saga alive(*khm* BG3 *khm*)
I didn't belong there. I was shy and awkward. I was only there because I made a good sidekick, and my friend was invited and very enthusiastic about going. He made me come with him. I was so nervous. She had Doritos in a bowl and since my parents never bought them I just practically ate the whole thing. My friend wouldn't eat them because he didn't want his breath to stink. He knew what was up.
Anyway, the time came and I was paired with Kimmy. She led my to her father's home office; a dark little room on the far side of the basement. There was a leather couch on one wall. The kind of bachelor's couch that gets banished to some dank corner of a married man's house. Well worn; a crumpled blanket slung over the side for the nights when the husband gets banished as well.
On the other wall was his computer. A spinning box bouncing off the edges of the screen caught my eye. Noticing this, Kimmy asked me if I wanted to see. Timidly, I went with her. She urged me to touch it. My trembling hands reached out to the gentle contours of the mouse, bumping it slightly and causing the screen to flicker. In a moment i saw it in all her full glory. A scene from a sunny day in baldurs gate. Docks district. Kimmy put her hand on top of mine and showed me everything. Pointing, clicking, inventory, party selection. We talked to a few commoners before our time "in heaven" was up.
I didn't know it at the time but I had just started a new chapter in my life. I would leave boyhood behind that night, and start my journey toward man-boyhood. It wouldn't be until college that I actually played Baldur's Gate again. But then I would go all the way... to Serevok. Now, older still, after the wife and kids are asleep I revisit Baldur's Gate in some forgotten corner of my own house. I remember my youth. I remember Kimmy. I remember the promise of an open world.
Honestly, don't remember a lot after that. I had played all the Gold Box games and loved them so was more or less familiar with AD&D. I know I started off with a Paladin. I remember the nice thick manual that I spent tons of time browsing to learn about the various stats and what does what. Boy do I miss those days of manuals like that. So much nicer to sit down with an actual manual than to read PDFs on my computer ... which they even do makes equivalent manuals like that. I knew about being able to adjust stats, but it felt too much like "cheating", so I would keep rolling into I got something I could sort of live with. The only concession I did allow myself was to switch 2 stats. I never did finish the game at that early point. I think the furthest I ever got was to Baldur's Gate ... after many reloads and dying to the various assassins, etc., and I think it was just too big for me and my interest turned to something else. It is extremely rare for me to actually finish a new game. Part of that is a problem of being a perfectionist and I get into the game and realize I haven't done things optimally and soon I'm restarting. I'm trying to get over that, but it's quite the mountain to overcome.
I do recall my amazement upon wandering around the area of Beregost for a while when Khalid and Jaheira got into a fight with Xzar and Montaron. Pretty sure Khalid and Jaheira kicked their butts. Oh well ... at least gave me room for Garrick and Branwen.
Years later, I came back to it and re-started ... I always have to re-start. That may have been around the time of BG2. Not only did I finally complete the game, but I completed it close to 10 times with various characters: paladin, ranger, fighter, cleric-mage, invoker, druid, bard ... maybe a couple others. I also finished BG2 once, with my cleric-mage which despite my fondness for paladins is my favorite character due to all the spells. Odd that I've never beaten the game with a thief. Will need to do that at some point. I've never beaten the ToB part of the game.
'Course, then with all the mods popping up, I got really interested in those. I spend tons more time actually fiddling with mods than I do playing the game. Last couple weeks, got the bug again and I'm back to using Big World Setup (absolutely amazing if you want to fiddle with lots of mods) to create a super-modded game that I'm going to play all the way through the series. Starting with ... a paladin of course. I think I finally sort of have the mod situation "perfect" ... ... until I find the next "bug" that I have created.
Still have my original 5-disk set of BG. Have bought the game tons of times including all the original releases, and now all the GOG versions and even BG:EE on Steam. Also the original releases of IWD as well as the GOG and EE versions. Have beaten IWD once as well, but not IWD2. Have just also fired up a modded IWD:EE game to play with the IWD NPC mod.
So, not sure which will win out for the first to really get started. I am looking forward to finally getting all the way through ToB however. Already have started firing up an install for BGT to include some of the big mods such as Dark Side of the Sword Coast and The Darkest Day.
Still plenty more game left for me. The newer games can wait their turn.
Another friend of us, whose dad was some computer expert with pro equipment had a CD burner that back then was terribly expensive and unreliable (and required a SCSI interface!) ... Friend's grand idea was to order the original English edition from "his aunt in America" (blessed land of the nerds), burn copies for all of us, refunding his invest with that deal ...
Well thought, but English was not what we wanted to play and the disks took weeks to come over the Atlantic ... When they arrived we others had bought the German version from store, already gathering the party before venturing forth, when cd burner friend was waiting for the orders to come in that never came :-). He's a computer expert in America now though - happy end!
I felt, back then, genuinely uncomfortable about the "chunking" that occurred in both (which I switched of in BG II; thus discovering the exploit that enabled preserving enemy equipment even after shattering frozen foes, or disintegrating them).
And both titles, "The two Towers" and "Shadow of Amn" have something else in common, in that they fortified my bond to fantasy in gaming, movies and literature. My first gaming experiences before that were with Final Fantasy VII/VIII/IX and, while also very pleasant (VII over IX over VIII, for me) not as important as what BG did for my pop-cultural preferences.
It is debt which I can never repay and has lead me to wonderful worlds, since then.
During all that, I picked up Baldur's Gate and I clashed a bit with the profusion of explorable areas and how easy it was to wander off the path and get overwhelmed at low level. I actually got pretty far into BG in at least one playthrough but I think my impression of the game suffered because I played SoA first.
I haven't played multiple playthroughs like many of the people here, but I have been a fan of infinity engine games since Planescape: Torment. Right now I've got a BG playthrough I intend to fully finish and take through SoD, SoA, and ToB.
I started playing Baldur's Gate... About a month ago to be exact. I bought it on Tablet, realized that I have a hard time walking through doors and decided to rebuy the series (I don't do incomplete series if I can help it) on Steam. I had the D&D 3rd edition core rulebooks so I had a rough idea about how the game worked, and I felt the need to try and treat the game like I would when I attempted to play with my brother and sister, so I limted myself to three rerolls and I played what I felt was my favorite class, the Druid.
So, I went through Candlekeep and thought that for a game that reviewers said was the most satisfyingly difficult game, it was pretty easy. Then again, I also had an expectation that the game was gonna be harder as I played FF games before and so I always expect the beginning easy. So I decided to incorporate Ironman mode in the run... no knowledge or anything. Because Ironman is fun.
So I watched the Prologue cutscene and figured the bad guy was a bad guy and I was gonna kill him because he messed with me twice. That's not really balanced as my druid thought, as it should have been my turn.
So, got Imoen... chased her off (I think her voice is... eugh... loud for the sake of a better word) and went to investigate the place with rocks (trying to avoid spoilers here). Then I went further north and found a guy wanting to jump off a cliff, told him to do it and somehow he has faith in me (tbh I was pretty much laughing at the absurdity of the situation to actually care) and didn't jump.
Then I met a bear and figured I would become friends with the bear...
Then I made my second character who is a cleric. Kinda did the same thing but with less bear and more caution and reading of what the spells actually do and so far I just killed Chapter 2's Epic Baddy of Epicness... mainly because he exploded because of a backstab.
And I'm still enjoying it.
so as I said before, when I first starting playing BG I had to go over to my neighbour's house to play it, and after a few months of playing BG I was finally starting to get the hang of BG, I was starting to learn the mechanics better, I finally found out what dexterity and constitution actually did and I may have even figured out that charisma can actually affect npc interaction ( although not 100 % sure if I knew about the CHA thing)
anyway one day my neighbour said hey; I have BG2 which is the sequel to BG want to give it a try? So I thought; hell yeah, if BG is this great BG2 must be friggin' awesome, so I started a game
first thing I noticed was how clean it looked, since bg2 ran at a higher res, it looked better from that, second I noticed that the game was a lot better at explaining what things did ( like upon character creation this is lots of info of whats going on)
so first, I went through the races and noticed there was an addition: the half-orc, and when I read about his stats allocation, I was blown away at how awesome that was, because in BG1 especially to have 19 STR and 19 CON is pretty overwhelming to have on a character, and since I loved the idea of being a powerful warrior in games the huge STR and CON was a great fit
next, I looked up at the classes, and I was blown away with the improvement of them, not only were there 3 added classes from the first game ( barbarian, monk, sorcerer) all the other base classes all had class kits, and I was in class heaven, I couldn't believe all of the cool options that were available, and I read through them all, and just from that, I was starting to get more interest in BG2 despite the fact that I haven't even finished making my character, just reading in on the class descriptions was showing me how epic this game was going to be, so with all that being said, I believe I went with some sort of fighter, don't remember if it was just a normal fighter or if I went with berserker, now although I remember way in the early days playing a barbarian ( and more of that to come shortly) this next paragraph makes me believe that I had to have been a fighter of some sort
so now, it was weapon proficiency time, and holy crap, was it different, not only did they change it so that if you want proficiencies in a weapon, it has to be in the actual weapon you want to use ( compared to BG's weapon category system) so first I saw that you could place grand mastery into a weapon right off the get go ( since I had 6 proficiency points to start with) and I was like; whooooooa this is friggin' baddass, high mastery already? ah but there was a catch though, weapon proficiency bonuses have changed in bg2 since bg1, but I didn't realize that until I was in the actual game, so here I thought I was butt kicking for goodness without realizing how bg2 crippled the weapon proficiency system, anyways, the next thing that caught my eye was the fighting styles, another one of those tidbits that really got me more involved into the game, and I thought the addition of fighting styles was just superb, the ones that really caught my eye where the single weapon and two handed weapon fighting style ( I missed the two weapon fighting style because I never knew I could dual wield until later) and what I saw was that if you had proficiency in these fighting styles you could score critical hits on a 19, and I though; oh my god, my guy is going to be beast mode, 19 STR, scoring critical hits on a 19, this is the promised land, so with my last proficiency point, I put it on two handed weapon fighting ( at that time, I didn't really know what speed factor was per se, but the +1 to damage and increased critical sold me in on it)
so with all the epic character creation all completed it was time to start the bg2 journey
when the first cutscene started, I noticed several things, first of all the increased RES, back in those days I knew nothing of PC hardware, and by default bg2 would run at 800x600 instead of BG's 640x480, so anyways, I thought to myself: wow, this game looks smaller that BG but man does it look pretty - who would of thought that with a few more pixels it could make it look so much better-
then the voice acting on the mage in the first dungeon, it blew me away, because back in those days, video game voice acting was still pretty new, and I couldn't believe how good it was, and also the animation of the sprties, Jon looked amazing, the golem looked amazing and even the shadow thief looked pretty cool, so it was pretty neat from the beginning
then, imoen joined my team and I noticed that she had a different portrait from BG and I thought, oh wow neat, that's cool, and by the looks of it, they made her look a little bit more mature and a little less innocent looking I thought, but I thought it was pretty neat regardless, and also her class, how they had her set up I thought was bizarre; level 7 thief dual into a mage? I thought shenanigans, how could she have such a class set up? but oh well I took her in and thought it was pretty neat that she had some mage in her ( even though I would have rather had a full thief, but I made due) next I saw jaheira and minsc, I grabbed them as well and saw that they also had updated portraits and thought that was cool beans, but also I received a whooping 3000 XP each for having them join my team, and I thought; wowzer jam, the XP in this game is huge, and that was another reminder that this game was going to be epic if I was getting XP in this fashion
so anyway I going along grabbing gear and fighting a baddie or two, and then I remember coming up to the goblins thinking: wow this is neat, little goblins, why weren't these things in BG? and I thought the animation was so cool on them and I was getting pumped, next I noticed that when I starting scribing scrolls into my spell book and disarmed traps and removed locks, I was getting XP! and not only that, BUT A LOT OF IT, level x 1000 for scroll scribing? I thought this was amazing and I always got excited every time I found a scroll because I couldn't wait to get the huge increase in XP,
then the next thing I noticed was the music, the dungeon battle music I thought was the greatest game music I have ever heard, I fell in love with that music, for whatever reason it just tugs on the pleasure strings on the ears every time I heard it, and that alone almost could have been the reason why I went back to BG2 months later
anyways, on my venture, there were a couple of things I didn't like about bg2, first; the lag was real, I remember going into the library area of the first dungeon and the game lagging hard, and infact lots of the battles dropped the frame rate, and I thought? was is this game doing this so much? ( as I said back then I knew nothing about PC hardware, and back in the day believe it or not BG2 was a pretty hardware intensive game with its 8 MB video memory requirement, that's right folks, not 8 GB, but 8 MB as in megabytes of video memory, and even some 8 MB video memory cards still struggled to make BG2 not lag, and back then some of the BEST graphic cards were 16 MB, but you had to be RICH to afford one of those- just comes to show how progress in the world has come-) and the second thing I didn't like, was the animation of the armor and weapons, bg2 did a complete revamp on all the weapons and armor and I was not pleased with it, I though all the normal weapons looked broken ( especially the battle axe) and it was just weird for me to see them that way ( although ironically enough, I miss the old BG 2 animations since the EE games got rid of a lot of them)
anyway, I never finished the first dungeon, I think I played for about and hour maybe, and I believe the furthest I got was the bedroom that had the 7 traps in it ( ah when that alarm went off, that was a very unpleasant surprise when I had 2 warmongers come in on me - barely made it out alive at that one-) and then for whatever reason I either had to go home, or some such and that was my first experience with bg2
I had mixed feelings about bg2 though, I don't know if I liked it all that much, I LOVED BG and all the glory that came with the first game, but BG2 just didn't have the same magic that BG had when I first played it, but that night the thing I remembered most was the music of the first dungeon, and I thought that track was beautiful, and I always held onto that idea for a few days, and then about a week or so later my neighbour gave me the versus books strategy guide for BG2 to read, and then my head starting to spin, and the magic came back after I started reading it
first off, I say more indept about the classes, and I saw wizard slayer, and the fact that it received magic resistance, and I was blown away, remembering how hard it was to get MR in BG I thought that it was so BADASS that a class could give it to you, not only that, it was a fighter class ( which was a class that I loved) ANNNNNNNNNNNNND the huge penalty it gave mages for each time you hit them, after reading a few pages of the guide I saw that there would be many many mages, so I thought this class was god mode, and I couldn't wait to start BG2 again
and not only did I find my favourite new class, but I looked at the monster and item appendix in the back and it was almost orgasmic from what I saw, weapons and armor that reached +5, the additions of actual dragons and all the other cool looking monsters in the game, the magic of the first game starting to come back a million fold after I saw what BG2 was ready to dish out with all this cool stuff; lots of cool looking baddies, tons of new awesome powerful items, and to top it off, in the first dungeon you could get a +2 two handed sword, IN THE FIRST DUNGEON, I was more than excited, I was AMPED as hell to start again
so months later I finally got a copy of bg2 and installed it onto the new store bought PC we just got and I was ready to kick some butt with my half-orc wizard slayer wielding a two handed sword ( now that I come to think of it I believe in my very first playthrough I may have a used a long sword, not sure) anyway, so off I went and the beautiful music came back again, oh man was I getting pumped, and not only that, no lag this time, so that felt nice ( this PC could actually run bg2 at 30 fps without lag, so that was nice) so off I went kicking some serious butt, and I finally came out of the first dungeon, thinking hell yeah, time to explore the sweet bg2 world........... and then imoen gets captured..... um lol? even though I read the perfect guide, it was more of a scan of a few sections of game and what was happening ( I was more interested in the weapons and monsters part)
so imoen got captured, and I was like; oh man, I just gave her all those scrolls in her spell book, I direly need to get her back, so off on the questing I went, although I don't think I got much further than that, infact I think I restarted my game ( maybe even because of irenicus taking imoen away so I had to set up my team a bit differently)
so I made a new game, but this time I believe I made a barbarian because the d12 HP looked so cool ( now this might have been the 10th or so playtrough of bg2 at this point, but this game I remember the most, since It was the first playthrough were I got to spell hold)
so anyway, made barbarian, half-orc, two handed sword, all that good jazz, and kept my scrolls this time since I knew imoen would go away, beat the first dungeon, and then I finished the circus quest, brought aerie along, went to the slums, grabbed nalia, did her quest and then I finally had the money to start chapter 3 and if im not mistaken this was the first time that I ever go to chapter 3 ( during this time I remember one of the tool tips saying: if you wish to dual wield, just simply place a second weapon in your shield slot) and I thought, no way, you can dual wield in this game?!?!?! so I tested it out, and I saw myself dual wielding and I thought it looked badass as hell, until I saw what happned to my thac0 and I was like; um nope, cant do this, back to two handed sword
so anyways, going along chapter 3 getting HUGE XP, I couldn't believe the amount of XP this game was dishing out ( especially when I completed nalia's quest, that mammoth 45 000 xp per character almost gave me a stiffy..... anyways) and at the tale end of chapter 3 I had my first run in with vampires, I don't remember much about how I dealt with it, but I remember getting level drained and how much I HATED that mechanic, I did not like level drain at all, but I persevered and made it to chapter 4, and things REALLY starting getting interesting because I have NEVER made it this far before
now from what I can remember, I remember getting imoen back on my team, since someone did a nice little betrayal to me right before hand ( quite convenient that imoen was there to pick up the slack actually, and that betrayal just through me away, I couldn't believe the depth that this game had) and then going through the spell hold dungeon, and the sheer awe I was in, I looked so pretty, lots of cool different monsters, lots of cool puzzles that weren't boring, and just so much stuff to do, I loved that spell hold dungeon, especially from 2 killer items I found: the ring of regeneration and the flame of the north, with those 2 items I thought I was jesus incarnate, not only did I regenerate but the sword of the north not only gave MR but it also did extra damage to evil baddies, I was so jacked with all this cool gear I couldn't wait to continue kicking some bg2 but
and then I eventually found my way to irenicus and I cant quite remember if the battle was hard or not, I do believe I had a little trouble with the thieves in the end of it, and when that was done I took the saemon havarian route, and I remember desherik going hostile for some bizarre reason ( oh well more XP and items for me, to put into my new awesomely found bag of holding, this item I thought was of legend, I couldn't believe such an awesome mechanic of freeing up inventory space for all the new found goodies I have found in the spell hold dungeon)
and then I finally found my way to the sahuagin city, the thing I remember was that the battle music was pretty neat, since it was a new tune, and that is what I FINALLY hit the 1 000 000 XP mark on my character, and I would just look in awe of my character and think of how awesome he was, with over 160 HP the ring of regeneration, flame of the north, and damage resistance, I thought that my character was GOD MODE INCARNATE, but if im not mistaken that was the end of that character's journey, I don't recall if I ever made it to the underdark with that character, but I remember that being the furthest that I have ever made it with a character in SoA before, and after that, there would be many many MANY more play throuhgs, and even many MANY more play throughs of bg1, I would go back and forth ( and way back in the day I still loved bg1 more, since I had way more experience with that game, but now it seems that I have a little bit more love for bg2, since bg2 improved absolutely everything from bg1)
and alas, the years would go by with thousands of play throughs of both games, and it wasn't until about 5 or 6 years ago did I finally start slowing down from playing those games 11-12 months out of the year, down to about 5-6 months out of the year
the BG series for PC will always be my favourite games of all time, and they will always hold a special place in my heart, and if somehow or some day a bg3 ever came out ( which I kind of hope doesn't happen, I would prefer a whole new game instead of a continuation) I hope that it can give me the magic of happiness and amazement that bg1 and 2 did all those years ago
Edit: Also, from the posts below, seems like I'm not the only one feeling sometimes a "like" just isn't enough.
Sometimes stream-of-consciousness is my favorite writing technique to read as the reader. It's almost like the author is doing a Vulcan mind meld with his or her reader.
Died to shank or carbos
Made a Paladin
Ruled the Sword Coast
I can't remember much of my first time sadly... I do know that for many years I was terrified of playing mages, and never a cleric(not sure why on that).
Decided to play the game with a Half-Elf Chick, Fighter/Mage/Cleric (because... why not?). Now I had basic exposition to 2.0 AD&D having played 2 campaigns, one of which as a Barbarian up to level 11, but had never DM-ed, nor did I own any books at the time about any D&D related stuff. So stats, how THAC0 worked... no Idea. In BG1, you are both a player and a DM (to some extent).
So meh, I just rolled what I thought where good stats (18/53-06-18-18-18-07), and it took a long time until I realized even with a FullPlate I had crappy armor stats. I still outlived Xzar and Khalid tho. Played a few hours, and got into that area with all the spiders... at level 2... Yeah. But nothing like reloading when failing right? Then I went to Nashkel a few level higher with good gear and wondered why Xzar/Monteron always fought with Khalid/Jaheira... Whatever, just reload again and we're all set. Found Minsc (wth is that guy on... oh wait, he's cool... and POWERFUL). Had to ditch Xzar to get Dynaeir... okay so Monteron just leaves if I do that. humm... Now where am I supposed to find a good aligned thief? Umm, I guess it's back to fetch Imohen who I left to hang on the streets near Candlekeep (why would I need thieves in my party right? Thieves sucks anyways right??).
I actually was appalled... This game ROCKED ! So much attention to details it's insane.
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(I actually stopped my first game around the Basilisk area because I had hit the level cap of 89'000 and was not interesting keeping playing with such an XP cap on. Fortunately, friendly modders rectified that problem soon enough and I finished the game a few years later, before diving back in BG2)
The fact BG1/2 are part of my "Old games" is a testament on how good it is. But that first day of fooling around being completely lost was really fun. And finding those 18 dex bracers on the gnoll bridge (Gnoll fortress) was a real wake-up call to the fact that DEX isn't "Just only for thieves".
By the time BG2 was out I had entered the job market and found myself in possession of a monster PC (at LEAST a P-450!) and again entered a semi-hermit like state, though I had to attend to work, naturally. So I probably spent a month playing BG2 the first time.
I was hooked. First roll, a paladin, and I've to this day no idea what stats she had. She insta-died fighting a gibberling though. Was named Kerrigan after the second most awesome game released in '98.
Don't remember much of my first playthrough, except that it took me months to actually get to chapter 5, when I first was let into Baldur's Gate itself. Much of that time was spent just running around the maps exploring and dying to everything. I've no idea how many characters I did or how many hours I spent before I actually killed Sarevok for the first time. But it was a lot. A loooot.
Still have no idea why I loved the game so much. I understood nothing and died to everything. Yet I loved it. Guess it was something about the endless world and my sense of exploring that did it.
I did buy Baldur's Gate at release, in large part to thank Bioware for the great support Greg Zeschuk gave me with Shattered Steel, and in part because I was already playing pen and paper 2nd Edition AD&D.
Problem was, the game didn't grab me, and I hated the screen door transparency effect, so I shelved it.
Years later I bought the game for Android, thinking that since I'm mainly playing on Android these days I might play it that way. I did play the tutorial and decided that the game was playable enough, but then wanted to choose between playing Final Fantasy 4 and BG (never played an FF game before, either), and by web advice went for FF4, simply because it's shorter. I'm still stuck on some boss fight on that, I'm way too casual these days.
So one day I will probably start BG, and I can only hope that I'll be able to get into it, but I don't play that much to get to it any time soon.
A few years later I was experimenting with other PC games. I'd tried Diablo, which scared me, and few other dungeon crawler types that failed to capture my heart. We didn't have a Nintendo, I didn't get my first GameBoy until I was about 14, so at that time my entire concept of "video games" consisted of the educational games I had that came of actually-floppy floppy disks, a free Mario game that was on our PC, and whatever Dad deigned to buy.
I was about 12 when my parents finally let me sit down and roll my first character in Baldur's Gate: Shadows of Amn. I remember exactly what she was, too: a half-elf druid. I used the standard blond elf with the green clothes as my portrait, and the kinda rude/snotty voiceset (streetwise in BG1 now I believe). Her wisdom was abysmal, her charisma was much higher than necessary, just in general her stats were absolutely abysmal. I picked my party based on who had the cutest portraits. Needless to say, that run was an absolute disaster. I never made it out of chapter two. In fact, I never beat either game until I was in high school. I was 16 when I finally made to Spellhold iirc. But I was hooked long before then.
If not for Baldur's Gate I don't think I ever would have gotten into games as a creative medium. It's a series very near and dear to my heart.
Honestly, so many of those games I would be like "meh" but immediately for whatever reason just the user interface, the screen, Imoen, I don't know what it was but it immediately struck like a serious chord and I was like I have to have this game.
I think I was just a pretty big fan of D&D, but it was always hard to get people together to play it and stuff. Consequently, the idea of just having it accessible there I thought was a pretty awesome concept. It was just like "Playable D&D" and Bioware I think did a really amazing job at keeping it feeling like D&D (Having cameos by Elminster, Drizzt, etc).
It was clear to me they were big fans of it as well and they tried hard to-
Oh! I'm getting carried away sorry =-), anyway yes a friend was playing it and I went out and got it the next day or something. I can't remember when this was exactly though.
Things I learned: It's important to say no to a relationship you aren't sure about. My inability to say mean things led to me marrying Aerie. It was only when I was staring at my son as an inventory item named Quayle that I questioned where things had spiraled out of my control.
Fast-forward to 1999. I had changed careers to software development and was working at a Baby Bell, with Y2K looming and companies throwing billable hours around like no one's business. I was spending what little free time I had working extra and learning new programming technologies gives. (I even moved to a downtown apartment so I could get an extra hour a day to bill out instead of drive.) A friend recommended the game, so I bought it and tried it. It was damn cool, but given my hourly rate, it was too expensive to play. I made a mental note to return to it when I could. In 2000 I was working on a hardcore rewrite/conversion, again pulling as many hours as I could, in a different city. I knew no one there, more or less, and one rainy Sunday morning I decided to try it. I was hooked. It was epic in scope, it was immersive, the plot was teasing and great, the characters believable, and there was humor with enough pop culture references to think the folks at MST3K may have been involved. And the release of BG2 was even greater.
Now I'm in a forced medical retirement and have such debilitating fatigue that "fatigue" isn't enough to describe it; they really need a new word. But I can pick up my my iPad and chuckle at hamsters and rangers rejoicing or hear Jan annoy a party member, and it brings a smile to this curmudgeonly old omnipresent authority figure.
My enormous sword broke in half whilst clobbering rats in Candlekeep. I then talked to Gorion before going back to the Inn for another one, accidentally told him I was ready to go, then got killed trying to punch a wolf to death outside Candlekeep.
After that I rolled a fighter with sword and shield. And made sure I bought more than one sword. And then died a large number of times to Tarnesh. Put the game away for a few months after that :-(