BG2 is much more polished game. Graphics, writing, combat, plot, class options. Everything is done better. For me, there's no question as to which is the better game, especially if we're talking about the vanilla versions.
That said, ever since the enhanced editions came out I found myself replaying BG1 more often. Easier game to get into, and I have a soft spot for low level characters even if the tactics tend to be simple. Most of the areas are pretty boring, but somehow that also makes them easy to get through, and their bland nature somehow makes them more replayable. Sort of like how you can quickly get tired of exotic fare but never grow tired of white bread/rice. The nonlinearity also helps.
Also, when you play the game enough times the writing quality/plot doesn't matter much anymore. Yeah, the writing in BG2 is much better and the dialogue choices in BG1 can be ridiculous (often not in a good way), but after so many playthroughs I find myself not reading them anyways.
So basically, BG2 is a better game. BG1 (or more accurately, BG1 in the BG2 engine) has more replay value.
As far as mages being overly powerful in BG2, in pen and paper D&D high level mages are absurdly powerful as well. This is the payoff for taking a character that's basically on life support until he accumulates close to 100,000XP (which is very tedious in 1 and in pen and paper). Same with monks who are garbage early on but high levels they're absolute beasts. When building a 1st level character you have to consider how many gaming hours you'll have to basically run and hide before you're even not a burden on the rest of the party versus the potential if he survives long enough to realize the potential of the class.
To be fair BG2 should force you to slog through BG1 working your mage up from level 1. Starting the game casting lv5 spells is pretty broken and really takes away the sense of how much effort it took to get your mage to the point where could survive against half a dozen kobalds.
On the flip side, adding HLAs for all classes make higher level progression rewarding for them as well, and I think is a nice touch. Overall tanks and thieves would get boring to level up pretty fast compared to spellcasters.
I love 1 and 2, but for re-play value I prefer 2 because of the different strongholds and romance options. Also the banter between party members offers a lot more entertainment in 2 and demands trying lots of variations to get some real gems of dialogue. Having the option to align with different factions is nice, and the addition of bags and containers for inventory management is priceless.
I prefer BG1. I've always felt that BG2 was more of a video gamer's game while BG1 was more true to the roots of the RPG. In BG2 fun was constantly being thrown at you from all directions in the form of NPC romances, epic enemies, and powerful items and abilities. In BG1 (and the IWD games to some extent) the onus is on the player to make his or her own fun, but for those players with the imagination and patience for it, it was supremely rewarding. As much I love Irenicus, I've also always found the Highlander-esque story and stopping the villain in BG1, given where you started from, to be more personal and fulfilling.
I find the open wilderness areas of BG1 a chore to explore - I have to grit my teeth at times to get through them all.
But you don't need to get through them all - that's part of the beauty about having the freedom to explore. While there are certain areas that you are required to at least visit, for the most part, you have the freedom to explore as much or as little of the rest of the game as you wish. You can play in the "no fog of war left behind" style, or you can stick to the roads and veer off the beaten path only when you wish to pursue certain quests, or something in between. I enjoy the freedom to explore the game as the whim strikes me, so that no two playthroughs of mine repeat the same path.
In BG2, you are required to endure a rather lengthy, tedious dungeon crawl just to kickstart the game, and while you aren't required to partake in every one of the subquests, any one that you do take part in will likely also require a similarly lengthy, lineal crawl of some kind (i.e: the Coronet slavers, Nalia's keep, the Umar Hills, the Planar Sphere, etc.).
I've recently found that I get the most fun from BG2 if I through the storyline out of the window, which goes against all of my roleplaying instincts - and therein lies the big difference for me between the two games: BG2 is not a roleplaying game.
I think of both games as a single entity. Sure, they were developed and released at different dates, but I can't help but think of Baldur's Gate (BG1, TOSC, BG2, TOB) as one, long saga of RPG epicness. It's like when people ask me if I prefer Godfather 1 or Godfather 2 (my favorite movie(s) next co Gladiator). Like the annoying distant cousin in the family, I pretend Godfather 3 never existed. Nonetheless, I think of GF1 and GF2 as one long cinema. Afterall, it was based on a single book. Same thinking is applied to Baldur's Gate.
I think something that skews opinions is that there is general agreement that the most fun levels to play the game are somewhere between 5 and 15. This means basically the end-game of BG1, but BG2 from the beginning, so a lot of folks have fond memories that BG2 was simply more fun from the beginning.
When reasoning things through, my head says I should pick BG2 as the better game. The NPCs are more polished, even leading to romances if you wish; a broader range of D&D lore is included, such as the idea of 'named level' characters building strongholds (the level where XP/level caps); the backgrounds and visuals are rendered at a higher resolution; the plot drives you more clearly from the beginning to the end; kits, fighting styles, monks and other classes added that did not appear in BG until the Enhanced Edition.
And yes, when I play the first game, it has a more innocent feel. Many of the maps are bright and colorful, much more pleasant to explore. The end game occurs at the height of the characters' powers coming into the fun zone, so can be a satisfying conclusion - for BG2, the end-game is already coming out of the top of the 'fun' zone and into an space that is beloved of the hard-core gamers, but turns into too much of a game of mage-chess for many. While the head says BG2, BGEE definitely tugs at the heart.
In the end I am glad to have both games, and each is my favorite in its own way. I try to enjoy each for its own merits, rather than not being what the other excelled at.
That's surprising to see these opinions, especially how few people put BG1 on first place.
I'd say too that BG1 is better and more enjoyable to play than BG2.
Story in BG1 is much less artificial than in BG2. Is has extremely solid start, probably best written part of all BG series is Candlekeep exit.
Low level play in BG series is much more cool and interesting than when you have 50+ useless spells and hundreds of useless familiar objects too. Discowering basilisks for the first time is was great. Facing Durlag tower on low levels. There was nothing close to this in BG2.
In BG1 you actually explore world, move on roads, it's solid space in which you immerse with distinct areas of interesting wilderness, cities, secrets.
What is city in BG2? It's not even a solid city, almost no houses. Every area is a bit artificial, for example, temple district. You don't get attached to such things, more-like think "wtf is this" on every corner.
You actually feel BG1 deja-vu in Watcher's keep area of BG2. Probably most solid part of BG2, was very enjoyable to explore.
Technological inconsistency again is on the edge in BG2. You start asking questions like how dragon exits this area via above human size caverns or doesn't Ihtillids break lore completely. Much closer to breaking immersion than in BG1 as it seems.
I've said this elsewhere but BG1 is a low-power game and I prefer low power games. I can see the appeal of Shadows of Amn, but it doesn't appeal all that much to me.
(With that said, I also prefer the smaller scope of the battles in BG1 - Siege of Dragonspear took too many tactical cues from Throne of Bhaal for my liking)
Technological inconsistency again is on the edge in BG2. You start asking questions like how dragon exits this area via above human size caverns or doesn't Ihtillids break lore completely. Much closer to breaking immersion than in BG1 as it seems.
Not really. Magic. Dragons are good at it. Teleport or polymorph into something smaller. Or at least in the case of Adalon, inherent racial polymorph self is a silver dragon thing.
The shadow dragon does seem a bit oddly placed, I will admit.
Adalon and Firkraag have humanoid forms that we actually see in-game, outside their lairs. They certainly don't have any problems getting in and out.
As for the shadow dragon Thaxll'ssillyia, there's a hole in the ground on the exterior map that's implied to be that dragon's path. "The edges of this pit are scratched and torn, as if some large creature has moved through here recently. The darkness of the pit is a black so deep it strains your eyes just to see it."
So yes, the game's designers did account for how the dragons get in and out of their lairs, at least for the SoA trio.
I much preferred the visual design of BG1 to BG2. I preferred the sprites, the paper dolls, the shields and armour, the character portraits.
And I preferred setting out from Candlekeep alone to waking up in Irenicus's dungeon with Minsc and Jaheira and being told I had been adventuring with them when I knew for a fact I hadn't. To me BG1 feels like an open world with infinite possibilities. At the start of BG2 I feel like I am being railroaded in someone else's story.
And don't even get me started on what they did to Imoen . . .
@Permidion_Stark "And don't even get me started on what they did to Imoen . . ."
Give her an actual arc? :P
Arc is overrated.
Sounds a bit like "Themes are for 8th-grade book reports." Too soon.
Here is my 8th-grade book report on character arc:
The vast majority of characters in art and literature don't have a character arc and don't need one. In Baldur's Gate, even the protagonist doesn't necessarily have one. If you start out as a paladin and fight the good fight (and continue to fight the good fight even after discovering you are the child of the Lord of Murder) and you keep on doing that right to the end, at which point you reject the opportunity to sit on your father's throne, then you haven't got an arc because you have done the same thing at the end that you would have done at the start. Then again, if you start out as a paladin, do some bad stuff, become a fallen paladin and then reject the chance to become Lord of Murder you've got an arc (and a pretty interesting one).
If Imoen has got a character arc (and I don't believe she has) then the most significant event in that arc occurs off screen, somewhere after the end of BG1 and before the beginning of BG2, when she decides to become a mage. But this change isn't rooted in her personality - there is nothing in BG1 to suggest that Imoen has an interest in magic. It happens because it is convenient and her stats allow it.
In BG2 she gets tortured and it makes her miserable. But she would have been miserable if she had been tortured in Candlekeep. The discovery that she too is the spawn of Bhaal doesn't fundamentally change her and even when she attains Bhaalspawn powers her stats may change but her personality doesn't.
Just in case I have misunderstood and we were in fact talking about story arc not character arc I will also provide an 8th-grade book report on that:
The term 'story arc' is just a fancy pants way of alluding to the fact that stories have a beginning, a middle and an end. It is possible to change the order in which these three elements appear in the narrative but all three must be present in order to constitute a story. If only the first and third elements exist then you are telling a joke. And if only the first element exists you are asking a question.
That was good story, but ... why it's called a longest joke? They mention some pun in the end, but with English jokes you never know if you missed it or it's some native word play (it's nice to have this excuse in pocket).
Comments
That said, ever since the enhanced editions came out I found myself replaying BG1 more often. Easier game to get into, and I have a soft spot for low level characters even if the tactics tend to be simple. Most of the areas are pretty boring, but somehow that also makes them easy to get through, and their bland nature somehow makes them more replayable. Sort of like how you can quickly get tired of exotic fare but never grow tired of white bread/rice. The nonlinearity also helps.
Also, when you play the game enough times the writing quality/plot doesn't matter much anymore. Yeah, the writing in BG2 is much better and the dialogue choices in BG1 can be ridiculous (often not in a good way), but after so many playthroughs I find myself not reading them anyways.
So basically, BG2 is a better game. BG1 (or more accurately, BG1 in the BG2 engine) has more replay value.
To be fair BG2 should force you to slog through BG1 working your mage up from level 1. Starting the game casting lv5 spells is pretty broken and really takes away the sense of how much effort it took to get your mage to the point where could survive against half a dozen kobalds.
On the flip side, adding HLAs for all classes make higher level progression rewarding for them as well, and I think is a nice touch. Overall tanks and thieves would get boring to level up pretty fast compared to spellcasters.
I love 1 and 2, but for re-play value I prefer 2 because of the different strongholds and romance options. Also the banter between party members offers a lot more entertainment in 2 and demands trying lots of variations to get some real gems of dialogue. Having the option to align with different factions is nice, and the addition of bags and containers for inventory management is priceless.
In BG2, you are required to endure a rather lengthy, tedious dungeon crawl just to kickstart the game, and while you aren't required to partake in every one of the subquests, any one that you do take part in will likely also require a similarly lengthy, lineal crawl of some kind (i.e: the Coronet slavers, Nalia's keep, the Umar Hills, the Planar Sphere, etc.).
Exactly how I feel about BG2.
When reasoning things through, my head says I should pick BG2 as the better game. The NPCs are more polished, even leading to romances if you wish; a broader range of D&D lore is included, such as the idea of 'named level' characters building strongholds (the level where XP/level caps); the backgrounds and visuals are rendered at a higher resolution; the plot drives you more clearly from the beginning to the end; kits, fighting styles, monks and other classes added that did not appear in BG until the Enhanced Edition.
And yes, when I play the first game, it has a more innocent feel. Many of the maps are bright and colorful, much more pleasant to explore. The end game occurs at the height of the characters' powers coming into the fun zone, so can be a satisfying conclusion - for BG2, the end-game is already coming out of the top of the 'fun' zone and into an space that is beloved of the hard-core gamers, but turns into too much of a game of mage-chess for many. While the head says BG2, BGEE definitely tugs at the heart.
In the end I am glad to have both games, and each is my favorite in its own way. I try to enjoy each for its own merits, rather than not being what the other excelled at.
I'd say too that BG1 is better and more enjoyable to play than BG2.
Story in BG1 is much less artificial than in BG2. Is has extremely solid start, probably best written part of all BG series is Candlekeep exit.
Low level play in BG series is much more cool and interesting than when you have 50+ useless spells and hundreds of useless familiar objects too. Discowering basilisks for the first time is was great. Facing Durlag tower on low levels. There was nothing close to this in BG2.
In BG1 you actually explore world, move on roads, it's solid space in which you immerse with distinct areas of interesting wilderness, cities, secrets.
What is city in BG2? It's not even a solid city, almost no houses. Every area is a bit artificial, for example, temple district. You don't get attached to such things, more-like think "wtf is this" on every corner.
You actually feel BG1 deja-vu in Watcher's keep area of BG2. Probably most solid part of BG2, was very enjoyable to explore.
Technological inconsistency again is on the edge in BG2. You start asking questions like how dragon exits this area via above human size caverns or doesn't Ihtillids break lore completely. Much closer to breaking immersion than in BG1 as it seems.
(With that said, I also prefer the smaller scope of the battles in BG1 - Siege of Dragonspear took too many tactical cues from Throne of Bhaal for my liking)
Not really. Magic. Dragons are good at it. Teleport or polymorph into something smaller. Or at least in the case of Adalon, inherent racial polymorph self is a silver dragon thing.
The shadow dragon does seem a bit oddly placed, I will admit.
As for the shadow dragon Thaxll'ssillyia, there's a hole in the ground on the exterior map that's implied to be that dragon's path. "The edges of this pit are scratched and torn, as if some large creature has moved through here recently. The darkness of the pit is a black so deep it strains your eyes just to see it."
So yes, the game's designers did account for how the dragons get in and out of their lairs, at least for the SoA trio.
And I preferred setting out from Candlekeep alone to waking up in Irenicus's dungeon with Minsc and Jaheira and being told I had been adventuring with them when I knew for a fact I hadn't. To me BG1 feels like an open world with infinite possibilities. At the start of BG2 I feel like I am being railroaded in someone else's story.
And don't even get me started on what they did to Imoen . . .
Give her an actual arc? :P
Arc is overrated.
Gave her a scar?
Made her into a mage and then removed her from the party for a significant part of the game. And they gave her a scar.
I often use EEKeeper to turn Imoen back into a pure Thief for my BG2 playthroughs. XD
Sounds a bit like "Themes are for 8th-grade book reports." Too soon.
She's actually a character now. Its an improvement from the nothing she had before.
Here is my 8th-grade book report on character arc:
The vast majority of characters in art and literature don't have a character arc and don't need one. In Baldur's Gate, even the protagonist doesn't necessarily have one. If you start out as a paladin and fight the good fight (and continue to fight the good fight even after discovering you are the child of the Lord of Murder) and you keep on doing that right to the end, at which point you reject the opportunity to sit on your father's throne, then you haven't got an arc because you have done the same thing at the end that you would have done at the start. Then again, if you start out as a paladin, do some bad stuff, become a fallen paladin and then reject the chance to become Lord of Murder you've got an arc (and a pretty interesting one).
If Imoen has got a character arc (and I don't believe she has) then the most significant event in that arc occurs off screen, somewhere after the end of BG1 and before the beginning of BG2, when she decides to become a mage. But this change isn't rooted in her personality - there is nothing in BG1 to suggest that Imoen has an interest in magic. It happens because it is convenient and her stats allow it.
In BG2 she gets tortured and it makes her miserable. But she would have been miserable if she had been tortured in Candlekeep. The discovery that she too is the spawn of Bhaal doesn't fundamentally change her and even when she attains Bhaalspawn powers her stats may change but her personality doesn't.
Just in case I have misunderstood and we were in fact talking about story arc not character arc I will also provide an 8th-grade book report on that:
The term 'story arc' is just a fancy pants way of alluding to the fact that stories have a beginning, a middle and an end. It is possible to change the order in which these three elements appear in the narrative but all three must be present in order to constitute a story. If only the first and third elements exist then you are telling a joke. And if only the first element exists you are asking a question.
tl;dr
Same. Or at least I make her a much higher Thief, like 10th.
That was good story, but ... why it's called a longest joke? They mention some pun in the end, but with English jokes you never know if you missed it or it's some native word play (it's nice to have this excuse in pocket).