What are some things that frustrated or dissapointed you about the BG or IWD series?
HaHaCharade
Member Posts: 1,644
Ok, we all *love* the BG series and most of us also have a place in our heart for the IWD games too, but what things just straight up frustrated or dissapointed you about them? (Disclaimer - Talking original games with no mods here).
Here's a few for me:
1) BG -- No 5th level clerical spells, even after the expansion. C'mon, no Flamestrike? No Raise Dead? Who wants to play a druid to get that stuff...
2) BG -- Lack of inventory space. Those fancy gem pouches and scroll cases? That was futuristic technology at the time.
3) BG -- No Max HP per Level, No Automatic Spell learning. Reload, Reload, Reload, Reload.
4) BG -- Horrible pathfinding
5) BG -- Ridiculous Kobold archer encounters at low level while camping. The dialogue here should have read "Every Kobold in Faerun awakens you from your slumber -- ROAR."
6) BG -- Those little kids always taunting me. YOU FUNNY LOOKIN. Ha, ok just kidding on this one.
7) BG2 -- Xzar and Montaron die. Boo... HISS.
8) BG2 -- No Kagain. I probably am alone on this one but I *liked* Kagain, and Korgan is just a jacked up substitute on steroids.
9) BG2 -- Beginning of the game assumes you played as good aligned in BG1. I know, I know, I know - This was almost impossible to change but I remember playing it and being like... these people got captured with me? They weren't even in my party lol.
10) IWD -- Item Randomness. ITEM RANDOMNESS. AAARRRRGH. But it gives replayability! But its more like using the random treasure tables in AD&D! F*ck that! Give me the best items so I don't have to reload and hack.
11) IWD -- Lack of spell scrolls to suit more than one mage. Might enter a bit into the replayability argument above, but one fireball scroll? ONE FIREBALL SCROLL?! Rage.
12) IWD -- Lack of gameplay hours. Nuff said.
13) IWD -- Trials of the Luremaster. C'mon - You're going to take me OUT of Icewind Dale for an expansion? I didn't buy "Icewind Dale and the Desert". Isn't there enough in the frozen north to keep me occupied?
14) IWD -- Heart of Winter eliminating/changing items from IWD. Really? You're going to try to balance the game by removing cool magic items and making my Mithril Field Plate +2 magical? I hate you.
15) IWD -- Build a party instead of finding NPCs. I guess its "Different" and a "Matter of Preference" and I did enjoy writing the biographies for my chars... not sure this should be on this list, but it is, screw it.
16) IWD -- Changing store inventories. Better buy that item soon - OR ITS GONE. Why do make it so hard to make money, and then make it even harder by taking away certain items if I don't buy them soon enough? How about you place those items in dungeons instead, since some of them are the coolest ones in the game.. This is Dungeons and Dragons not Merchants and Barmaids! :P
Here's a few for me:
1) BG -- No 5th level clerical spells, even after the expansion. C'mon, no Flamestrike? No Raise Dead? Who wants to play a druid to get that stuff...
2) BG -- Lack of inventory space. Those fancy gem pouches and scroll cases? That was futuristic technology at the time.
3) BG -- No Max HP per Level, No Automatic Spell learning. Reload, Reload, Reload, Reload.
4) BG -- Horrible pathfinding
5) BG -- Ridiculous Kobold archer encounters at low level while camping. The dialogue here should have read "Every Kobold in Faerun awakens you from your slumber -- ROAR."
6) BG -- Those little kids always taunting me. YOU FUNNY LOOKIN. Ha, ok just kidding on this one.
7) BG2 -- Xzar and Montaron die. Boo... HISS.
8) BG2 -- No Kagain. I probably am alone on this one but I *liked* Kagain, and Korgan is just a jacked up substitute on steroids.
9) BG2 -- Beginning of the game assumes you played as good aligned in BG1. I know, I know, I know - This was almost impossible to change but I remember playing it and being like... these people got captured with me? They weren't even in my party lol.
10) IWD -- Item Randomness. ITEM RANDOMNESS. AAARRRRGH. But it gives replayability! But its more like using the random treasure tables in AD&D! F*ck that! Give me the best items so I don't have to reload and hack.
11) IWD -- Lack of spell scrolls to suit more than one mage. Might enter a bit into the replayability argument above, but one fireball scroll? ONE FIREBALL SCROLL?! Rage.
12) IWD -- Lack of gameplay hours. Nuff said.
13) IWD -- Trials of the Luremaster. C'mon - You're going to take me OUT of Icewind Dale for an expansion? I didn't buy "Icewind Dale and the Desert". Isn't there enough in the frozen north to keep me occupied?
14) IWD -- Heart of Winter eliminating/changing items from IWD. Really? You're going to try to balance the game by removing cool magic items and making my Mithril Field Plate +2 magical? I hate you.
15) IWD -- Build a party instead of finding NPCs. I guess its "Different" and a "Matter of Preference" and I did enjoy writing the biographies for my chars... not sure this should be on this list, but it is, screw it.
16) IWD -- Changing store inventories. Better buy that item soon - OR ITS GONE. Why do make it so hard to make money, and then make it even harder by taking away certain items if I don't buy them soon enough? How about you place those items in dungeons instead, since some of them are the coolest ones in the game.. This is Dungeons and Dragons not Merchants and Barmaids! :P
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Comments
BG2 -- Viconia dumps me after I sleep in her bed. FIX THIS TOO!
IWD -- Didn't get to see Poquelin and Yxunomei's armies fight. Why did I kill them all?
BG2 - losing all your stuff at the beginning of the game when you replay......needs to be a fix/workaround for this.
BG2 - no female edwin romance......mods took care of it but come on, missed opportunity.
BG2 - if male, requiring high wisdom to get out of sleeping with drow female, and auto breaks romance if you mess up.....
more but wife got home, will post again later
I'm told I've been captured and put in a dungeon? How did that happen? How come I didn't put up a fight? To make things worse I look terrible and I don't seem to be able to decide whether I am right or left-handed
But I figure what the hell and I fight may way out of the dungeon (with a couple of people I thought were dead) only to find my favourite character is taken away from me (and again I don't get to put up a fight).
I was really looking forward to BG2 but I always assumed that the party from my final save in BG1 would be there with me. It was so disappointing to find they had all gone.
What annoys me the most nowadays is probably the pathfinding issues in bottlenecks and all-around tight quarters - how a character finds his way blocked for one second and then decides to walk off around the entire map hoping to find a better way, even if there isn't one. Would have liked either for characters to be able to occupy the same spot and walk through each other, or for the pathfinding AI to simply wait for awhile rather than going off in the opposite direction.
This is also evident e.g. when trying to enter Cromwell's place in the Athkatla docks. Can take ages to get everyone up the stairs or close enough to them so you can enter. I would like a mod that enlarged the area your party has to be in before you can use an exit.
Other than that it's mostly stuff that was hardcoded or part of the 2e ruleset, that bugs me like:
- fighters getting immense bonuses from str while thieves and mages get comparatively little from dex/int - this can be altered of course, but the game isn't really balanced around it
- the UI not being modifiable so classes and class combos aren't very malleable
- stoneskin making your character spend close to the entire trilogy brown-coloured annoyed me for a long time and almost put me off from playing a mage - but it got fixed, awesomely enough
As for IWD, I never liked it that much at all.
The beginning of BG2 never really bothered me. The party I had imported from BG1 had already been Imoen, Jaheria, Khalid (actually kept him alive once) and Minsc. I had killed off Dynaheir, can't remember who I replaced her with. Would be nice to see it changed up though to show your actual party. Should be easy enough to script in that Imoen gets captured too or maybe Jaheria and Khalid came looking for you if you didn't have them in the party.
Also, one more thing about BG1/BG2, seems like my health is always rerolled at the beginning of BG2 as it's always less then the amount i got from reloading rolls.... that might just be me though
BG2 on the on the other hand is a different story. After BG1 success I really expected an Open World exploration just like its predecessor, when I got to the Athkatla gates and find out its not the case I felt a MASSIVE disappointment!! and thats without talking about those AWFUL AWFUL paperdolls...
As for frustrating things I think that the 20 stack limit for arrows/bolts and the lack of gem bag are the most frustrating things.
I'm disappointed by the Nabassu demon boss in TOTSC, as it seems immensely overpowered and requires way too much knowledge about the D&D rule set to come up with ways to defeat it. I was seriously annoyed and eventually figured it wasn't worth the time or effort to take it out. I'm not saying I want it to be easy - I just don't want to resort on gimmicks to win.
BG2 -
Honestly wasn't disappointed by this game at all. It had some frustrations (got sick of level drain a LONG time ago), but it wasn't fun-breaking.
IWD/IWD2 -
Bleah. I want a story and reason to play. Not 'find more enemies to kill' for no reason whatsoever. Weak games, through and through.
BG 1 - When I tried to play an all-evil party, and being really evil, I had problems in concluding quests. In Nashkell, some Amn Mercenaries attacked me, and the mayor became hostile, so I couldn't finish the mines quest. It bugged me a lot. I'd like if people wouldn't become automatically hostile if some Mercenaries or head hunters attacked me and I killed them. I still want to do my quests.
BG 2 - I liked to be able, in BG1, to wander around at pleasure a lot before doing my quests; in BG2 there was always some problem that arrived at the wrong moment: Jaheira got cursed when I was searching for Valygar, while Anomen had to go back to the temple and Jan to his sister. And Keldorn to his wife. And a kid arrived just at that moment to summon Minsc hastly for the shadows. I like to straight up priorities, but damn...
BG 2 - Linked to the previous one, the fact that there were a lot of areas, not related to the main quest, that you had to be invited to, like Firerkaag's hills, the merchant city (the name evades me at the moment - I stopped playing the game some years ago), the place with the quest of the shadows (name, name, name...)...
BG 2 - Shapeshifter druid was lame. I liked a lot (A LOT) the idea, and loved the sprite. But when transformed, it was basically a heavily underpowered warrior (it still had cleric's THAC0 and hp, plus it couldn't use special weapons and armours), and that took away the best part of the class. As a caster it wasn't that bad, but I wanted to play a werewolf, not a werecleric... I would have gladly gone with more restrictions on spells, but useful were forms.
BG 2 - Not being able, as a druid, to grow in power for a good half of the game was super-lame! Stupid level cap.
I got it on my second try. Got Viconia to drink a potion of magic resistance, which brought it to 100%. The demon wasted his best spells on her. Then Shar-Teel rushed him hasted with a potion a strength, and I got him pretty quickly.
As far as the BG2 druid criticisms go; my understanding was that the advanced shapeshifter abilities were never coded correctly and were intended to be much more powerful than they were in game. Hopefully by the time BG2EE rolls around that will be fixed.
The druid level cap thing was strictly carried over from AD&D, even though it makes no sense in the BG setting...
*gets out AD&D rulebook*
PnP:Basically there can only be one level 15 druid in the world at a time, thus the immense xp gap between lvl 14 and 15. You can only achieve that level by being appointed by the previous level 15 druid. You could only advance past that point (to level 16) by having some OTHER level 14 druid to replace you as the only level 15 druid in the world. Oddly enough, there can be an unlimited number of level 16+ level druids. Whew...
Even though the only part of that requirement to make it into BG is that you must be level 15 to obtain the druid grove stronghold in BG2, the XP tables were kept the same. Even though the PnP rulebook specifically states that this is not a combat challenge; in BG2 it is.
(Interestingly, if you reach the XP cap in SOA Jaheria's xp is juuuuust a little too low to become a level 15 druid and issue the challenge herself. Of course, even with an xp cap remover she still can't, because it was only intended for the PC. Cernd himself can reach level 15 as a pure druid but also won't challenge for some character-releated reason I don't know because I never used him).
tl;dr: Druids are no good in BG2 because Bioware and TSR hate you.
But that is being fixed with BG:EE.
I agree the demon was not that hard I got him on 3rd try, I used the raise skeletons spell as cannon fodder, and my mages to cast protection from petrification and fear resistance and me, montaron, viconia with haste using best missle/bow weapons with best ammo and korgan with full prof in axes and using that throwing axe that returns to hand + buffs, haste chant and the usual, slaughtered it
The lack of evil choice you really have when it comes to quest. You can't play a jerk in this game, and most of the side quest are a success only if you try to resolve the problem in a goodie fashion : helping the people solve their problem, save them...
You can almost never solve the problem by being a complete jerk, and you will miss most of the rewards.
I can understand your difficulties, I heavily relied of korgan and montaron doing the main damage on magic resistant creatures. viconia was basically the skeleton summoner and buffer, my character illusionist/ theif was backstabber and used situational spells like charm, web and haste, xzar skull trap, fireball, lightening bolt and anything mad and suicidal. Anyway the key is to use stealth to kill the priest and cultists around the demon first then fight the demon.
...Look, I don't deny that she'd wear the pants in the relationship. Don't judge me!
BG2 is too rail roaded, you can only enter most areas when the game thinks you are ready too. You are FORCED (so much for RP) to save imoen, (Didnt I kill her in BG1 and she exploded - aka not resurrectable)... I hate you are forced to start with a goody goody party every time. And no that was not an engine limitation - it was development laziness. They could have put a canon good, canon neutral and canon evil party, depending on the charname alignment.
I find BG2 to be very boring and tedious near the end and extremely intolerable in ToB.
The complete lack of joinable NPCs made for rather low replayability in BG2 and there is a reason so many thieves were available in BG1, because it is almost compulsory to have one. BG2 has a complete lack of thieves...
I preferred BG1.
My largest problem with Infinity Engine games was -always- the Combat. It just felt so messy.
And after playing The Temple of Elemental Evil, all of these games with the turns mixed into real time feel too simple (Though, I must say that NWN does a good job with the system, keeping the "turns" really in.) TOEE had all the D&D 3.5e combat rules, from attack of oppoturnities to "ready vs..." actions and what not. Five foot steps, charges, I loved the combat in that. Baldur's Gate is just a bit disappointing with the combat not having even AoOs in it (Which NWN series had.)
Then again! I'm not really an expert on the AD&D2 ruleset, but I know enough to be comfourtable with it, and how to play BG:EE with it. I of course prefer the D&D 3.5e rules myself, but that's how I am - spoiled.
I very much dislike the fact that you have to find or buy the spell scrolls for wizards (instead of gaining spells on level up), certainly dislike some of the racials, and I also dislike the abilities compared to 3.5e.
I also found BG1 too hard at times. Skip something and you're not high level enough, or you don't use the right tactics (Read: Bring the right gear) and you find your party being used for... well, I can't possibly say, that would ruin your (the reader's) sanity.
Examples of the above:
On my level 4 party (Me: Wild mage, Minsc, Paladin npc, Dynaheir, Branwen, Imoen) I ran into Vampiric Wolves or whatever when coming south from Beregost. Only way I could damage them was with Magic Missile, but then they just closed in on melee and ate my party. I tried CC (Grease, web, stinking cloud) and peppering them with arrows. No damage. And couldn't make enough magic missiles to kill them with those two low level mages.
Don't get me wrong, I prefer hardcore D&D rules (Sleep or Hold my character, I get it, I'm f-----), but.. come on, at least give me a chance of fighting these things. I came with all the buffs on. Bless, barkskin, protection vs evil and no luck. Even used that Branwen's Spiritual Hammer and some fire arrows on Imoen, but the wolves got all their lost HP back in a single attack.
EDIT: I've played a lot of IWD 2 and BG 1, but haven't really dabbled into IWD 1 or BG2. I also finished Planescape. I must also confess that I am absolutely in love with D&D 3.5E and some of the "newer" games (TOEE & NWN -series)
And I -Hate- the Fourth Edition.