Even with it's (very minor flaws) Siege of Dragonspear felt very necessary and the right move for a "sequel" for one simple reason: ever since Baldur's Gate 2 came out, the transition from defeating Sarevok to ending up in a cage in the dungeon of Irenicus felt completely random and out of the blue. The saga NEEDED a bridge to make it perhaps THE most epic RPG saga of all time. And it also added another 25-30 hours onto a full-play. Now, when one sits down and makes a new character and walks in a circle around Candlekeep, if they intend on experiencing most of the content with that character, they are looking at the possibility of a 250 hour quest.
I really don't see how SoD made the transition better. You can still completely avoid Minsc or Jaheira in BG1 and SoD and it still make no sense for them to be in Irenicus dungeon with you. Depending on your party composition, you will be forced to have Safana in your party during SoD prologue which is illogical. None of the things you do in SoD matters as there is no references to them in BG2 (because obviously BG2 was released before and no new SoD contents have been added to it).
There are too many ways to play BG1 and now SoD to be able to have an explanation as to why you end up captured by Irenicus during the transition between the games. And in this case, I think it's best no to try to explain anything so the player can create its own story depending on its party composition and how (s)he played.
SoD is nice but it should not have tried to explain something that can't be explained. And it should not have added new story plot holes (soultaker quest @ThacoBell ). In my opinion, a standalone adventure would have been much better.
@lefreut Beamdog can't change content in the original games. The canon party of Minsc, Jaheira, Khalid, Dynaheir, and Imoen is ALWAYS going to be the case when srtarting BG2. THere is no getting around it. SoD at least gives SOME justification for why these characters come with you at the end of SoD (All of them having story reasons for following ANY charname). As for Safana showing up. It makes perfect sense for the Dukes to hire her in the event of your party missing a thief. I don't see how thats a plot hole at all.
As for Safana showing up. It makes perfect sense for the Dukes to hire her in the event of your party missing a thief. I don't see how thats a plot hole at all.
The party is missing a thief only because Beamdog choose to remove Imoen. I'm fine with not having Imoen during the crusade but I don't understand why they decide that you can't have her at the beginning.
I only played SoD once (mostly because it's not translated in my language but it's out of topic) and it's been a while so I may not remember correctly but I think that when you start, Safana is forced into your party and you don't even get any dialogue or explanation.
@leufreut Imoen has started her mage training and doesn't have her thief skills. While I personally wish they let you keep Imoen for the intro, it makes sense within the story as written. Safana is also the logical choice for the Dukes to hire for your expedition. Montaron is Zhentarim and dangerously violent, while Alora is too carefree to trust to a sensitive mission. Unless I'm missing a thief, that leaves Safana. Who is neutral and is probably used to doing thiefy things for coin.
@leufreut Imoen has started her mage training and doesn't have her thief skills. While I personally wish they let you keep Imoen for the intro, it makes sense within the story as written. Safana is also the logical choice for the Dukes to hire for your expedition. Montaron is Zhentarim and dangerously violent, while Alora is too carefree to trust to a sensitive mission. Unless I'm missing a thief, that leaves Safana. Who is neutral and is probably used to doing thiefy things for coin.
theres a 4 week time skip after the intro dungeon so she should have been able to be with us during that. just say she started her training after.
The whole "Imoen started her mage training so she can't thieve" is utter nonsense. It's only is a thing because of the rules of D&D.
I wrote a storied playthrough with charname dualing. I'm not a writer, have no experience writing and managed to come up with a better and more plausible reason for why a character or NPC can no longer thieve. They were seriously injured in a fight so simply couldn't perform the tasks until they healed and therefore did something else.
Kind of straightforward and pretty much based on realism, people take time to rehabilitate after serious injury. In the meantime they do/learn what they can or something else.
If you are going to have rules that make a story senseless, adapt the story. They had the stupid poisoning but not poisoning incident in the palace, hey presto, the poison left her somewhat paralised, no thief skills until she fully recovers. In the meantime, she learns magic, it's book based isn't it?
That uses no reference to arbitary rules that when looked at, fail to convince. Especially as it also gets past the "oh look, I've remembered all my previous skills". And for what reason is that pray tell?
yep. now you don't need to head canon why the canon party is with you at the start of 2 and play whatever party you want in bg1 and sod.
Instead you have to headcannon why Minsc and Dynaheir are sitting in the Three Kegs when you killed them less than a month ago......
Yeah, I can really see how that is so much better.....
Seems to me that whereas BG2 had understandable and forgivable reasons for why the cannon party has to be present at the start of BG2 (constraints on the development, kicks the story off, could be played as a standalone game which many, many people did, ect.), SOD doubles down on the insistance that these NPC are the ones you should play with.
It dictates evenmore how you should play. But then, with SOD, the whole design is to remove as much "R" from RPG as it possibly could.
Ah, that's right. How many of them do you trust to hire?
@UnderstandMouseMagic But Imoen starts BG2 as a Thief>Mage. That needed to be explained. Having take some time off and train under a mage makes perfect sense. SoD also doesn't railroad the playing any harder with the story than any other of the BG titles. You always have to stop the Iron Crisis, You always stop Sarevok, Minsc, Jaheira, Khalid, Dynaheir, and Imoen somehow always traveled with you in BG1, you always chase after Irenicus, etc. SoD does an admirable job fitting those retroactive railroads into a coherent storyline.
baldurs gate in general railroads you all the time. it's just the games are so open with side quests most people don't notice unless your just doing the main quest.
I agree, I really like what EET does to help add some interactivity and personal connection during the crossover. I keep checking the site in hopes that the Icewinddale part of the mod is going to come around. Fingers crossed that k4thos shows up at some point.
Well, in my first attempt I didn't click with SoD at all. Now on my second playthrough and really enjoying it. Maybe it was my mood or too high expectations first time? Great game, beamdog!
I have mixed feelings when it comes to SoD. First, what was the point of Romancing Corwin and Safana? Its not like the romances pick up in Baldurs Gate 2. Sure, this was scripted in way before the 2016 backlash. Where they could have seen them get added later. But even so... Siege of Dragonspear was too linear and too short to have anything solid with them. Second, In terms of New Characters. I HATED the M'Goblin. Just something about her voice and dialog that made me cringe. And Third, Glint. I didn't keep him in my party long enough to know just how *** he really was! Not that theres anything wrong with that! Just... not my cup of tea. Fourth and Finally, The Unfinished Business with the Hoodedman plot. Left a mystery to stay a mystery. Despite the game being mediocre. I think it was good enough be part of the Trilogy.
First, what was the point of Romancing Corwin and Safana?
I agree. Every romance in SoD seemed painfully awkward and forced, even in comparison with yuckiness of BG2 romances. Especially Corwin - one or two neutral talks, and then suddenly she admits some attraction. Very bizarre.
had it just been the ee npcs that were romanced then it would not have been an issue. but they decided the new npcs , safana, and vicky needed one to. safana's is the real issue as you know it's not gonna last [ but to be fair npc project did the same thing with coran which may be where they got the idea.]
1. Not enough Dorn content (but that is just me lobbying for my favorite companion NPC )
2.Lack of some basic attribute enhancing kit for STR + for an example. They have that spear - but it is just annoying. Some Ogre gauntlets etc would be nice.
Otherwise - I am having a really good time and am playing at a nice leisurely pace on my Android tablet - ... giving the Devs time to work out the kinks with NWN EE on Android.
Thanks Beamdog - your quality mobile offerings once again justify you as my favorite publishers for iPAD and Android games.
Just finished my first full run-through of SOD and can say that it was worth it to be patient and finish the game. It even eventually game me a little PST buzz ....
There is no original content that even comes close to this on mobile.
I would have played it all the way through on PC as well, if that was my preferred platform.
I stopped BG2 which I was about 75% through to play SOD and I am glad I did. I may now go back to the beginning of BG2 and have it flow in nicely.
Just finished my first full run-through of SOD and can say that it was worth it to be patient and finish the game. It even eventually game me a little PST buzz ....
There is no original content that even comes close to this on mobile.
I would have played it all the way through on PC as well, if that was my preferred platform.
I stopped BG2 which I was about 75% through to play SOD and I am glad I did. I may now go back to the beginning of BG2 and have it flow in nicely.
Once again - good work Beamdog ...
SOD is a fun romp. Much more focused and linear than BG1 but with a tighter story / plot, imo. Highlights for me had to be the starting dungeon, walking through the jam packed streets of Baldur's Gate and of course, storming Dragonspear.
Agree - with all that Grimjack - + also the jump out of Prime was enough to give me a bit of PST nostalgia.
I kept waiting for the game to suck ... but it never happened (for me).
What a shame that it apparently did not have great commercial success and that Infinity is a pain to work with (according to BD). I would have liked to have seen more releases like this one.
Although it has a linear aspect, there are enough choices / NPCs etc (that I did not explore) to leave me looking forward to returning to play once I complete the current Saga run and return for another cycle.
I am currently playing SoD with SCS on Insane and I am also having trouble enjoying it. The first playthrough I did about a year ago was fine, but in this setting it feels unbelievably tedious and just...not very much fun. Aside from a story and characters, which both have good and bad moments, the biggest problem I find are the fights themselves. While some of them are quite fun, mostly at this level of difficulty it is just repetitive fights against the same armies of enemies. It's an army of spiders, or an army of orcs, or an army of goblins, or an army of shadows or an army of skeletons (probably five or six different armies of enemies that just get rotated on every map), but every fight (and there is lots and lots of them) looks exactly the same. A priest in the back buffing the enemy group, a few archers, a few frontline berserkers and a few thieves with infinite supply of invisibility potions. And wherever you move, at every step, you encounter these armies. One example is Dead Man's Pass, where in one map you have literally like 15 of these groups waiting for you.
None of these fights is particularly difficult with a bit of preparation, they are just tedious and require the same preparation and doing pretty much the same thing every time. My avenger throws a web and morphs into a sword spider, mage throws fireballs and skull traps around, frontline fighters attack enemies, a thief detects illusions. Forget one of these things and you are dead. If your thief stops detecting illusions and automatically attacks somebody, three or four thieves come out of hiding and gib one or two of your chars. Don't throw the web and 10 fighters gang up on your thief or mage and they are dead. Again, in moderation, this is quite fun, but if you have to do it every few steps it just becomes boring.
So far (and I am almost at the siege part), there wasn't a single fight of the type I most enjoy in BG1 or BG2 - a fight against a group of adventurers/bounty hunters of approximately the same size and composition as yours (Drasus' party or pretty much every end-of-chapter fight in BG). These kind of fights can be won using many different strategies (backstabbing, individual disablers such as blindness or dire charm, mass crowd control, mass AoE damage...). But the same is not true for the SoD fights. Basically, my favorite spells in BG1, such as dire charm, ray of enfeeblement, blindness or anything that is a single target are really pointless, because if you disable just one enemy, you still have 30 others attacking you. So the only thing that seems to work in all fights are mass crowd control and AoE damage spells. And this makes the game so repetitive.
the biggest problem I find are the fights themselves. While some of them are quite fun, mostly at this level of difficulty it is just repetitive fights against the same armies of enemies.
I think I've made this comparison before. The encounter design tries to be like that of Throne of Bhaal, but it's jarring in the context of a full tri^H^H^H tetrology run - Baldur's Gate is tuned to specialized but small encounters, Baldur's Gate 2 (or at least the first half) is tuned to specialized but small encounters. New wine in old wineskins and such.
In Siege it's especially bad since you don't have the right tools to actually handle the scope of combat the way you instinctively would want to if you're fresh off ToB or even an Icewind Dale game, just due to your relative levels, and especially in an unmodded game (the Icewind-Dale-ification mod helps considerably with this, by adding in more lower level AoE/Crowd Control spells).
Yes, I am in fact still bitter about having a charname with the godbow get swarmed and killed by that cave of trolls. What gave it away?
Yes, I am in fact still bitter about having a charname with the godbow get swarmed and killed by that cave of trolls. What gave it away?
@Pokota
My main tactic in SoD (without SCS) was go slowly around the areas until the lifted FOW revealed a waiting enemy. Stop so they wouldn't notice the group. Blast as much fireballs as the group has onto that spot. Go in with fighters and end what is left.
Worked great.
My main tactic in SoD (without SCS) was go slowly around the areas until the lifted FOW revealed a waiting enemy. Stop so they wouldn't notice the group. Blast as much fireballs as the group has onto that spot. Go in with fighters and end what is left. Worked great.
Well, with SCS tactics is pretty much the same. Since with better calls for help everyone will join the fight immediately, the tactics is basically - see a single enemy, pause the game (because you can be 100% sure that -every- single time that one enemy is supported by an army behind him), throw web or some other AoE disabler, throw cloudkill and/or spam fireballs. Then clean up with fighters. Every single fight on every map.
In Siege it's especially bad since you don't have the right tools to actually handle the scope of combat the way you instinctively would want to if you're fresh off ToB or even an Icewind Dale game
This is true. You pretty much have -one- way of handling these fights. Or at least one way that I have found out, which heavily relies on AoE disablers or AoE damage. Everything else - backstabbing, single target disablers, gung ho march with fighters etc etc falls flat on its back. And throwing around fireballs or cloudkills was my least favorite way of doing fights both in BG1 and BG2. But even that, in moderation, is fun. What is not fun is having to do this at literally every step of every map, and with the same groups of enemies.
@VanDerBerg I understand the sentiment. I am one of those players that see fights as a nuisance I have to go through so I can get the next NPC dialogue, so I actually enjoyed that this tactic worked every time without me having to deal with micro managing the fights.
@VanDerBerg I understand the sentiment. I am one of those players that see fights as a nuisance I have to go through so I can get the next NPC dialogue, so I actually enjoyed that this tactic worked every time without me having to deal with micro managing the fights.
That wouldn't be so terrible if the story wasn't...well, I don't know how to put it in a nicer way, but...purely ridiculous.
Caelar Argent is mobilising armies for a crusade with the goal of...Wait, we really have no idea what her goal is, neither do the people who follow her, but that's fine. Then at some point midway through the game we find out that her goal is to return those who died from Nine Hells and, for some reason, to accomplish that she is marching to attack...Baldur's Gate? And she is burning villages and people are running away from her because why not, that's obviously the best way to accomplish her dubious goal. Then she is also, for some random reason, very interested in the child of Bhaal because of course she is. Then, at the end, somehow her sidekick turns out to be the semi-main villain, who opens the gate to Nine Hells to let the main villain out, who will take over the world. Then your mid-level party descends down into Nine Hells and defeats the main main villain. In other words, your mid-level party which barely survives the groups of 10 crusaders or so somehow manages to defeat the villain for which Caelar was mobilising the whole army.
But, to keep suspension, we are also introduced to a mysterious hooded figure, who is totally pointless and irrelevant to the game plot. And also, we have 5 dream sequences which are basically... CHARNAME says something, then someone else says something, then the hooded figure says 'You don't understand' and then someone turns into a slayer.
Oh, wait, there is also an excellent element of gear hunting. Yes. it is simply impossible to resist fighting ten groups of 30 enemies each, in order to get that shiny +1 short sword that has an amazing feature that if you roll a 17 while fighting an ogre, you have 5% chance of being affected by a bless spell for 3 rounds, but only if you are half-elf skald with intelligence of precisely 13. Who even came up with all those ridiculous weapons and pieces of armour that give you a small chance of getting a bonus that ordinary level 1 priest/mage spells give you for much longer duration?
I finally gave up from ever playing this game again. The only half-decent (and actually pretty good) part of the game is the Temple of Bhaal. Wish the rest of the game was at least half as good as that.
I found SoD very disappointing - linear, forced, unimaginative, single-track storyline (which really didn't work for an Evil party) and then at the end set you up with the NPCs you'd rejected twice already
Right, read through the entire thread (ignoring the bickering around pp4/5) and I dislike this 'bridge' for exactly the same reasons I thought I did, ahd that others have said
In BGEE played an evil party, took Edwin, killed Dynaheir, so had to kill Minsc
Oh look, they got better, they're here and they forgive me, their killer, but not Edwin
I'm evil. Kill them again (really, who resurrects these clowns)
Where's Shar-Teel? Oh well, at least I got Edwin, Viconia, Dorn & Baeloth (eventually), but I had no other evil warrior, not even Kagain, in fact, wait, no other warrior except the now-deceased Minsc, or much much later, apparently, KKKKhalid which means taking Jaheira
So reluctantly I'm forced into taking Corwin - good archer but phenomenally irritating all through
Then you absolutely have to follow the locations in order, or you get locked out of some
Irritating and the antithesis of BG
Spoiler time
So off we plod. Some good side quests - but again, you have to do them in exactly the right order at the right time or they are no longer available
Irritatingly bugged Menhirs
Get Baeloth
Entire map of groups of identical Crusaders, all trivially easy to defeat with me, L10 thief with 120% HiS/MS wandering around, spotting them, summon up Edwin and now Baeloth, with web and stinking cloud, then ice storm and cloudkill, then fireball after fireball until the surviving enemy spot 7s, at which point in go the hard hitters and slat the remains
Or, for a change, send in Viconia's animated dead - four is usually enough combined with stinking cloud & cloudkill
Yawn
Eventually get to the only actual siege of the game at the bridge ... where as long as I am careful who I attack, I can wander amongst the besieging forces to my heart's content, and get Dorn back, kill a few trolls, a couple of named besiegers, then get inside and ... some more minor sidequests
After that, instead of me killing off the entire Crusade force with just my party, a bunch of others turn up
Ordinarily this would make it very difficult to proceed the 'correct' way for a massively larger force - crowd control plus A9E plus fireball/chain lightning wands - because I'd kill my own side
What part of Evil did the developers not account for?
Battle over, more 'allied' dead than Crusader dead, but who cares?
Interesting that Corwin doesn't care tgat I just wiped out dozens of her comrades in 'friendly fire'
Do the bridge thing - again, Stinking Cloud and summoned skellies with an invisible poison-proof thief to keep the only important target in sight trivialises this, while again Edwin & Baeloth play "whose cloudkill kills the most"
A few pathetic assaults on the camp which Baeloth handled two of on his own
Then repeat the entire process, including subquests, for Dragonspear courtyard - which is not a siege!
Kill all baddies, then take thd castle
The underground river, temple of Bhaal/Cyric, warrens and castle catacombs, the ogres and a few other bits and bobs were really good - they felt like BG again, but overall, very poor
I've left out discussion of the end bits because there was not one choice that made any difference
Railroading players is only OK when they have an Illusion of choice- probably why I disliked the end of BG from 'forced back to Cahdlekeep' onwards
So, overall, no, I did not enjoy this, and especially not happy about finding out, just before the black cloud came down, that not only have all my companions vanished, but also some plonker has resurrected the two wastes of space again, and once again, they don't care that I killed them
Comments
There are too many ways to play BG1 and now SoD to be able to have an explanation as to why you end up captured by Irenicus during the transition between the games. And in this case, I think it's best no to try to explain anything so the player can create its own story depending on its party composition and how (s)he played.
SoD is nice but it should not have tried to explain something that can't be explained. And it should not have added new story plot holes (soultaker quest @ThacoBell
I only played SoD once (mostly because it's not translated in my language but it's out of topic) and it's been a while so I may not remember correctly but I think that when you start, Safana is forced into your party and you don't even get any dialogue or explanation.
Imoen has started her mage training and doesn't have her thief skills. While I personally wish they let you keep Imoen for the intro, it makes sense within the story as written. Safana is also the logical choice for the Dukes to hire for your expedition. Montaron is Zhentarim and dangerously violent, while Alora is too carefree to trust to a sensitive mission. Unless I'm missing a thief, that leaves Safana. Who is neutral and is probably used to doing thiefy things for coin.
I wrote a storied playthrough with charname dualing. I'm not a writer, have no experience writing and managed to come up with a better and more plausible reason for why a character or NPC can no longer thieve. They were seriously injured in a fight so simply couldn't perform the tasks until they healed and therefore did something else.
Kind of straightforward and pretty much based on realism, people take time to rehabilitate after serious injury. In the meantime they do/learn what they can or something else.
If you are going to have rules that make a story senseless, adapt the story. They had the stupid poisoning but not poisoning incident in the palace, hey presto, the poison left her somewhat paralised, no thief skills until she fully recovers. In the meantime, she learns magic, it's book based isn't it?
That uses no reference to arbitary rules that when looked at, fail to convince. Especially as it also gets past the "oh look, I've remembered all my previous skills".
And for what reason is that pray tell?
Yeah, I can really see how that is so much better.....
Seems to me that whereas BG2 had understandable and forgivable reasons for why the cannon party has to be present at the start of BG2 (constraints on the development, kicks the story off, could be played as a standalone game which many, many people did, ect.), SOD doubles down on the insistance that these NPC are the ones you should play with.
It dictates evenmore how you should play. But then, with SOD, the whole design is to remove as much "R" from RPG as it possibly could.
@UnderstandMouseMagic But Imoen starts BG2 as a Thief>Mage. That needed to be explained. Having take some time off and train under a mage makes perfect sense. SoD also doesn't railroad the playing any harder with the story than any other of the BG titles. You always have to stop the Iron Crisis, You always stop Sarevok, Minsc, Jaheira, Khalid, Dynaheir, and Imoen somehow always traveled with you in BG1, you always chase after Irenicus, etc. SoD does an admirable job fitting those retroactive railroads into a coherent storyline.
Only complaints I have at this point are:
1. Not enough Dorn content (but that is just me lobbying for my favorite companion NPC
2.Lack of some basic attribute enhancing kit for STR + for an example. They have that spear - but it is just annoying. Some Ogre gauntlets etc would be nice.
Otherwise - I am having a really good time and am playing at a nice leisurely pace on my Android tablet - ... giving the Devs time to work out the kinks with NWN EE on Android.
Thanks Beamdog - your quality mobile offerings once again justify you as my favorite publishers for iPAD and Android games.
There is no original content that even comes close to this on mobile.
I would have played it all the way through on PC as well, if that was my preferred platform.
I stopped BG2 which I was about 75% through to play SOD and I am glad I did. I may now go back to the beginning of BG2 and have it flow in nicely.
Once again - good work Beamdog ...
I kept waiting for the game to suck ... but it never happened (for me).
What a shame that it apparently did not have great commercial success and that Infinity is a pain to work with (according to BD). I would have liked to have seen more releases like this one.
Although it has a linear aspect, there are enough choices / NPCs etc (that I did not explore) to leave me looking forward to returning to play once I complete the current Saga run and return for another cycle.
I am currently playing SoD with SCS on Insane and I am also having trouble enjoying it. The first playthrough I did about a year ago was fine, but in this setting it feels unbelievably tedious and just...not very much fun. Aside from a story and characters, which both have good and bad moments, the biggest problem I find are the fights themselves. While some of them are quite fun, mostly at this level of difficulty it is just repetitive fights against the same armies of enemies. It's an army of spiders, or an army of orcs, or an army of goblins, or an army of shadows or an army of skeletons (probably five or six different armies of enemies that just get rotated on every map), but every fight (and there is lots and lots of them) looks exactly the same. A priest in the back buffing the enemy group, a few archers, a few frontline berserkers and a few thieves with infinite supply of invisibility potions. And wherever you move, at every step, you encounter these armies. One example is Dead Man's Pass, where in one map you have literally like 15 of these groups waiting for you.
None of these fights is particularly difficult with a bit of preparation, they are just tedious and require the same preparation and doing pretty much the same thing every time. My avenger throws a web and morphs into a sword spider, mage throws fireballs and skull traps around, frontline fighters attack enemies, a thief detects illusions. Forget one of these things and you are dead. If your thief stops detecting illusions and automatically attacks somebody, three or four thieves come out of hiding and gib one or two of your chars. Don't throw the web and 10 fighters gang up on your thief or mage and they are dead. Again, in moderation, this is quite fun, but if you have to do it every few steps it just becomes boring.
So far (and I am almost at the siege part), there wasn't a single fight of the type I most enjoy in BG1 or BG2 - a fight against a group of adventurers/bounty hunters of approximately the same size and composition as yours (Drasus' party or pretty much every end-of-chapter fight in BG). These kind of fights can be won using many different strategies (backstabbing, individual disablers such as blindness or dire charm, mass crowd control, mass AoE damage...). But the same is not true for the SoD fights. Basically, my favorite spells in BG1, such as dire charm, ray of enfeeblement, blindness or anything that is a single target are really pointless, because if you disable just one enemy, you still have 30 others attacking you. So the only thing that seems to work in all fights are mass crowd control and AoE damage spells. And this makes the game so repetitive.
Rant over, coming back to playing.
I think I've made this comparison before. The encounter design tries to be like that of Throne of Bhaal, but it's jarring in the context of a full tri^H^H^H tetrology run - Baldur's Gate is tuned to specialized but small encounters, Baldur's Gate 2 (or at least the first half) is tuned to specialized but small encounters. New wine in old wineskins and such.
In Siege it's especially bad since you don't have the right tools to actually handle the scope of combat the way you instinctively would want to if you're fresh off ToB or even an Icewind Dale game, just due to your relative levels, and especially in an unmodded game (the Icewind-Dale-ification mod helps considerably with this, by adding in more lower level AoE/Crowd Control spells).
Yes, I am in fact still bitter about having a charname with the godbow get swarmed and killed by that cave of trolls. What gave it away?
My main tactic in SoD (without SCS) was go slowly around the areas until the lifted FOW revealed a waiting enemy. Stop so they wouldn't notice the group. Blast as much fireballs as the group has onto that spot. Go in with fighters and end what is left.
Worked great.
Well, with SCS tactics is pretty much the same. Since with better calls for help everyone will join the fight immediately, the tactics is basically - see a single enemy, pause the game (because you can be 100% sure that -every- single time that one enemy is supported by an army behind him), throw web or some other AoE disabler, throw cloudkill and/or spam fireballs. Then clean up with fighters. Every single fight on every map.
This is true. You pretty much have -one- way of handling these fights. Or at least one way that I have found out, which heavily relies on AoE disablers or AoE damage. Everything else - backstabbing, single target disablers, gung ho march with fighters etc etc falls flat on its back. And throwing around fireballs or cloudkills was my least favorite way of doing fights both in BG1 and BG2. But even that, in moderation, is fun. What is not fun is having to do this at literally every step of every map, and with the same groups of enemies.
That wouldn't be so terrible if the story wasn't...well, I don't know how to put it in a nicer way, but...purely ridiculous.
But, to keep suspension, we are also introduced to a mysterious hooded figure, who is totally pointless and irrelevant to the game plot. And also, we have 5 dream sequences which are basically... CHARNAME says something, then someone else says something, then the hooded figure says 'You don't understand' and then someone turns into a slayer.
Oh, wait, there is also an excellent element of gear hunting. Yes. it is simply impossible to resist fighting ten groups of 30 enemies each, in order to get that shiny +1 short sword that has an amazing feature that if you roll a 17 while fighting an ogre, you have 5% chance of being affected by a bless spell for 3 rounds, but only if you are half-elf skald with intelligence of precisely 13. Who even came up with all those ridiculous weapons and pieces of armour that give you a small chance of getting a bonus that ordinary level 1 priest/mage spells give you for much longer duration?
I finally gave up from ever playing this game again. The only half-decent (and actually pretty good) part of the game is the Temple of Bhaal. Wish the rest of the game was at least half as good as that.
I found SoD very disappointing - linear, forced, unimaginative, single-track storyline (which really didn't work for an Evil party) and then at the end set you up with the NPCs you'd rejected twice already
And took away my favourite companion, Shar Teel
In BGEE played an evil party, took Edwin, killed Dynaheir, so had to kill Minsc
Oh look, they got better, they're here and they forgive me, their killer, but not Edwin
I'm evil. Kill them again (really, who resurrects these clowns)
Where's Shar-Teel? Oh well, at least I got Edwin, Viconia, Dorn & Baeloth (eventually), but I had no other evil warrior, not even Kagain, in fact, wait, no other warrior except the now-deceased Minsc, or much much later, apparently, KKKKhalid which means taking Jaheira
So reluctantly I'm forced into taking Corwin - good archer but phenomenally irritating all through
Then you absolutely have to follow the locations in order, or you get locked out of some
Irritating and the antithesis of BG
Spoiler time
Irritatingly bugged Menhirs
Get Baeloth
Entire map of groups of identical Crusaders, all trivially easy to defeat with me, L10 thief with 120% HiS/MS wandering around, spotting them, summon up Edwin and now Baeloth, with web and stinking cloud, then ice storm and cloudkill, then fireball after fireball until the surviving enemy spot 7s, at which point in go the hard hitters and slat the remains
Or, for a change, send in Viconia's animated dead - four is usually enough combined with stinking cloud & cloudkill
Yawn
Eventually get to the only actual siege of the game at the bridge ... where as long as I am careful who I attack, I can wander amongst the besieging forces to my heart's content, and get Dorn back, kill a few trolls, a couple of named besiegers, then get inside and ... some more minor sidequests
After that, instead of me killing off the entire Crusade force with just my party, a bunch of others turn up
Ordinarily this would make it very difficult to proceed the 'correct' way for a massively larger force - crowd control plus A9E plus fireball/chain lightning wands - because I'd kill my own side
What part of Evil did the developers not account for?
Battle over, more 'allied' dead than Crusader dead, but who cares?
Interesting that Corwin doesn't care tgat I just wiped out dozens of her comrades in 'friendly fire'
Do the bridge thing - again, Stinking Cloud and summoned skellies with an invisible poison-proof thief to keep the only important target in sight trivialises this, while again Edwin & Baeloth play "whose cloudkill kills the most"
A few pathetic assaults on the camp which Baeloth handled two of on his own
Then repeat the entire process, including subquests, for Dragonspear courtyard - which is not a siege!
Kill all baddies, then take thd castle
The underground river, temple of Bhaal/Cyric, warrens and castle catacombs, the ogres and a few other bits and bobs were really good - they felt like BG again, but overall, very poor
I've left out discussion of the end bits because there was not one choice that made any difference
Railroading players is only OK when they have an Illusion of choice- probably why I disliked the end of BG from 'forced back to Cahdlekeep' onwards
So, overall, no, I did not enjoy this, and especially not happy about finding out, just before the black cloud came down, that not only have all my companions vanished, but also some plonker has resurrected the two wastes of space again, and once again, they don't care that I killed them