The most replays with Baldur's Gate
murmandamus
Member Posts: 45
Most certain i can call Baldur's Gate games series of my life. No other game has been replayed by me this much. - did it about 14 times alredy and now after year i feel urge to start new campaign (well maybe Betrayal at Krondor can come quite close with 9 replays but still wont reach BG) For me no other game have such replay value and charm. So what about you guys. How many times did you beat BG series from start to end?
4
Comments
BG1: 6-8 runs, 4 no-reload
SoD: 5 runs, 5 no-reload
BG2: more than 10 runs, 6 no-reload
ToB: less than 10 runs, 5 no-reload
IWD: less than 10 runs, 3 no-reload
IWD2: less than 10 runs, 2 no-reload
Generally, I get bored and restart some time around Brynlaw/Spellhold.
Can't count but I rarely restart.
BG far more than BG2.
There's just something about the start of BG that's magical/transporting/endlessly fascinating. I never get bored with it, you can play around so much.
But strangely, (though perhaps not), "no reload" ruins the experience for me, you have to be so strict and constrained and careful.
I've also been playing multi-player for a while now - 2 successes there out of approaching a couple of hundred attempts.
On the actual question, too many times to give an actual answer.
BG games made - 3000+ at least
BG games completed - maybe only 1000 - 1500
BG 2 game made - 2000+ or so
BG 2 game completed - probably again around 1000 or so
Full runs starting from BG1 at 0 XP to the last boss fight of ToB at 8 million XP - a few dozen times ( i normally would stop at abizigal's enclave and start a new BG1 game )
i remember one time years ago i started a new game after work on friday evening in candlekeep and by sunday night i was fighting the last boss in ToB with 8 million XP per character, that was my quickest full play through ever
i think back then full play throughs would take:
BG 1 - 12-14 hours
BG 2 - 10-12 hours
ToB - 8+ hours?
a full play through being; doing every quest, getting all zee items, and gathering lots of loltastic gold/xp and hitting the XP cap in all games
even though, i havent played in months, my playthroughs have been a little slower due to the fact that when i play BG1 i play gold piece runs, and in SoA i do every little thing to get XP for ToB ( cowled wizards, and centurion soldiers, good times )
aka not much school homework was getting done, hence the reason why i passed high school with a C average haha
However...if I asked how many hours I put into trying different characters, mapping out each dual class possibility in excel for optimal combination, tinkering with mods, fixing bugs, artwork, rewriting the entire trilogy novelisation... I wouldn't like to comment heh. I've probably spent ten times longer doing things around this game, than actually playing it
I mean, yes, addictive game, loyal following, etc., but come on.
But really, too many to count. Full runs importing from BG1 to the end of ToB, maybe 25-30. But times playing BG1 and BG1 only, maybe 15? And for BG2 and BG2 only before ToB came out? Probably another 10. And then times playing just BG2+ToB? A lot. I couldnt make a reliable estimate but it wouldn't be less than 50, Ive beat the game with every kit at least once, and probably every multiclass (but not every race and multiclass), though I cant say I ever did it with every specialist wizard.
There were always new mods coming out back in the day, and usually they were worth a new playthrough to try out.
Over the last, I dunno, 10 years I've just played the saga through about once per year, first with Baldurs Gate trilogy, then with the EEs.
The BG series is my favorite game of all time, ever, no questions asked. I like BG2 more than BG1, though.
Let's see if I can estimate my usage a bit more carefully ...
- in the last couple of years I've documented about 200 attempts on my 'long-life' solo challenge. That though accounts for a minority of my play. I suspect probably no more than a quarter, but let's call it a third to ensure I'm not exaggerating. In terms of runs, most of the remaining play is still solo, but some of that will be at a slower pace (for instance while playing LoB or when specifically undertaking a completionist run). Let's add 300 for that. Playing with a party is much slower, so probably only about 20 there. There's also something like 40 multiplayer runs to add in.
- so that's 560 attempts in a couple of years. I didn't begin playing BG intensively until a while after it was released, so let's start the clock running from 2002. There has been the odd period where I didn't play, but for most of that time I've probably played a comparable amount to the last couple of years. Again to be conservative, let's say that my time spent on the game should be multiplied by 6 rather than 8.
- the number of runs though will be lower than that as when I started playing I typically did fairly completionist runs using a full party of NPCs (and in the very early days that wasn't necessarily always even no-reload). It was a few years before I settled into playing mainly no-reload, solo games.
- so, continuing the conservative approach, let's multiply the 560 by 4 (that also ignores the fact that, before I started playing MP I would have been playing SP and would probably have 5 or 6 runs of that in the same time as a single MP game). That would give 2,240 runs.
At the time I did my original post I had in mind a figure of 3,000, though I didn't state that since I hadn't thought it through. Having now gone through the above chain of thought I'm pretty sure the true figure would be at least that, but even if I'm fooling myself there I can't see how the total could be below 2,000.
In general though, and in the simplest of terms, not even close to being enough to make me want to stop anytime soon.
(Plus, ya know, new mods are like candy, Oh, gotta try that out. That one got an update. Oh, gotta try that one out, etc., etc, and so on.)
- Are you literally a hermit?
I honestly cannot take such numbers seriously and clearly I'm not the only one.
If I assumed an average run would take 10 hours (and I suspect the true figure would actually be rather less than this), that would mean that the 2,240 runs I calculated earlier in the thread would require 22,400 hours. Based on playing for 16 years, those hours would be needed over 5,840 days, which would mean playing a bit less than 4 hours a day. Given that I sleep several hours a day less than the rest of my family, I'm sure the amount of gaming I do would be well above that, but I do sometimes play other games ...
The older I get, the more I prefer BG over BG2