Nostalgia clouding your judgement
subterra
Member Posts: 49
I fail to see what is so good about this game, i realise that i may not understand the game and i havent perservered with it long enough but having said that what exactly is it about it that makes this game so good for you ?
The combat feels extremely clumsy, the characters die before u even have chance to issue orders (yes i know there is a pause button) the entire game feels like its based on luck tho and the balance feels awful, it feels completly random wether you win a battle or not, characters die way to easilly, it certainly hasnt aged well atall.
I will continue to play it in the hopes that my opinion will change but so far i really dont get it atall, perhaps as the title reads you guys are all clouded by nostalgia ??
The combat feels extremely clumsy, the characters die before u even have chance to issue orders (yes i know there is a pause button) the entire game feels like its based on luck tho and the balance feels awful, it feels completly random wether you win a battle or not, characters die way to easilly, it certainly hasnt aged well atall.
I will continue to play it in the hopes that my opinion will change but so far i really dont get it atall, perhaps as the title reads you guys are all clouded by nostalgia ??
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It's just not for everyone, I understand. You can make this game more "quicker pace" and I'm sure some would think it was an improvement but others would probably stop playing all together.
No nostalgia at all friend :-) We're all playing the other games still as well! (Neverwinter Nights, Planescape Torment, Icewind Dale, Baldur's Gate 2, etc)
Lower your difficulty if you can't micromanage your characters well enough to survive. You didn't really bring up any issues besides the fact that you suck at the game and keep dying.
In regards to difficulty and people dying in one hit, that's sort of a beauty of this game that I enjoy. You can actually die, and not just die, but it's easy to die. In fact, you get screwed over by one of your friends dying. I actually somewhat love the one-hit death scenarios. The idea that your character or friends can get chunked during a battle or you wander somewhere and go, "Hey, are those statues?" then bam you become one yourself due to a marauding basilisk. That's great to me. Especially the permanent death aspects, even if you can just reload. Then again, I absolutely adore Dwarf Fortress, so maybe I'm just a masochist.
It's perfectly fine if you don't enjoy how the game works on a mechanical level, it's just a completely subjective conclusion.
But to answer your question more seriously...well, you kind of answered it yourself, really. This game, to the uninitiated, is hard. You play fragile characters who can't get through the game by themselves, even your main (unless you know the game mechanics inside out and then cheese it thoroughly), which forces you to think hard about who you select for your party, how you develop them and what tactics to employ when it all kicks off. And it is deeply satisfying to pull yourself through a battle that really challenges you.
It's never going to look great compaired to what's out there now in 2012, but you have to admit it's got some style, hasn't it? A feel all of its own. And a solid story with decent writing to boot. I'd advise you to play through it just for the chapter when you return to Candlekeep. Christ, that was an emotionally intense forty minutes
This game is a true classic with proper vintage; you just need to spend a bit more time discovering its charm
If you want victory or defeat in combat to be less 'random', figure out appropriate tactics for dealing with a given encounter.
For a game that is mechanically driven by simulated "dice rolls" behind the scenes, the results are often quite predictable. For example: Let enemy wizard live for more than eight seconds = 50% of your party polymorphed into chickens, other 50% of your party get facemelted. You learn your lessons hard and fast, but the game is completely fair; whatever the bad guys can do to you, you can do right back at them. Play around with it!
At least find something worth complaining about, I could simply say that every other game sucks because they are too easy and I never die.
It really does shows that BG hasnt aged well at all though, thats why you are here and why you purchased the game /not.
Oh, and nostalgia doesn't cloud my judgement. It seasons it, like a steak and summer ale in Beregost on a fair summer's night, recovering from strange adventures along the coast...
Baldur's Gate is a true rpg , the game dont hold your hand , you have to plan before a fight , you die , and you die alot in the beggining , pause the game , think the best way to approach the fight and save alot , its a great game , great characters , its a true epic adventure , but its not for everyone.
Look at it as a puzzle, take a problem-solving approach. You just need to use everything at your disposal. Use potions and healing spells during battle. Don't put vulnerable characters in the front - use formations (you can rotate them with the right mouse button). Use ranged weapons. Get to around level 3-4 quickly, don't do any challenging stuff before that. Read the manual. Ask questions on the forum.
And, be friendly and constructive on the forums. There were a bunch of posts you could have responded to, but you just picked the ones you didn't like the most and decided to sarcastically respond to those while losing sight of the topic (which you started yourself) - that's a flamers attitude and it leads nowhere.
Then try an Evil play through...it's a completely different and even harder game again.
I remember on the Nintendo when there would be games like Castlevania II: Simon's Quest where I had no flippin idea what the heck I was doing. Or the first Mega Man that just kind of let you play any stage in any order, but it took awhile to learn the weaknesses. And you didn't have the Interwebz to look it up.
Then you had the days of Japanese RPGs with their excessive grinding mechanics. And then you had PC games like Myst. And then came games like Fallout and Baldur's Gate and Planescape Torment...
In the past games were always pretty unforgiving. Also I didn't have a lot of money growing up since I didn't have a job since I was a kid...and my parents didn't exactly spoil me with a new video game or five every month. So you know...you had to sit there and actually play the games you got over and over again and make them last awhile...which thankfully that difficulty actually did (although sometimes it was because the flippin game cheated or just had logic that didn't make any sense).
Today...you can buy a AAA game and beat it in a few hours. In some cases like Mass Effect or Dragon Age it might take a few days of dedicated playing. But ultimately...you have these very cinematic games that don't even take a week to complete. They rely on multiplayer mechanics (at least ME3, Half-Life 2, Bioshock 2, etc did) and that sort of reliance was something that always bored me out of my skull.
I like games that make me take my time. Make me explore. Give me dialogue trees. Give me conflict. Give me secrets to unlock and things to master over a length of time. Baldur's Gate and Baldur's Gate 2 and all the infinity engine games were great.
You know what was also great? Neverwinter Nights. The original storyline was crappy at first and I dare say it did get better at the end if you stuck with it, but where it shined was the ability of other players and the mod community adding to it. The game is still played today. It's glorious. It's still old school. It's still dated and ugly compared to new game standards.
But I have logged in so many hours. Just as I still sit around and play Super Mario Bros or Mega Man once and awhile. Just as I'm still paying money for Baldur's Gate.
Patience. That's what we had to have back in the day (and it wasn't even that long ago, cripes!) and we can't be too upset over players "not getting it" today. I used to think that the generation whose first game was Final Fantasy 7 was a lot different than the generation that grew up with Super Marios Bros. Or the generation that grew up with Pac Man even before it. But just as we adapt to the newer games (Mass Effect 3 might have space magic, but it still had an emotional story and was one of my favorite games of all time...despite my dislike of the ending), hopefully some of the newer players will take a look at the games we played and see the value in them and what really charmed us.
It won't work. And honestly...newer players have every right to say that a game that is "enhanced" for newer technology stinks. No matter how much nausea it might stir in the guts of fans.
They should probably release a demo.
You get penalties very quickly when you're below 10 points, but you don't usually get meaningful bonuses until your stats are ~14-15, and the bonuses aren't linear, in BG an 18 is much much better than a 16.*
This is especially true at low levels where a fair chunk of your power comes from stats, so making sure your stat points are setup well for your class is very important.
Also mages kind of suck at low levels, and utility spells are generally better than direct offensive ones until you get 3rd level spells (Charm Person and Sleep are really good for example), once you get back to the higher levels utility spells become better again (since you get a lot of save or die (like Polymorph) and utterly ridiculous self-buff effects (like Stoneskin) ).
*For those of you who've played 3e or one of the 3e based games this is why point buy has the high stat values cost so much even though power in 3e is linear, they used the same point buy table from 2e.
Much like the new version of X-Com Enemy Unknown, your going to die. You just are. One wrong move, one mistep, one bad roll, and your dead. And unlike XCOM, its fully acceptable that you will reload.
I understand this game is not for everyone, but you must remember that a lot of us here grew up with
games like this, there was even a term for it:
NINTENDO HARD: http://tvtropes.org/pmwiki/pmwiki.php/Main/NintendoHard
Back when game over meant just that, start at the beginning, no sissy level codes (Thank you Mega Man the first game besides Contra I ever finished), no checkpoints, and no mercy.
And one more thing... this game really is not hard it just has a learning curve, go play Ghouls 'N Goblins and then come back and have a chat with us.
As a matter of fact, go play XCOM (the original) on Steam, its like 5 dollars now. If you manage to not have anyone die on normal difficulty then you sir are my hero.
seriously check this thread out and go ahead and tell me hes not trolling http://forum.baldursgate.com/discussion/comment/158718/#Comment_158718
First of all, this is very much a SLOW paced, tactical turn based game. Even if you are dumb enough to NOT pause the action, it is still turned based in the background. If you aren't using the pause button extremely frequently, and doling out commands to each party member pretty much every combat round (some exceptions of course), then you are doing it wrong. If you want fast paced action, go play black ops 2
Secondly, OF COURSE LUCK IS HEAVILY INVOLVED...IT IS A FREAKING RPG...everything you do in the game relies on roles of various sided dice (virtual dice in this case, but still dice nonetheless). That being said, it is hardly pure luck, there is a TON of strategy and tactics involved. There have been many books written about said tactics so way to involved for a forum post but things like party positioning, opening with the right spells, using optimal equipment, etc etc etc etc. Its honestly about 10 percent whim of the dice roll, and 90 percent skill. Also, how you choose to advance your characters makes a huge huge difference on mitigating the randomness of the rolls.
Bottom line: This is a slow paced, often paused, thinking mans (or womans) game. If you are looking for fast paced brainless action, you picked the wrong game my friend. Good luck!
I'm sure you have figured it out by now...Baldurs Gate is not an action game. It is a computer simulation of a turn-based table top fantasy game system. In fact it cannot be played without using the pause functions and micromanaging your party. The squad based (or party) turn-based tactical combat is a big part of what DnD players like about this game.
In the gameplay menu there are autopause options which you should set. Otherwise you will not survive difficult battles.
For some this kind of gameplay is not their thing; if you prefer arcade style gameplay BG may not be for you. I hope you will follow the excellent advice in some of the responses you got and perhaps even begin to get into the spirit of the game and begin to enjoy it.
Cheers
Thanks for the encouragement