Despite taking a break from pushing World of Warcraft, I still enjoy playing through a good game. Right now, there’s not a lot of new games that really entice me and I’ve been meaning to go back and give Baldur’s Gate 2 a spin again. It takes a bit to pick up where you left off because it’s still a pretty big game.
Right now, I’m just trying to get back to where I was before my old system got replaced. I never bothered backing up my saved games so I started from scratch, which meant doing everything over again. I’ve probably done this 2-3 times already, each time experimenting with different party combinations. Truthfully, I’m never 100% satisfied as there are always a class or NPC I wish I could take with me.
As I played through the game, somethings started to hit me. For instance, I think in playing World of Warcraft and Diablo 3 for such a long time, I got babied in some ways. In Baldur’s Gate 2, for instance, you do not have the luxury of Town Portals or Hearthstones. So a lot of the game involves pointless meandering back and forth in long spans. It can get really painful too as the AI can occasionally bug out, leaving your characters trapped in corners or (more often than not) aggroing mobs or springing traps inadvertently. That forces you to do a lot of unnecessary micromanaging.
Another thing about the game that I found was how bad the basic interface is. I like the game for the AD&D rule system and being able to play in a multi party/player type of environment. But the near real time game play can be frustrating and requires far too much micromanaging that does not behave the way you expect most of the time. I found myself pounding my keyboard far too often, trying either pause the game so that I could activate an ability or spell. However, half the time I would be too late and ended up giving up on any sensible strategy in favor of straight melee zerging.
In general, I found spell casting to be really frustrating on average. Enemies naturally would have every single spell on the planet lined up with numerous contingencies and spell sequencers. Because of how magic resistance works in 2nd edition rules, it’s pretty much pointless casting anything damaging. Instead, the only spells worth casting are debuffs and party buffs. The weird part though is how certain spells like Cloudkill are ridiculously overpowered compared to other spells. For instance, there’s the odd “cheat” of using Cloudkills on dragons, etc. and just hiding in a corner while they drop in health (my game didn’t do that, but I’ll explain that part later). Also, the whole spell casting time thing is an aspect of AD&D that I absolutely hate. Again, unless you have tons of contigency and spell sequencers lined up, it’s virtually impossible to get off a decent spell the way the game is set up.
So I mentioned the Cloudkilll spell on dragons not working. Actually, I think my game was heavily patched so people couldn’t use this tactic. When I tried this on a few high level mobs, they simply healed up. But that makes me realize that the game cheats horribly. I mean, some of the encounters are ridiculous unless you take extreme preventative measures. And that’s even with the easiest setting. I mean, some of the worst situations are one shot mechanics that somehow favor the monsters in terms of you avoiding your saving throws. In a normal AD&D setting with the gear and levels that you can get from this type of gear, etc., you’d always make your saving throw and the monsters should never be able to hit you (for instance, kobolds or hobgoblins). I don’t think it’s bad throwing monsters a bone, but it’s obvious that the game makers provide too much of a handicap towards players rather than letting RNG be real RNG and follow the rules closer.
The other thing that bothered me is how everything just seems way too high level and common. In most normal AD&D campaigns, you wouldn’t see so many OP liches, archmages, drow, etc. Most creatures would be an end game boss in themselves. Sure, they wanted to give the game a more epic feeling by throwing in a ton of challenging bosses, but it really dilutes how normal campaigns play out. For instance, there’s way too many vampires in the campaign. For the most part, realistically, it’s pretty tough preparing for encounters like that since you have to equip Amulets of Power, bring Undead Hunters and/or memorize tons of Negative Plane Protection spells. Otherwise, you’ll spend most of the time casting restoration on your guys for being horribly life drained.
I still love the general that is created though. I’ve never beaten Throne of Bhaal so I hope to eventually finish up that part. Baldur’s Gate 2 really has a great sense of adventure and setting but I wish they had more campaigns appended to it with the content drawn out longer rather than getting people to an overpowered state in such a short time span.
One thing I do enjoy is the questing model. All the quests are meaningful and non-linear, except for the main ones. But you have the option of moving between quests, which is something I wish other MMORPGs (*cough* World of Warcraft *cough*) would do. You still have the essentials of questing (kill, talk to, collect, etc.) but rather than making them into meaningless, boring grinds, you face enemies who are named and require complete clears of areas to benefit from the experience. The only sad part is that, unlike MMORPGs, once you clear an area, there’s no point in returning as all the monsters pretty much are dead.
Of course, there’s the whole storyline. Shadows of Amn and Throne of Bhaal to a degree, were pretty dark for AD&D games. Shadows of Amn, in particular, is quite gritty. You don’t really feel as though you’re playing a typical AD&D fantasy game, but are engaged in something almost sci-fi like at times. The villain especially is highly memorable and someone that resembles a god in some ways with the amount of power he wields. Even though you manage to thwart all types of high end foes, you constantly feel underpowered and intimidated by the sheer danger at every turn. Even low level areas can be difficult, which makes leveling a real challenge at times.
But the setup of the game is just really awesome. The entire time you’re slowly progressing to gain enough power to face your ultimate foe. And even with all your spells, abilities and gear, you still have doubts whether or not you can beat him in a fair fight. The game ensures that you won’t faceroll over anything. That said, you get gear to beat the bad guy rather than farming the bad guy to get gear to beat him over the head over and over again. After playing World of Warcraft for so long, it was nice seeing a guaranteed Holy Avenger as part of loot from killing a beast like a Red Dragon so that I could turn its blade against vampires, liches, and other evils in the Forgotten Realms.
Perhaps, my favorite thing is seeing the evolution and growth of my party as well as figuring out various class party combinations. With six slots available, you can configure your party in different manners. Equally important is how you gear your party in relation to their class party combinations. For instance, will you have an all evil party that cannot wield a Holy Avenger? Or will you take an Undead Hunter as opposed to an Inquistor so that you can avoid the various undead annoying level drain mechanics then provide a poorly armored class like a pure mage to use the Amulet of Power?
These types of questions force you to plan your game out in advance. Quite often, I wished that we were allowed two more slots just to have more NPCs join or try out more class combos.
One thing I hope is that this game is redone with a better interface, more content, more classes, more NPCs and two extra party slots. The game has a lot of personality with a solid foundation for more expansions. It should definitely have more life in another form and hopefully future generations can enjoy the ideas behind a game like this but in an updated format.