If you will look at some of the points I have made about the game, I have noted some of its good points. Here, I noted that it does eventually make use of a promising urban setting and eventually gives the character personal stakes, but noted that it took too long to do either to make up for its flaws. Elsewhere in this forum, I have, unless my memory fails me, noted that the painted backdrops are nice in IE games all around; I did not restate that here since pointing out how two games have a common point of quality does nothing to distinguish which is the relative best. I have also managed to say a few good things about IWD in comparison to BG in this thread in particular.

It's true that I do tend to bring up the bad things about games when I talk about them, but that's because fleshing out an opinion requires taking note of the cons as well as the pros. As someone else put it far better than I could, "I do point out every little thing that's bad about a game, but then, I'm a critic, it'd be weird if I didn't. If I put people's balls in my mouth for a living, I'd be a prostitute, or possibly a GameSpot employee, but I criticize, so I'm a critic.", albeit minus the whole getting paid part. The phrase "everyone's a critic" is used a lot to brush off criticism by creators, but I embrace it because it's true; everyone is or has the potential to exercise critical thought in opining on a book, game, or film, and doing so by necessity requires giving a full assessment of the thing warts and all.

As for "droning on", my hope was that by commenting I would be able to get some discussion about the game that went beyond the rather shallow levels of analysis it has received, with regards to both the good and the bad, for the reasons I listed earlier, namely that discussions of the successes and shortfallings of games help me develop insight into what makes a good game, to possibly discover an unknown redeeming point in a game that I don't like, and to round out the discussion of a game to provide an underrepresented insight into the game and thereby provide prospective buyers with additional points of data so that their decision to purchase is more informed. Rest assured, if all I wanted to do was troll, I would not waste my time by attempting to engage in any kind of analytical discussion, nor would I restrict my posts to threads where I am actually able to contribute to the main topic as opposed to frothing about BG's pathfinding in every thread about how to getting the game to run in Windows 8 or some other thing where those concerns are irrelevant.

With that in mind, I submit that I think that IWD > BG for the reasons I have given in this thread. Barring any attempt to discuss the relative merits of the games, I'm not sure what else there is to say as this thread seems in danger of going off topic.

Baldur's Gate 1 is, in my mind, quite clearly the work of inexperienced game developers/writers. It was my introduction to roleplaying games back in the day and I loved it, but replaying it later... a lot of the dialogue indeed is cringe-worthy.

But I still had a great time playing it. The areas are pretty, the Infinity Engine remains the best real-time-with-pause gameplay experience I know, the music is great, some of the quests are pretty good and Durlag's Tower is one of my favourite dungeon crawls in any game.

Icewind Dale 1 is more focussed and more polished than BG1. The story's much more boring, though, (BG1s story may have been poorly executed, but it's more interesting in concept and offers far more personal stakes.) and the linearity makes it less fun to replay.

Baldur's Gate 2 had a weak main plot that too obviously served as a convenient set of hooks to attach side-quests and dungeon-crawls to. The number of plot-holes, if you listed them all, would make the main quest look like Swiss cheese. A lot of the writing is much better though, and many of the side-quests are very involved and a great deal of fun. In fact, you could regard the game as a set of independent short stories: "Escape from the Underdark," "Mystery in the Umar Hills," "Siege of the D'Arnise Keep," etc. Lots of these sequences are very good. As for the main quest... eh, at least Irenicus had a great voice actor.

Gameplay wise BG2 is a lot more varied than bother other games, though a lot of the challenge comes from gimmicky enemies. (Beholders, mindflayers anyone?) Still, the first time I encountered those dragon fights, or the guardians in Watcher's Keep, were amazing.

(Throne of Bhaal was a big disappointment, except for Watcher's Keep. But Watcher's Keep alone was worth the price of admission.)

I'd say that Baldur's Gate 2 is more flawed than many people nowadays claim, (out of nostalgia?) but it nonetheless is one of the most enjoyable games I know once I get past those flaws.

Icewind Dale 2 is hampered by a weak start with too many Orcs and Goblins and a too large Ice Temple, but I still like it better than Icewind Dale 1. The story is a lot more interesting, the atmosphere is just as good, the gameplay is pleasantly challenging and I really like the way the game reacts to your party's stats, skills, race, alignment, etc.

It doesn't have as much personality as the Baldur's Gate series, though. Baldur's Gate feels like a (sometimes hokey, but fun) fantasy novel full of quirky and interesting (and sometimes annoying) characters. Icewind Dale 2 in particular feels more like a history book, recounting military campaigns from a detached point of view. It does what it does very well, but I don't enjoy it as much as I do Edwin's misadventures or fiddling with the Machine of Lum the Mad.

So in the end my vote goes to the Baldur's Gate series. It has more of the things I enjoyed in them. Both series have their flaws, though, and more modern games are often much more polished than these old titles. That doesn't stop me from firing up the Infinity Engine every couple of years, though. It's pretty hard to argue with that kind of lasting appeal.

Most sensible people, me included, appreciate a good critical review, but when all (or virtually all) a person can express is negative points in verbose manner, again and again, whatever reviewed, that is not a review but something entirely different, and amounts to little more than assassination of the review subject. It also says much about the reviewer.

Personally, I didn't find the mind flayers too bad in either IWD2 or BG2, the beholder's and gauth, definately. Insta debuffs (the first usually being dispel magic) and possible instant death spells made that part of BG2 a nightmare. I beat them using summons as a distraction and used ranged weapons to pick them off. If one fell, i retreated to save. Gotta fight cheese with cheese :)

The ice temple itself wasn't so bad, slogging through all 10 ranks of battle squares was tedious though. That along with the fedex quests in Targos and Dragon's Eye were my least fav parts of the game.

Where in the game did NPCs react to alignment? I always felt the only use for alignment in BG and IWD was minor factor in usable equpiment and cleric spells.

If a Paladin were doing the talking, sometimes there would be a dialogue option along the lines of "I sense the evil (or lack of evil) inside you". Beyond that, I don't recall that much about alignment reactions in IWD.

True, there weren't many reactions to alignment. I think I just accidentally included it in my list.

Definitely a lot of places where there are extra options or different responses based on class and race and skills/stats, though.

I never finished IWD2 because I didn't like the new rules, and it just wasn't as fun as IWD. Perhaps it was in the Ice Temple I got too fed up, I'm not sure.

I hated, HATED, the mindflayers in BG2 though. It felt like an enemy you could not defend or buff against, and the only way was to cheese, and cheese HARD. Set up a wall of summons and hope you can contain the mindflayers in a doorway or whatever. They attacked so fast too, so if they managed to lock onto a guy, he was effectively dead. Reload and cross your fingers you're luckier this time.

The beholders were tricky too ofc, but I found them more manageable. At least it's possible to defend against them, for a time, and it's easier to use tactics against them. Well, a bit cheese there too I suppose, but with a mage/thief I went around in that Underdark beholder cave and spammed cloudkill. It sure took a bit of time, but eventually they all died.

Both were tough as hell, an absolute nightmare to fight, but it's kind of good too, because they truly are horrible enemies.

I'd agree with feeling underwhelmed about Throne of Bhaal though. Watcher's Keep was fantastic, it really was, but other than that it wasn't all that great, and too railroaded. I also got rather fed up of the "Hi, I'm a friend -- HAH, now I backstab you!" mechanic.

So yes, there are certainly problems with the games (the pathfinding in especially BG1's warrens and such made me want to scream out in agony), but a few people in here seem only capable of seeing the problems, and then exaggerating them, instead of having a more measured approach. These games are near universally praised for a reason, and I highly doubt just about every gamer and reviewer over the last ~15 years got it wrong.

Ugh, no kidding. As much as I think that the rather nebulous and abstract 2E system isn't best suited to a computer game (which demands rigidly defined principles and automation, neither of which are the system's strong suites), IWD2 reminded me just how much of a pain trying to diagram out feat trees for one character can be, let alone 6.

I remember fighting Beholders in IWD TotLM, and yeesh... At least with Mindflayers, the whole idea of trying to create a bottleneck is a logical fighting strategy in general, but with those things you had to pray your party made their saves or be prepared to take it up the tailpipe. If they had managed to incorporate some of the strategy required to fight them in P&P (i.e. stay in the sight of the main eye's anti-magic cone to avoid the effects of the more nasty powers), they could have been a little more balanced, but as it stands they are ridiculous.

The popularity (or lack thereof) of a given idea says nothing about the underlying idea itself.

Again, I *do* see good in BG (the hand painted backgrounds, the eventual use of the setting of Baldur's Gate, and eventually giving the PC personalized stakes), and IWD (again, good art, a story that has decent pacing and structure), but the bad outweighs it; BG's urban setting and getting back to focusing on the PC's personal stakes happened well after the plodding pacing of a lengthy investigation into a seemingly unrelated iron crisis, and IWD's gameplay suffered the same problems as all IE games. The general implementation of RTWP produces serious problems on a gameplay level by trying to adapt a turn based system to real time and basing all on the 2E system (which is defined by not being a good system to play purely by RAW), and the pathfinding was so ill served to tight areas that it begged the question of why so many of those areas not only existed but were mandatory; granted, I managed to negate some of the deaths this caused (and consequently was able to get slightly more enjoyment out of combat) by abusing IWD's hilariously broken difficulty slider (more xp the further you are from normal difficulty, no matter which way you go), but that was akin to opening a portal to the elemental plane of cheese. The reason I wind up thinking that IWD > BG isn't that I think that either are all that great, but that IWD is the least flawed.

There I have to disagree. 2nd edition may be clunky, but it works fine in the Infinity games once you get your head wrapped around the concepts. (Mind you, if I started playing these games now as opposed to when I was a teenager with a lot of free time on my hands, I might not have wanted to invest the time to learn this system.)

There's a reason these games are so popular in their niche, and that reason is that the Infinity Engine works. The RTS style controls with pausing and auto-pause options let you control that party even with the strange hybrid rounds/real time system. Everything is crisp and responsive, the 2D graphics make it easy to see what is going on, and the auto-pause function prevents things from ever getting too frantic.

As for the pathfinding, 90% of the issues can be resolved by A] making the enemy come to you in rooms big enough to surround them, B] having balanced parties with only 3-4 guys fighting in melee and the rest shooting/using magic so they don't get in eachother's way and C] using the pause function to keep an eye on what people are doing. Sure, the Firewine Bridge in BG1 is an utter failure of area design that's borderline unplayable, but that's one area in one game out of four. Everywhere else the pathfinding is a minor annoyance at worst.

Now, a turn-based game like Jagged Alliance may well have better combat. So might a purely real-time game like Starcraft, though I personally prefer Baldur's Gate style combat. I don't know if that's inherent to the real-time-with-pause system, though. There are plenty worse games both in real time or turn based too.

If you don't like the combat I can definitely see why you wouldn't enjoy these games, since the writing isn't strong enough to carry them by itself. But I think the combat is the best part of it. I enjoy setting up orders for my characters, watching them attack hoping nothing goes wrong, then pausing again to evaluate what happened, what the enemy is doing, and what I'll do next to counter them. I enjoy how things are less predictable and controllable than in a purely turn-based environment, with more room for player mistakes. (Though sometimes I'll be in the mood for turn-based combat instead.) I enjoy not having to rely on reaction speed to use all my character's abilities to maximum effect, and having enough time to contemplate my moves. And I'm not the only one, going by these games' enduring popularity.

As for the original question, having thought about it some more I think I can't actually say categorically whether I like Icewind Dale better than Baldur's Gate, because there are two games in each series and I rate them very differently. I'd rate them: BG2 > IWD2 > IWD1 > BG1 > BG2:ToB

And that's before adding in mods, which are far more plentiful for the BG series. A modded BG1 will inch ahead of IWD1 in my ranking.

It's not the base mechanics that are the problem, it's that the mechanics as written are so limiting, and the IE's implementation is even more so. In RAW, attacking involved selecting a target and attacking or parrying, with the possible option of going for a called shot (which none of the IE games allows for). The thing with called shots was that they were very nebulously defined and under RAW were adjudicated by the GM as to what effect they had depending on what the player said they were trying to do. That kind of abstract adjudication just doesn't translate to a computer game, which demands that everything be determined by the code; granted, they could have pulled a Fallout and had a chance of various disabling effects based on general aiming, but IE doesn't even do that, and it certainly doesn't allow for parrying to boost AC.

Also, there was the way that 2E handled skill checks. If you tried to do something special, you rolled against the relevant attribute to determine if you succeeded, and it was pretty much up to the GM what attribute should be rolled for what, or for that matter if the thing in question was demanding enough to warrant a roll; granted, there was an optional rule for Non-Weapon Proficiencies, which basically made a character able to make a check against the relevant attribute to determine if they succeeded. The more nebulous system allowed players to do creative things like breaking down weak walls or various other structures with a Strength check, making a Dexterity check to move out of the way of a lasso or catch something thrown to them in the heat of combat, Intelligence/Wisdom to getting some unique insight depending on the nature of the thing at hand, and pretty much any damn thing that the PCs or the GM could think of (an adamantine golem none of us can hurt? That's cute; Legolas works his way to the top of the room to secure a chain to the rafters, I yank on it with my 18/97 strength to bring the house down on it, trapping the golem while we search the tomb it was guarding), which is great for P&P, but not so much for the constraints of a computer game. The NWP system would have been an ok compromise, but IE didn't even give that as an option.

In short, 2E as written was meant to be played on a more abstract "principles based" approach, which computer games just can't handle. There were various ways IE games could have compromised on that, but most of them adopted an even more anemic version of RAW where stats only affected combat and a few other miscellaneous areas, with the only remnant of the skills implemented in 2E being chest bashing and Thief skills, but even those were barely recognizable, and most of them didn't even try to emulate the effects of having good Intelligence/Wisdom/Charisma (with the exception of PST); as a result, where before having an ability that didn't grant bonuses was counterbalanced by being able to use your abilities creatively, if you didn't have a modifier in most IE games, then the stat might as well not exist. I may not like 3.5 too much, but it at least is a better fit for a computer game because that system was designed to operate on RAW alone with minimal principles-based shenanigans on the part of the players and GM, while still allowing for the implementation of a variety of combat and non-combat oriented skills.

Well, yeah, those are the kinds of things you can do in a pen-and-paper game that you can't do in any kind of CRPG. It's the reason games with a DM offer a very different and in some ways more rewarding experience than single player CRPGs. But that has nothing to do with the Infinity Engine games, though.

The Infinity Engine games were far more combat-oriented. That was a design choice. The complexity in the games came from controlling multiple characters at once and utilising and combining the dozens of different spells at your disposal to kill enemies. Sure, playing a single fighter is pretty limiting and boring. But playing a squad of six different classes is anything but. For that kind of gameplay these games (particularly Baldur's Gate 2) are still one of the best games I know.

Nor were (or are) the Infinity Engine games unique in this. There are plenty of RPGs out there where the roleplaying aspect is limited to dialogue and story choices you make and little changes based on your character's stats or skills. Plenty of which were not based on D&D at all.

Sure, games like Fallout or even Neverwinter Nights or the more recent Shadowrun game allow for a more varied approach with characters having non-combat skills they can use to solve situations in different ways. And I do really like games where this is done well. It can add quite a bit of depth. But even here the lack of DM problem you illustrated means that these non-combat solutions often just involve a dice-roll or an extra dialogue option appearing somewhere and some enemies going away. That creativity and out-of-the-box thinking that makes P&P so much fun just can't really be emulated by computers. Even in games like Fallout — famously winnable without ever drawing a weapon — the combat system will be many times more complex and involved than the non-combat skills.

So in short: I do not think it's fair to blame the Infinity Engine games for not including that kind of flexibility, and I do not think the choice of 2nd edition D&D mechanics is the cause of it. Icewind Dale 2 and Torment illustrate that the Infinity Engine was perfectly capable of including stats and skills in the gameplay, Fallout style. The other three games chose not to, or only did so incidentally, and focussed on a mix of story and tactical squad-based combat instead.

Maybe you don't care for that, but I contest that the games were good at what they were trying to do, and I appreciate them in that light.

Fair enough, I forgot about IWD2's Feats including NWP style skills. PST did a nice job making traditional "dump" stats actually have an impact on the game, which was nice, and some dialogue options would require Dex rolls, if I remember correctly (i.e. snapping necks, grabbing a fleeing beggar, to name a few). As for the other games, the focus on combat isn't quite the problem that I have with the 2e ruleset implementation so much as it is that it culls the little mechanical variety for combat that existed under RAW when it could have kept them in as a compromise; it's not reasonable to expect a game to account for every cockamamie stunt I can pull in combat, but removing the existing rules for called shots (maybe supplemented by 2.5 material) or parrying makes non-magical combat feel rather uninvolving.

Still, with regards to BG v. IWD, I have to give points to IWD 2 for the effort on that front.

No argument there. Compared to something like Neverwinter Nights, let alone a game like Temple of Elemental Evil, fighters are rather boring. (Rogues though, are a lot of fun. Particularly in Baldur's Gate 2 where they get traps and kits like the Assassin get even more abilities.)

In practice though, I'm not sure this is a bad thing. Even with pause, micro-managing six characters who -all- have to make complex choices would be a bit much. Typically, I have 2 or 3 fighter-types on a simple auto-attack script and merely make sure they don't rush off half-cocked into a trap or AOE spell, while I control my mages and rogues more directly.

The lack of complexity for fighters would be a flaw in a turn-based game, and quite frankly compounds D&D's general less interesting low-level gameplay in BG1 and IWD 1 (IWD2 offers more options at the start thanks to sub-races with racial spells, feats, etc. BG2 starts at level 8) but once the characters hit level 4 or so and amass a greater variety of items (potions and useable magic items can do a lot for fighters in tough battles) I never find myself short of things to do in a battle.

Given my general bugbears with trying to adapt a turn based system into a pseudo real time one and the bizarre results that produces, I can't help but think they should have designed the game with turn based combat in mind; at least that way, (1) you don't risk alienating RPG fans who otherwise don't care for RTS (admittedly more of a matter of taste), and (2) you avoid the more nonsensical results of trying to get the two to mate (i.e. not being able to catch up to someone and take a swipe at them after their turn ends as opposed to losing the window to attack due to the enemy changing course or your pre-attack animation giving them enough time to escape). I'd actually pay good money to see someone redo the entire series as a turn based RPG, to say nothing of a sizable bonus to see some of those options included; sure, I might have problems with the games otherwise, but at the very least it would make the base gameplay more palatable as an emulation of P&P.

At the end of the day, though, at least they didn't choose to run the games under FATAL. What a nightmare that would have been.

Well, from a commercial and popular perspective it seems to me Bioware's (and Black Isle's) choices made a lot of sense. These games were very popular and successful and Bioware is -still- making real-time-with-pause games as half their business model. Obsidian Entertainment kickstarted a couple million worth of fans' money who wanted more Baldur's Gate 2. So while a turn based system would have avoided the odd bit of clunky weirdness like you describe, "alienating turn-based fans" seems to have been the least of their problems.

Like I said. I like turn-based games. I'm interested to see what the Numenera Torment game will do with turn-based instead of real-time-with-pause combat. (As close as you're likely to come to being able to pay good money to see someone redo an Infinity game in turn-based mode.) But I'm also looking forward to seeing what Pillars of Eternity will do with BG style combat. Real-time-with-pause is fun to a lot of people, me included.

It honestly seems to me that your main issue with these games is that you don't enjoy the type of gameplay they're trying to offer. Particularly in the case of the older infinity games, if you don't enjoy the combat there's not enough left in terms of story to make for a good game, and the writing is somewhat rough at times, so no wonder you don't like them. But that doesn't make them as flawed or bad as you've made them out to be in this thread. For every poorly-written fed-ex quest there is a well-written and clever sub-quest. For every weird glitch in the combat system there's three challenging set-piece battles against strange and wondrous foes. The size, scope and variety offered by a game like BG2 is rivalled by few modern titles. In the end, for all their rough edges, these games have a great blend of high-fantasy gameplay and story to offer that keeps fans coming back for more after all these years. In my book, that makes them a success.