I love RPGs. I have loved RPGs for a long time. Since I was a kid enthralled by the early final fantasies and the Quest for Glory games, to today's Dragon Ages and Skyrims, they are my first love in video games.

Now, due to life issues, there was a gap between around 1997 and 2004 when I didn't really play anything, so I missed out on a lot greats in the genre. BY far the biggest gap is probably the Baldur's Gate series. And this is something I have been trying to rectify...

But by the gods these games don't make it easy to like them! The difficulty spike in the first game is huge. The first time I tried playing I gave up in frustration after five attempts with five different characters with radically different classes and still getting brutalized in any fights outside of the prologue.

BUt then more recently, I decided I really wanted to experience what is so often touted as one of the best, if not THE best RPG storyline out there. So I downloaded a trainer to make my characters super powered and gave it another go.

This time I made it as far as chapter III. I cleared out the mines and then.... wandered around, desperately wishing for some sort of direction, until I wandered into some tower where a succubus charmed my main character, which is apparently instand death, since no one had any way to dispel it, and the whole party just ganged up on him and beat him to death and once he goes down its game over, the end.

I tried to find walkthroughs, but they are all these ASCII walls of text that make my eyes bleed. I don't need details, just an outline of roughly where to go and who to talk to next. I've gotten used to the engine, thanks to Planescape: Torment (which was nearly as bad, but always managed to let me find my next objective just BEFORE I ragequit, and also enthralled me with the story sooner to make me actually want to know what happened next).

But I don't want to give up on it. I love BIOWARE games, especially the clasics. Hell, even though I am incredibly late to the party, Neverwinter Nights has been dominating my gaming time for the last six months, and I haven't even gotten into online play with it yet.

Please, someone help me love Baldur's Gate! I have both games, full versions from here on GOG, and I have the TUTU mod for the first game to play it in the second game's engine (which is awesome because I really want to play a Half-Orc as my character, preferrably as a Swashbuckler, though that may be a bad build, I dunno). Is there a simple guide out there somewhere? Something that is easy to just ALT+TAB to when I'm stuck without wading through walls of text?

Did you ever play Morrowind?

Gorion says GO TO THE FRIENDLY ARMS INN and meet Khalid and Jaheira, your new mom and dad. En route you meet Xzar and Montaron. Khalid, Jaheira, Xzar and Montaron all says WE MUST GO TO NASHKEL. The Mayor in Nashkel says INVESTIGATE MINES. The letters you find at the bottom of the mines directs you to Tranzig in BEREGOST. The encounter with Tranzig will lead you to THE BANDIT CAMP.
And so on.
Just pay attention and read the letters you find, and read the journal.

And always scout ahead with a stealthed or invisible character so you avoid surprises.

The main character can't be resurrected, so keep him alive. To avoid Charm and other spells that affect the mind, a Berserker is an excellent class for a newbie, since in addition to good AC and lots of HP, their Rage ability makes them immune to mind spells.

It took me 2.3 seconds of googling to find this concise (no wall to wall text, just the basic facts) walkthrough: http://mikesrpgcenter.com/bgate/walkthrough.html

The correct way to play BG is entering a new area from the travel map, walk around there until everything is visible on the automap, talk to everyone, do every quest, kill every monster, enter any cave/house/dungeon, ...
After your work is done in this area you can leave it and never return again. After doing this many times (and very few quests which force you to backtrack) no area is left and you've beaten the game.

The main achievement of Baldur's Gate was that it introduced Command&Conquer style point and click combat into crpgs, if you neglect and cheat in combat because someone told you a fairy tale about "one of the best, if not THE best RPG storyline out there" you'll never get to love this game.

Well, you might prefer to skip Baldur's Gate I and just try starting from II.

The BG2 starting movie and intro narration will fill you in on the story thus far, there's more overall plot and story, more direction, and the higher starting level will mean that you'll have more health and abilities. As you've learned, death is just an arrow or spell away in low-level D&D! Personally, I'm a fan of BG1 and I'd encourage you to keep playing, but there's nothing wrong with jumping ahead, especially if you aren't having any fun.

If you do decide to keep playing BG1, I think you have to 'play charitably'. The game is... quirky! However, it should be playable with the characters that it gives. Make use of buffing potions and spells, use ranged weapons, keep a scout ahead of your party, and be willing to run away! The wilderness areas are almost all optional, so if you don't feel like exploring them, that's alright. Some NPCs in inns and taverns will give you quests or if you're looking for a few things to do in between chasing the main quest line, and they'll usually tell you which zone they want you to visit. Usually.

Finally, for what it's worth, the storyline does pick up a bit after you finish chasing down the bandits and can enter the city, Baldur's Gate, in Chapter Five. Good luck!

You do realize you can actually control the party members in this game, yes?

Alyosha has a good suggestion. I played BG2 before BG and honestly I like it better, even BG with Tutu. BG2 you already have some decent spells, abilities, and equipment and you can figure out pretty quickly what happened in the previous game. I've played through BG to the conclusion, because I felt like I should and it didn't do much for me.

That being said, my brother absolutely loves the first one and thinks it is way better than the second. So it's a matter of personal opinion.

Best of luck, because the BG series is one of the best!

I was thinking the same. It also sounds like he may not be SAVING the game often enough. Why on earth would it be "game over" when you die, just reload and try different tactics or go somewhere else. Save the game before entering new areas, heck I even save it before talking to new characters.

All of the above is good advice, but I'd also like to point out that the tower you mentioned is meant for basically max-level characters in BG (7th or 8th level fighters, 8th or 9th level mages and thieves, etc), so you might want to leave that area until Chapter 7.

If you want an engaging story, don't look at Baldur's Gate - Look at Planescape: Torment.

Baldur's gate has that fantasy BS going on where random godlike powers are always being pulled out of some deus ex machina through a painfully slow storyline told through modestly interesting characters. And it hardly is fantasy any more when everything is always always always elves and dwarves! To quote Ben Croshaw:

"And there's something terribly weird about the standard fantasy setting, not least of which the fact that the phrase "standard fantasy setting" can be uttered without irony. Look at this, we're a civilization so steeped in escapism that we've managed to find mundanity in something that doesn't exist and never will, whatever your Otherkin friend might say. Why is it accepted fact that elves fire bows and arrows and commune with the trees? That was Tolkien's thing. Without him, elves would be just about qualified to sell Rice Krispies. And he made dwarves all have braided beards and wield battleaxes. Real dwarves don't do that; they get hired by Lucasfilm or take corporate office jobs because they're an equal opportunities bonanza. Are we all but children playing forever on the same swing set while J.R.R. is the grumpy dad watching from the park bench and trying not to get aroused?

[This] isn't dark fantasy, nor is it light, gray, avocado, or caffeine-free fantasy, it's just straight fantasy classic. It's a straight-line Tetris block wiping out four big fat rows of demand for traditional single-player RPGs. It's got elves, dwarves, dragons, it's got a title screen depicting a sword sticking out of the ground, and the world map looks like a fire-breathing coffee drink has been sick on it; we're talking a hundred percent commitment here, where every individual element could be taken out of context and every single one could make your girlfriend legitimately call you a sad bastard. "

If you don't like it now, nothing magical is going to come out and make you like it later. Fantasy games have that unwieldy grind of arbitrary quest after quest to do something for the locals and that ultimately do nothing but provide padding between the beginning of the game and the later expositions of the plot. I would say take a look at Morrowind, instead. The variety of maps at least lessens those pains, though it follows the same formula nearly just as closely.

BG was good, especially at the time, but it ultimately falls under every generic fantasy game ever made ever. You've played one Bioware RPG, you truly have played them all: They're a one-trick pony.

Well, personally I read books if it is a good story I want.
Where the BG games really shine is in encounter design. No game that I've played or heard of has more varied and unique encounters than BG2.

I suck at combat and cheat left and right, and I love the game for the story. Not a fairy tale, just different strokes for different folks.

Sure, books are great. But there are different ways to tell a story, and that's the fun of RPGs. It's what separates AD&D pen and paper campaigns with a great DM from reading a R.A. Salvatore novel. There's a world of difference.

It just disappoints me that there's always such talent in creating game mechanics but when it comes to engaging audiences it's put in some committee that decides that the status quo should be sought after. Mass effect had a truly interesting mechanic for dialogue and exploration and it ended up being yet another romp of inconsequential sidequests for locals with another climactic battle against god. The decisions that are made barely scratch an appeal to pathos when so little emotional value is attached to the items we are supposed to influence. There's so much more that can be done! Are we doomed to recreate the mundanity of the 'hero's journey' continually, over and over again? Dire rats at the beginning, Gold dragons at the end? Humble childhood, secretly-godlike-powers-that-must-be-unlocked?

If it's 'fantasy' it becomes a challenge to see who can be the best at impersonating Tolkien's universe.

And all this terminology and backstory to items and people. There are books in the game worlds that talk about them: For what, to interest us? Is reading a novel describing all these items going to make me care about a sword that slays spiders? (think of the differences in characterization between any of those swords in BG and Sting from LoTR - I can't remember any of the names of the ones in BG and I haven't read LoTR in nearly ten years). Are codex entries going to make me care about the planet I'm on?

If the OP is not liking the game, I encourage him to find a better one. Just because everyone says that the two BG games came down from the heavens does not make it so. There are a lot of games out there, go discover them. Don't grind yourself into expectations that highly rated games will always be good.

It is my hope that one day Bethesda will wise up and put Morrowind on GOG

Get a balanced party and micromanage them well. For example 2 tanks, 2 healers, a multiclass fighter/rogue for damage and a wizard. That would make it insanely easy. Also, for the first few levels I find it useful to just equip everyone with bows. Everything seems to just die before you get the chance to switch to melee :). I remember having tons of fun in multiplayer when me and my friend were playing BG1, when in the 1st map outside of Candlekeep we would engage wolves and bears and one of us would be running away from the animal while the other one would be hitting it with arrows. I say fun because I think we were playing on hard which pretty much meant 1 bear/wolf hit = death for any level 1 character. :P

Not gonna happen, they've put it on Steam. =P