WARNING: SPOILERS ABOUT BG 1



Totally disagree about Baldur's Gate 1 story...in fact I'd say in some ways the 1st one has the best story of them all. It's pretty great how you gradually unravel a conspiracy, and there were many elements (the shapeshifters infiltrating all manner of organizations, Sarevok double-crossing the Iron Throne who only were greedy merchants...while he had other plans) I really liked. SoA's story made much less sense in my opinion and wasn't paced as well,
I will admit however that BG 1's gameplay can be very, very tedious, especially if you're coming to it only now...it's also rather limited (basically just fight, fight, fight). So if the op doesn't enjoy it, maybe he should just give it a miss.

The conspiracy is a small part (and probably the only worthwile part of the story) and it only appears after dozens of hours of wandering around mostly deserted places.

The gameplay is fun though, low level dnd always is. Every gold coin and hp counts.

I disagree. Low level AD&D (speaking of 1e/2e at this point has several issues):

1. Physical attacks miss *way* too often. The fact that a level 1 fighter with average strength (assume no proficiency bonus or penalty here) misses a target with 10 AC (that of an unarmored character of average dexterity) 45% of the time is rather atrocious, making the game rather frustrating. The base chance of hitting in that situation should really have been higher. As it is, fights play out as a lot of misses (which gets frustrating) until somebody manages to hit. I much prefer games where misses are relatively uncommon.

2. A physical attack that *does* hit could very well be an instant kill (in the BG ruleset) or send the target into negative HP (in the tabletop/Gold Box ruleset). Combine this with point 1, and the game just becomes too RNG/dice roll dependent.

3. Spellcasters (specifically arcane casters) are too limited at the start. You cast *one* spell, and then you are unable to cast spells until you get a chance to rest. (Of course, the designers seem to have dealt with this by including the grossly overpowered (at level 1) Sleep spell, which is basically an "I win" button at low levels against low level enemies, but I would rather be able to fire a bunch of magic missiles before running out; it's no fun when your class's primary ability becomes unusable. Also, it would be unfair if enemies used Sleep against you, so the adventure designer would have to work around it by simply not giving them that particular spell, even though it would make logical sense for them to know that useful spell (or it wouldn't make sense for *you* to have that spell).)

4. In the Infinity Engine specifically, due to the fact that a round is 6 seconds real time, there can be times when nothing is happening. (That's also the problem with slow movement outside of combat.) This issue doesn't come up in turn-based games, where the round only lasts long enough to resolve the attacks that are being made, so those with fewer attacks don't take as much real time as those with many.)

I actually agree somewhat...I like BG 1's low level setting better than BG 2 with its tons of powerful magical items and fights against Liches and dragons...but it's much more limited than BG 2 in terms of gameplay. BG 2 was far from perfect but it had much more opportunities for roleplaying, interactions with party members and occasional puzzles. BG 1 was more purely focused on combat...killing's pretty much your only way of interacting :-)

1. So what? Missing is part of the game, it's dice rolls after all. Perhaps you prefer newer games, which are rigged in favor of the player?
2. Well,it's an rpg. It wouldn't be one with dice rolls. Have you ever played pen and paper rpgs like they should be?
3. It's good, it makesyou think outside of the box and manage better strategies. I do agree though, there should be more mages casting stuff like fireball, sleep and cloudkill against you.
4. Dungeons and Dragons in real time loses all its meaning. Baldur's Gate itself is like 1/8 of what DND is supposed to be and that's because the game is real time. Skills themselves don't really matter when you don't have turns, and that's why BG is mostly geared towards combat with little to no chance to get some true role playing (that is, using your skills outside of combat).

1. The problem with missing is that it makes the game more frustrating. My suggestion, instead of rigging the game in favor of the player, is to increase accuracy rates and hit points across the board, so it feels like the battle is constantly making progress. As is, you could easily (knowing how RNG behaves sometimes) have a fight that goes on for a while without anyone hitting anyone else. Also, why don't level 1 Fighters get better THAC0 than level one Mages?

2. Even with a reduced miss chance, there's still randomness. Misses still do occasionally happen; they'd just be the exception rather than the rule. Critical hits also occur, as do saving throws against spells, and note that some weapons' physical attacks would still have wide damage ranges. (Also, you could have something like the Wild Mage class introduced in Baldur's Gate 2's expansion for those players who really like randomness.)

3. Sleep, as it stands, is maybe a little too powerful. Maybe if it worked half the time and if physical attacks would wake up the target without doing increased damage, it wouldn't be so bad (but would still be useful, especially since there aren't that many 1st level spells that hit multiple targets). (Incidentally, I think the game has the reverse issue at higher levels; saving throws become so good that status ailments almost always fail and spells like Fireball almost always do only half damage.)

4. I would agree with your point, except that whether the game is turn-based or real-time has nothing to do with whether skills are useful outside of combat.

It's worth getting used to the slower pace of Baldur's Gate. Enjoy the hand drawn areas, no need to rush everywhere. Since there's no pause in the inventory, you can read item descriptions (some artifacts have really interesting story), books etc. when the party is crossing from one edge of the town to the other.

I genuinely enjoyed the slower pace of Baldur's Gate 1, and I definitely wouldn't call it inferior to the sequel, just a different type of game. One thing that struck me really hard about the first game is the atmosphere it creates. It seemed like a very believable world to me, and was quite an atmospheric experience.I love just walking through uncharted woodlands and enjoying the weather effects in the game. And I did enjoy the low level characters too, and I think it suits the story very well. You start as just a newbie to the world, and even random encounters in the wild could prove instantly fatal, making you learn to be careful and teaching you how the game works slowly.

I wouldn't see that as a generalist argument. An obvious example are simulators - there are a lot of ways of making them more fun, but if such changes lead towards decrease in immersion, whole gameplay experience may get ruined.

That's not the only example tho. Many decisions which are not fun at the first glance may lead to a much more compelling gameplay. In this particular case, I would say that slower movement speed made the original quite a bit more suspenseful, exploring a map felt like a slow and deliberate process as opposed to the bizarre constant sprint introduced in newer versions of Infinity Engine. Pillars of Eternity solved this dilemma very elegantly by introducing two movement speeds (fast and reckless where opponents are more likely to notice you and stealth mode which allows your party to move slower, notice more hidden objects and not get noticed by enemies.) and then adding an option for 2x speed - that's besides the point tho.

I think the best example of a game which makes a lot of seemingly un-fun choices leading to a very compelling experience is Dark Souls. Movement speed is slow, game doesn't allow for free saving, things like attack animations and such must always be considered and are part of the game's skill ceiling, combat is very slow and deliberate, I could go on. All of these individual, counter-intuitive and often flat-out bad design decisions end up building towards an extremely claustrophobic, lonely and right-down deliberately oppressive experience. Change any one of these aspects and you'll improve the game in that particular area, but the overal experience will inevitably get reduced.

It's not immediately obvious but ranged weapons are almost always the best option in low level AD&D. Once you figure out to spend most of your time with bows and slings equipped, practically all of your complaints are solved.

Of course, this is assuming that the DM doesn't decide to starve your party of ammunition; if you can't find any stones or arrows, those slings and bows aren't going to do you any good.

Also, I am not sure if ranged weapons are really useful in games like Eye of the Beholder and Dungeon Hack due to their first person grid based structure, the fact that there isn't a lot of room to move, the fact that visibility is more limited, and the fact that you need to worry about picking up your ammunition after you shoot. In fact, at least in Dungeon Hack, I find that attack spells aren't worth it much of the time, and that Vampiric Touch is better than Fireball (though this is in part due to the mis-implementation of Vampiric Touch, which stacks and lasts forever in that game).

It really does depend on the campaign and the DM (or, if the game is a CRPG, on the level design and on the decision of which rules to implement).