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Baldur's Gate series[BG1] Anyone go back to the original after playing an updated version?(34 posts)(34 posts)
(34 posts)
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This is my favourite topic
Posted January 16, 2020
What kind of problem do you have with these games? I'm willing to help, but you need to be more specific: which game are you trying to play? I won't be able to help much with EEs, but I can help with the originals.
Posted January 16, 2020
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Tuthrick: What kind of problem do you have with these games? I'm willing to help, but you need to be more specific: which game are you trying to play? I won't be able to help much with EEs, but I can help with the originals.
If you truly want to help me, then add me on discord

TL Gamer#7250
The types and amount of problems I've found with all these types of games (Baldur's gate series, Neverwinter series, Icewind Dale series) are so many and so uncalled and is such sloppy and piss poor design, it's impossible to to even start posting a list of anything. Besides, even when i have all I get is shit posting as a reply

____________________________________________________________

Just some information relevant to the situation
Anyone reading this should be aware about things the people shit posting on this forum don't want anyone to know about so they can further prevent me from getting help by posting lies and slanderous comments attempting pass it off as if I just have a rude attitude for no reason. Fact is I only have a rude attitude towards very specific individuals who deserved it..So Here is the full history of what is really going on:

I have been asking for help with these games as far back when I purchased the original 5 disk PC version of Baldur's Gate!
From that point on anytime i asked for help no matter how nice I asked and no matter how detailed I explained things all people did was shit post and not answer a single thing I asked Instead they do what you see them doing now, not helping purposely trying to antagonize me so when I leave a reply to their attitude, they use that to say I should ask nice..then continue the same circle jerk.

Just go look at every single reply everyone has left in any topic about any of these games on any forum I've asked them on, and you will see that exact situation I just described above in all of them.\

I have come to the conclusion that all the people replying have zero clue about the game and cannot answer anything, and they're replies prove this. As I said it's interesting how people who claim to know so much about these games cannot even answer a single question and then use the excuse of no one wants to help you when you don't ask nice or some other bullshit they caused the person to reply as.
Post edited January 16, 2020 by tx3000
Posted January 16, 2020
I added you on Discord, let's see if I'm able to help you out with your issues with the games.
Post edited January 16, 2020 by Tuthrick
Posted January 19, 2020
I tried BGT (Trilogy) a couple of times (meh!) and I never tried (and never will) Enhanced Edition (as any other 'enhanced' editions that are obviously enhanced only in better sucking your money off you).

There is nothing better than good old Classic Edition boosted with fan fixes, UBs and such.
Posted January 21, 2020
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dtgreene: What I am wondering is whether anyone, after playing BG2-in-BG1 or the Enhanced Edition, has ever gone back and played the Classic Edition. Have you done so, and if so, what are your thoughts on that experience? Were there things you missed, and perhaps things you didn't miss? Did anything surprise you, or not be as you remembered it?
I just came on here to download & play the original rather than play EE that i've got installed already, the original has much more atmosphere where as EE feels very bland & mechanical... sure its got Qol improvements & bug fixes, but it has also has so many other changes that us older fans never wanted & sometimes really hate.

Key things that piss me off with BGEE:

- the audio, everything about the audio is so bad in EE for some reason. The music is never at the right volume, positional sounds don't work correctly & background noises are either extremely loud or too quite.

- NPC audio triggers are changed, in EE its rare to hear them say alot of the dialog that gave each NPC character. BG2 made up for this by giving npcs alot other dialog & events for NPC's character but as none of that exist in the original game the NPCS instead feel too lifeless.

- alignment reactions, the new devs disagree with the originals devs take on alignments so they twisted the reaction chart to suit how they think it should've been instead, as a result some characters now no longer behave the same way & neutral character now would prefer to be centre of attn rather than remain neutral (ffs).

- limited summons, i hate this change with bg2 too... spamming summons was so much fun in BG1

- the changes to weapons proficiencies really limit what npcs can now equip to a handful of items for the whole game which is boring.

Ultimately BGEE feels very much like it was put together by fans of BGTutu/BGT rather than fans of vanilla BG, so many tweaks to suit the new devs opinions rather than the fans
Posted January 21, 2020
For me personally, there's no sense in playing any game on the newer engine of its sequels, not only BG1.

It's just like playing, say, Age of Wonders 1 on AoW2 engine. Or Diablo 1 on Diablo 2's.

It's not Gold Box games era anymore when graphic engines were very similar within the same game series (and I'm also not a fan of playing Pool of Radiance on Pool of Darkness engine though).

What for? Chasing the QoL minutiae? Duh, you lose all the atmosphere instead. In the end what you get it's not the old game nor the newer, it's a cadaver magically enlivened to imitate life.
Posted January 21, 2020
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bensmith85: - limited summons, i hate this change with bg2 too... spamming summons was so much fun in BG1
In classic BG2 there are ways around it. One of my favorite uses is in a now obsolete Throne of Bhaal speedrun where a player summons an army of undead and uses it to polymorph teleport into the trials without unlocking them properly. (For those not familiar with polymorph teleporting: When you change form, if your new form doesn't fit in the space, the game will move you to the nearest place where you do fit, even if that spot is on the other side of a wall. This trick has also been used in BG1 to skip a large chunk of the game (wand of summoning to summon a lot more than 5 creatures), and in BG2 to skip Spellhold (and all the major sequences within it).)

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bensmith85: - the changes to weapons proficiencies really limit what npcs can now equip to a handful of items for the whole game which is boring.
It's also not good for the PC either. Can you, without using any information that isn't either in the manual or available at character creation, explain what the tradeoffs between a long sword and a katana are, and why I would choose one weapon proficiency over the other?

As I said earlier in this topic, I really don't like the weapon proficiency mechanic, and BG2 just makes the problem worse. It feels like weapon proficiencies serve to limit what the player can do rather than expanding on the player's options. It would be better if it were like the Pool of Radiance series, where you are considered proficient in every weapon type and don't have to pick and choose. (As I said, however, combat style proficiencies are at least more interesting and feel more of a fair choice than specific weapon proficiencies.)
Post edited January 21, 2020 by dtgreene
Posted January 23, 2020
I have gone back to the original cds to see how things changed but didn't stay long.
I preffered to more advanced weapon skill choices and extra content even though I can't abuse the Biff the understudy bug to recruit a small army of his clones like I did in the old days.
Posted January 25, 2020
If you install SCS (Sword Coast Stratagems) you get to assign every specialization point for NPCs up to their level; as well as choose their starting spells and thieving skills if they have any, as long as you choose the correct option during SCS setup. I just selected '1' for everything (it's more challenging too). https://www.gibberlings3.net/mods/tweaks/scs/
Posted January 28, 2020
I find myself strangely attached to classic BG in that I'm not nostalgic for the game itself, but rather for what it represents. I still prefer Tutu when making a character I intend to take through the entire story, it makes more sense than the awkward conversions you have to do otherwise. But the pared-down experience of the original combined with a lot of the odd quirks and storytelling choices, to me all of this evokes the feeling of playing tabletop 2e during that era.

Of course I remember my experiences playing the Baldur's Gate games when I was younger, I thought they were cool, but I never managed to actually complete the first Baldur's Gate. Coming back to the game years later I was blown away by how much detail the game has though, things that you would never think about unless you played tabletop, like having a conversation moment where a plot NPC forces you to say "yes" under penalty of death.

Moments like these are incredibly accurate to methods actually prescribed by literature for DMs at that time. Most of these things are awful game design, both at the table and on the computer. They have since departed the scene and they deserve to be gone. It's not that miss it or think it was ever good or fun, but the way its implemented feels so accurate that I can't help feeling the ache of nostalgia: "Wow, things were different then". To me the original Baldur's Gate is like a historical document, akin to an old newspaper article or cartoon, beyond the content itself it reveals the cultural spirit of a different era.
Posted January 28, 2020
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Meganeura: Most of these things are awful game design, both at the table and on the computer.
I feel that way with many of the game mechanics, like the way combat at level 1 could be approximated by having all attacks be low probability instant death attacks, which gets quite frustrating (dying after your attacks repeatedly missing), and how weapon proficiencies feel like they limit the player rather than providing more options. Also, I dislike having your randomly rolled stats be set in stone for the entire game; CRPGs like Wizardry and Bard's Tale handled things better there (albeit not perfectly).

I should also point out that D&D doesn't scale that well to higher numbers; in Throne of Bhaal attacks rarely miss and you don't get a per-level damage bonus, and in the 3e epic level rules, at sufficiently high levels (~4000) a 1% difference in level means the difference between 5% and 95% accuracy in the right situation. (Contrast this to something like Disgaea, where a small difference in level doesn't make *that* big a difference at that point.)
Posted February 01, 2020
After trying BGT, it became my standard installation for many years. I went back a couple of times to the original BG1 just to see it again briefly when I was in the process of installing BGT from scratch. I never felt like playing the whole game again on it's original version. I played BG2 before BG1, maybe that's why I like the game more with the BG2 engine.

Then, when I got the Enhanced Editions, these became my favorite versions. I don't think I'll ever make another full playthrough of either BG1 or BG2 in their original versions.
Post edited February 01, 2020 by krugos2
Posted March 24, 2020
I have the original BG1, but it is stored someplace and it's too much trouble to get. I wanted to play it seriously (I only played a little ten years ago) so I bought the BG1:EE to play the old thing (I wanted it without the expansion but no problem - modded the xp cap to 89.000-, maybe need to change cure light wounds as well). Very good game, on my old computer the graphics are OK. The pathfinding is a little bad but not terrible (except Firewine Ruins).

I thinks it's best to play the original version first, then play the remastered or enhanced. But with little time, the EE is OK I think, on modern computers.
Posted March 25, 2020
I play the originals.
Posted April 19, 2020
I tried to play an unmodded BG1 again after many, many years. I wanted an "as vanilla as possible" experience, and with a little program called Integer Scaler I got it super crisp looking even at its low resolution.
The thing that killed it was that it's not possible to comfortably scroll the screen with the arrow keys. I always have one hand on the mouse, controlling my characters and the other on the arrow keys to direct the screen. It's super choppy in vanilla BG1 and that killed my whole enjoyment of the game. Went for EE again in the end, and I'm enjoying the crap out of it right now.
Post edited April 19, 2020 by Rineux
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Baldur's Gate series[BG1] Anyone go back to the original after playing an updated version?(34 posts)(34 posts)
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