twillight: I could piece the story of BG together in 5 minutes. Maybe 5 seconds. Because it is a skeleton-story with barely any events.
But I betyou think Rick&Morty is only for "highly intelligent" people, and u r one of 'em...
Engerek01: Please do it then. Write it down here. If you can piece it together in 5 seconds, then writing it down also shouldn't be a problem.
Aside it being a pretty long game, ye, sure, no problem at all.
So, we start with the opening cinematic, where a dude kills another dude, who says there are others. Armored Dude somehow doesn't care, because he is stupid, most likely. It is obvious we (the protagonist) are amongst those "others". Even from the tutorial part we learn all this is about beings of Spawns of Bhaal, a long dead diety, who prepared its own resurrection (he plans a Battle Royal, which winner will be bodysnatched by him). Because he was the God of Murder (and dying in general), his spawns have a tendency to be involved in bloodshed, most of them even has this tendency in their nature (kinda bloodline thingy), aka. they kill.
The tutorial-part is mostly ok, the problem is, the combat-exercises provide no benefit (no item or even exp), but they are totaly insisting to participate on them. Otherwise the tutorial shows your mundane life in the library-monastery, and prepares things by throwing you two assassins, which points that leaving is a pressing issue, and priests sucks at their job as usual.
Then the tutor is taken out, and an annyoing NPC is forced on you instead. Not thatthe tutor was thatstrong... While the later installments count the possibility you might play solo despite the intention of the developers, BG1 lacks that.
The game also heavily pushes you to play goody-good, else you'll be stomped to the ground by powerful respawning enemy.
The game also has the horrid issue of resting. You'll want to rest when you are out of resources, and after the bigger fights, you WILL be out of resources. But this will happen a lot in the middle of dungeons to start with, so no inn. With very frequent spawn-points (sometimes they are not even circum-navigatable!) and monsters spawning out of thin air interrupting your attempt to sleep, you not gaining back any resources, inn/tavern being nowhere nearby, this leads to frusrating save&reloads.
Here let's mention the random encounters between areas. Sure, you can most of the times just run from them, but there is at least one encounter to screw you over, and force save&reload: the all enemies are archer encounter. Especialy on low level that's instant death. And this game is NOT supposed to be rogue-like!
Now let's move to the first area. Random monsters problems aside, we have... Though we could mention the only way to reliably lower your reputation while keeping it on a reasonable level is screwing over your romance-option - genious design, not?
So, first real area. Forced party member tick, looting the tutor, tick. There is a pair of potential-party-members, who'd join ... because the plot says so, or something. There's a guy who considers suicide, but despite perfect opprtunity to introduce allignment, anything you do with him, is inconsequential in every way - the character just stole five minutes of your life. There's an easter-egg diamond, as the game tries to be an open world game. Now if you try this exploration-all thingy, your nose will be bashed by an overpowered-compared-to-your-level-and-equipment ogre. Are you having fun yet? Me neither.
Now you arrive to the Friendly Arms Inn, what was your destination. Here you meet your contacts, who wanna investigate some mines. Because reasons. They seem shady because of this. Actualy, your only option for progress in the game IS investigating the mines, despite the game pretending it is not.
If you want, you can go to the mines right now, but you'll be stopped a lot towards there by the pesky area-borders-unlocking system, which is frustrating. Turns out if you just galopp to the mines, your nose will be bashed. Not that you could just go there. Aside the constant interrupting of you enjoyment with artificial barriers, the game goes to the extent of entirely blocking your passage by placing bloody enemies on the road, which was safe route until now. So what are the rules of the game, someone tell me! Give me DIRECTIONS, because the constant reloading for too hard enemies bashing my nose is frustrating.
But ok, I assume the game wants you to do sidequests. Welcome to the world where your playthrough at 90% completion OF THE TRILOGY will be ruined, because you "washed the pantaloons" for 100 exp, and not stealing them. Are you having fun yet? Or you activate the cheat menu?
And you know what? I'd be ok, if people within the Inn would give me the sidequests. But nah, a lady living at a random location gives me one too, because reasons. I also feel confused. One NPC thought by looking at me I'm an adventurer (weapon-and-magic-slinger), while the other thought I'm an elegant servant.
Oh, and let's mention the design-failure assassination attempt, which NPC is not just way overlevelled than you, but also casts stuff like Horror. Are you having fun yet?
Of course if your ENTIRE party could sneaking - but they can not. So I assume the game wants you a thief, and a mage with an invisibility 10 foot radious? Not that the game'd make this possible, but whatever, right?
But ok, let's arrive to Beregost.
You do the aquired quests - then you have no purpose to do anything else here. But you better do some nothing-to-do-with-anything sidequests, or your nose will be bashed in! But oh, please don't do sidequest, the game changed its mind, as you can turn out too powerful, and loose all challenge-value! But whatever.
After visiting 30-40(!) unrelated random areas, where maybe 5 quests has to do stuff with companions (half of which in a playthrough you won't hire), you go to the mines.
Unil now you learnt there is incrised bandit activity, occasional monsters, and that the iron is bad in the area, and most probably not for natural reasons. You also might encounter zounds of world-describing books, which neither has to do anything not just the story of the game, but also neither the areas you can walk in! Are youhaving fun yet? Because I just learnt to not touch books, not read scrolls, skip the dialogues.
There are actualy 2 books that has stuff to do with the game: The Chosen of Mystra tells you, that you play the game. Wow, genious, master-level story-telling. The other tells the backstory of Bhaal, mostly ruining all surprises not knowing what the cult of Bhaal is up for, or if it even exists, but whatever, right?
So you enter the mines, where you learn it is infested by kobolds, which are put there to split some acid on the ore (it works like Btaman's Shark-repellen, ok?). They are placed there by some human organisation, but named organisation has trouble with replenishment and supplies, so something is off, because that's not the local authorities, that's for sure.
You go and check upon the clues, namely bashing noses, and discover it is the black talon, which is the organisation of Zentharim which is a border-country, if I remember correctly, and not simple bandits. But these bandits work for someone, and that someone is in Baldur's Gate: the Iron Throne.
To learn this you have to pass the Cloakwood Forest too, which has one problem: it is empty, it is a forest, and we try to play a game instead. So the quests and events would be all right, but they are too infrequent, far-away from each other. The mine here works properly, producing good iron - but the Iron Throne does not sell it, expecting profit during the coming war, playing twosides.
On the sidenote, a certain Irenicus left a certain spider-lady in the Cloakwood Forest...
Whatever, so we reach Baldur's Gate. Here you again do mindless amount of sidequests, which wouldn't be THAT bad, if they'd be kicked off the right way, like that thief going to you, instead waiting to be talked to, or the posion-brothers wouldn't spawn at such bad places. Because you might not even encounter them to be honest, and man, they could be a nuisance in chapter 7-or-what! Of course if you just try to investigate the Iron Throne, your nose will be bashed in...
Also, could we only have NPCs with unique names which actualy have a purpose? To encourage people to discover the game for themselves, instead of opening a walkthrough? No? Are you having fun yet? No?
So after an unrelated main quest (investigate missing citizens) we enter the Iron Throne building, where we learn they not just having the same difficulties as the rivaling country, but that theyare slowly replaced by body-snatcher. What is a B-movie-dumb plot twist, but whatever.
A third party's existance is obvious, just like that that Sharewok-fellah will be the head honcho of whatever is happening here, not the so-called leader, who is his (step)father by the way. Who cares, will die off-screen.