Being a Planescape: Torment veteran and also having invested some time into Icewind Dale, I find the "legendary" BG slightly disappointing now that I finally got around to play it. Supposedly a more story-focused game than ID, I believe the fighting:dialogue ratio has even been slightly higher here than in ID and it's already chapter 5! Hell 99% of dialogues don't last more than one or two responses, and in ID in the first area there's a priest that is very talkative and then you get a huge voice-acted exposition by Arundel, and then a nice chat with the undead king, and so on... The dream sequences are quite nice, but atmospheric chapter expositions were also there in ID. And just like in ID 99,9% of xp comes from combat. The quests are few and far between and consist mostly of simple kill this, fetch that, and the rewards are lackluster to the point that most of the guides out there are filled with out-of-character recommendations like help out guy A, become his best friend, hug him, and then kill him for xp, and continue to be "good" because you didn't lose rep anyway.

Compared to linear ID the main difference seems to be the open nature of the world in BG. But most of the areas seem to be there for pure hack&slash, so while it was fun for a while, after an n-th area with story not budging an inch I began to wonder what I can skip not to handicap myself too much later on, and since there's no way to know (unless you spoil things with walkthroughs) it's quite a frustrating experience. At least in ID you always knew you were pushing the story forward with each dungeon level.

In short: I totally do not understand the opinion that ID = simple dungeon crawler, BG = story driven and more complex. It seem like they are about equal in both aspects, the only difference being the open world.

Meanwhile, based on reputation I thought I'll be comparing BG to Planescape more than ID. I was excited about the fact that you do not just create companions like in ID but they come with their own backstory... then realised it mostly amounts to a very basic quest and very short biography. The first disappointment came when I got my first companions and tried to talk with them... nope, not possible. A barbarian with a hamster friend? What a cool idea, I'd like to know more! But quickly I find out that all this relationship amounts to is just that it exists. No discovering Dak'kon's past. Or even Sulik from Fallout 2. Yeah, Fallout 2 came out same year as BG and Fallout 1 preceded it. Yet how extensive the dialogue trees were in Fallout, how complex the quests.

Don't get me wrong, I'm having some fun, but it's mostly some open world exploration + hack and slash type of fun with all the positives and negatives of the D&D Infinity Engine, not a pinnacle of RPG experience it's lauded to be, where combat, story, exploration, and role-play are all supposed to go hand in hand.

(I'll add a question: what can I skip if I want to focus on story, granted I play sub-optimal builds - loaded my warrior with some charisma and int/wis at the cost of other stats because I thought I'd be using such stats like I was in Planescape or Fallout when interacting with the world in a true-RPG manner - neither do I go the "reload till you get max possible HP on lvl-up" route, which feels to me like cheating or a design mistake)

Preconceptions are a terrible thing.

Personally, when comparing Baldur's Gate to another RPG of its time, I like to choose SaGa Frontier, which was released (in the US) earlier in the same year, yet is vastly different. In particular, I consider SaGa Frontier's gameplay mechanics to be more innovative and interesting than Baldur's Gate. Baldur's Gate is pretty conventional except for the use of real time with pause combat; SaGa Frontier may have had conventional Wizardry/JRPG style turn based combat, but it is otherwise unconventional. For example, here are some points of comparison:

Character growth: In Baldur's Gate, character growth is infrequent and scarce; you only level up less than 10 times during the course of the game, and your stats don't even change when you do. In SaGa Frontier, on the other hand, your stats are constantly increasing; assuming a 5 human party, a battle where nobody gets any stat gains afterwords is rather rare. Furthermore, SaGa Frontier lets you control stat growth by having it be influenced by your actions; this is in contrast to Baldur's Gate where you choose which weapon you want to specialize in beforehand. In summary, SaGa Frontier's character growth feels more fluid than Baldur's Gate's. I could also point out that, while Baldur's Gate only takes you up through about 4th level spells (in AD&D terms), SaGa Frontier has some powerful spells, including one spell (Overdrive) whose closest AD&D counterpart is Time Stop, a 9th level spell.

Races and classes: In Baldur's Gate, each character has a class, which is the primary factor determining a character's abilities. This means that, when creating a character, the character's abilities for the entire game are pretty much set in stone (except for the limited exception of dual-classing, but even that you need to plan for at character creation). There's also the choice of race, but the effects are rather minimal; some stat changes, some special characteristics, but nothing that drastically changes the way you play a character. SaGa Frontier's system is much more free-form; there are no classes. Want to make that character you just recruited into a mage? Just buy her some spells (maybe even get her the gift if you can) and have her start using them. Want to have her learn martial arts? Just start having her punch enemies until the lightbulb shows up, then use the new ability that she just learned (in the middle of battle!). Also, race in SaGa Frontier has a major impact on the character; characters of different races don't even grow the same way! (For example, robots (called "mechs" in the game) get all their stats from equipment.)

Setting and plot: Baldur's Gate has a single plot in a fairly typical medieval fantasy setting. SaGa Frontier has 7 different plots (albeit not all of them well-developed), each completely different. For example, there's Blue's quest, in which your task is to become the most powerful mage in the world (and to kill your twin). There's Red's quest, where you have a secret identity as a superhero. There's T260's quest, where you're a robot with a mission (and there are times you enter a computer's virtual world, something that you would never see in Baldur's Gate's setting), and of course, there's the supermodel Emilia. Also, SaGa Frontier even includes a lesbian relationship, something that is pretty much unheard of in video games of that time. By contrast, Baldur's Gate's setting plot, while more focused, feels more plain.

I should point out that SaGa Frontier *does* have its flaws (the game isn't what I would call balanced, for one), but despite them I find it to me more enjoyable than Baldur's Gate.

I'm not really having a beef with the game, I had quite a lot of fun. It's more about the legend surrounding it, game's reception is precisely my point. I'm not comparing it just to Planescape, I'm trying to situate it against Icewind Dale, Fallout1&2 and Planescape and others. It might sound academic but to me it's (insert Spock's voice here) fascinating.

It's fascinating how nobody labels BG a hack&slash game, yet it feels mostly like H&S in fact, with a few tidbits of something else thrown in here and there. I would say even Diablo 2 has about the same story:combat ratio (granted the story is much more generic, except for the Marius plotline mostly resolved through cinematics)

Although yes, regarding my personal fun with the game, having already sunk tens of hours into Baldur's Gate and the whole thing, while a lot of fun initially, becoming quite repetitive, the question is now, whether I want to complete it?Should I end my journey now and focus on other game now like KotoR 2, Witcher, Arcanum, or some Spiderweb ones.... Or should I continue but focus the main storyline. So these are the questions I'm struggling with.

If the game will consist of another 50 hours of managing my inventory and spells to 10 hours of actual discovery, exploration and story, then I will probably need to pass. If can see the BG story to its end faster than that, then I'll continue. After all, I want to check those other games too, and there's Pillars of Eternity and Wasteland 2 I haven't touched yet, and Tides of Numenera coming out right about now, new Mass Effect soon... Hm, thanks for recommendation.

I actually think a fixed class and stats is not necessary a bad thing, it encourages roleplay, and since it's taken from a RPG PnP system, that's exactly the reasoning why it is what it is. A youtuber MrBtongue had some interesting thoughts on it when comparing Fallout 1&2, where this concept really shined, to fallout 4, where it was all but abandoned in favor of an open system.

I don't have a problem with a focused storyline either, but with how huge the BG world is, it feels like 99% distraction 1% essence.

Now in comparison, in Fallout there's also a huge world, but each place is a story of it's own. In Icewind Dale on the other hand, each place is directly tied to the main storyline. You never stray from the path. Final Fantasy (7&8 being my experience) or Witcher 1 - a bit of both but the main plot is unfolding rather constantly unless you really want to fool around. And Diablo... Diablo was short at least and ended before the fighting got too boring (unless you want to replay on higher difficulties) :) And in case of Diablo 2, you progressed through the singular story arc at a very regular pace.

Yeah, it's all a question of pacing.

Way too much story and dialog in BG for it to be a hack and slash game. You can even avoid a lot of the fights through dialog as well.

If you do decide to play SaGa Frontier, one recommendation: If it is your first playthrough, do *not* choose Lute as your main character. Lute's scenario is perhaps too open; in fact it is so open that you can actually access Lute's final dungeon right away, and that dungeon is a point of no return (in other words, you can't go back out). Because SaGa Frontier scales normal enemy strength based (loosely) on the number of battles you've fought, you might not realize that you are near the end of the game until you reach the final battle and lose miserably.

Personally, I recommend Red, Emelia, or T260 if you want somebody with a strong story (though Emelia and T260 will occasionally get forced time to explore (in other words, to continue you must fight X normal battles, then return to a specific spot)). Riki also has a strong story, but I'm not sure if a new player will want to deal with monster growth. Asellus is interesting, but different; for the entire mid-game you basically wander around until the bosses find *you*. Blue makes what for other characters is a sidequest (gathering the magical gifts) into the main quest.

I could add one more thing: SaGa Frontier 2 is a very different game than SaGa Frontier; it takes place in a common magic (that is, almost everyone can use magic, and for the one character who can't, it's a major plot point) medieval setting, and the structure of the game is *completely* different. Whether you like one of the games does not necessarily have any bearing on whether you would like the other. (I happen to enjoy both, but not everyone does.)

I disagree, unless something dramatically changes after the 5th chapter. As of chapter 5 the total amount of text is the same or less than in Diablo 2, a standard hack & slash example. In Divine Divinity there was also a lot of dialogue and you could avoid a fight or two and there were some important dialogue choices (as opposed to Diablo 2), yet people still call it hack and slash.

I have exactly the opposite observation. I am playing IWD for the first time and 30 hours into the game and it does not have any dialog at all. It is pure hack and slash. And you are considering this to BG which had 12.000 pages of script?

In BG you can avoid most of the fights just by talking. I can name 50 quests. However, there was not even one single quest that you can do that in first IWD. You cant even go to where ever you want. You always have only one direction and one way of doing things. That is not the case in BG. There are almost always atleast 2 ways to solve every quest.

Yes there are voiced conversations but again in total they are much less than they are in BG series. They didnt even bother to give a story to town NPCs. They are just people who sell things. In BG even a guard has a story and character and with everyone you talk to, you can understand in what kind of universe you are living in. You understand how common people see things or how things work. In IWD all I heard from common folk is "dont touch me, evil is coming..."

I am not saying IWD is a worse game. I enjoyed it a lot since it suits my busy day life. I dont have to think what the hell I was doing last time. It is very casual. It is the Diablo 2 of infinity engine games.

Diablo doesn't even give you dialog options. You just click a topic and get 5-10 lines of information. In BG you can have actual conversations. Diablo doesn't have a fraction of the script BG has. As the other poster pointed out, it has a massive script. You can even solve quests simply by using the right conversation options.

Diablo is as far from BG as Mario Kart is from The Longest Journey.

It's all about perceptions, as I already said. You've made your mind up already, so make a decision and go with it.

It's fascinating how perspectives differ.

Diablo is a much shorter game so obviously it has a shorter script. However if you take the total time you spend reading text (assuming you read everything, including flavor stuff like gossip and the like) and divide it by the time takes you to finish the campaign you get similar values from what I've seen. Aren't you exaggerating a little? The game consists mostly of fights with random spawning monsters and quite a few predetermined groups put here and there. You can't talk to them, they attack you on sight. That's where most of your playtime goes. A few scripted events don't change that. It's funny, cause my impression is exactly that it isn't like you describe it in BG. I have yet to see a guard with a story and character. Hell, a named captain I met in Beregost in chapter 3 was basically reduced to being a vendor for bandit scalps.

Oh, and as far as the common folk go, it's pretty similar in BG: "iron has gone bad, Amn is gonna attack, brigands are everywhere". Now they added to that the fact that I liberated Nashkel mines. That isn't much.

Have you played BG relatively recently or are you relying on old memories? Or maybe a lot of stuff you're referring happens later on, I don't know. But then the pacing is the problem, if after so many hours I'm only getting there. It's not true. In the first area you can have quite an extensive conversation with the priest about his past. There's a quest that describes a story of a relationship between a siren (I think it was, some female creature) and a fisherman. Then on your way to Kuldahar you meet an ogre with a headache (and you have a choice what to do with him, although it's an exception), some goblins ransacking the mill (there's a small dialogue there)... I'm not saying it's more than BG but it feels similar to me. True when you enter the Valley of Shadows you have several dungeon levels of no dialogue (except some "go away, you're not welcome here" from an odd monster) but it also happens in BG all the time (Nashkel mines for example). I haven't met any vendors with stories in BG in Beregost or in Nashkel. In Kuldahar in IWD the potion vendor and the wizard are given some small ones. There was some story with the serving lady in the tavern I also remember and something with a ring in the guesthouse and there's gonna be some developments later on.... It's not much, but it's not nothing.
(and BTW in Diablo 2 literally every vendor has a backstory)

Again, not saying Diablo 2 or IWD is story-heavy, just that it's about the same. Hm, IMHO when it comes to difficulty of combat and all, it's the same fare as BG, if not more difficult (they throw huge numbers of mobs + magic users at you very fast and powerful items are much more scarce, there are almost no respawning mobs, so cash and xp is limited etc.).

To me, what you're saying is that Baldur's Gate is an open world game with some unlinearity. Whereas IWD is mostly linear. True, but an open-world game with choice doesn't mean it's not hack and slash. It doesn't make it story-driven. A story-driven game can also be perfectly linear. It's about how much time you spend interacting with the world and its characters as opposed to fighting hordes upon hordes of monsters.

Granted, again, if I focused on the main quest it might become more story-driven, I don't know, that's what I'm trying to find out and that's what I decided to do - focus on the main quest now. But the world around it, all the side-stuff - it's pretty basic filled mostly with killing monsters and getting loot.

I haven't entirely made up my mind. I'm not sure were the route of focusing on the main quest will take me. Maybe it's possible to skip most of the hack and slash? That would shift my perspective a bit, depending on how the main questline plays out further.

1. Diablo isn't much shorter at all. BG just has way more optional content. All the dialogue makes it feel longer too. Diablo has about 20 pages of monologues. BG has 12 000 pages of dialogue.

2. Those are random encounter monsters. In the towns and at other important locations you meet NPCs that will only attack you after dialogue (if you go for that solution). Some encounters can even be avoided based on which party members you have with you.

3. That vendor in Beregost still has way more to say than most of the Diablo NPCs, and the Diablo ones are main NPCs.

4. Duh. That is early on in the game. The people will discuss current events. Later on, when you have actually done more stuff, they will discuss those bits. It changes as the plot unfolds. Once you get to Baldur's Gate itself you get a myriad of topics. Different ones for each district in the city, really.And you get LOADS of information that fleshes out the earlier bits in the game too.

The pacing is good. If you keep wandering off into the wilderness for 30 hours, it will, of course, feel a bit off.

5. Of course every vendor in Diablo 2 has a backstory. There are only about 10 of them anyway. And the backstory is very very short. You can't even ask any in-depth questions. You basically just click an "information button" and the game just tells you stuff. No options or branches in the conversations at all.

6. Cash and XP is not limited in BG. Not at all. You just don't get loads of it right away. I think I ended up on 30k gold and nothing worthwile to spend it on, when I beat it last time.

Just because a game has combat doesn't make it hack and slash. Hack and slash games are all about killing stuff. BG is far, far from that.

I have finished BG1 2 times in 2016. One as BGT and one as BG1:EE. I never finished BG2.

I think BG2 might be a better fit for you than BG1. In BG2, your party NPCs have dialogue with you and with each other every so often, which does not occur in BG1 so much. It also has romances you can try. And there are a lot fewer wilderness areas to explore that don't have to do with any quests. There's still a lot of optional content, but overall I think the quests are more varied too.

The first half of Chapter 6 in BG1 is almost all dialogue and no fights as you return to Candlekeep and explore its library too, so I would continue your game, especially since you are getting fairly close to the end.