I really liked BG1, but BG3 seems to have jerk characters.

Which game would I like if I enjoyed BG1 (haven't played BG2 yet but it feels way more dark)? I know about POE and Kingmaker, but I'm not sure about them, as I didn't like POE's storyline (I had the ending spoiled), and I heard that Kingmaker is not as coherent or something - but I'm willing to give it a try, so I'm asking for advice.

I'm looking for: a) fun exploration, you play as a good hero (so no Tyranny)

b) puzzles and secrets are always welcome

c) fun characters that aren't jerks to you, like most characters in BG3 (both female characters that are out so far - how surprising, and partially Astarion from what I've seen).

Fallout 1/2, Planescape: Torment, Arcanum, Jagged Alliance 2, Ultima 7, Wizardry 8, Anachronox

Thanks for the tips everyone! I think I probably should've mentioned the games I played, hehe!

I've played VTMB, but you play the game solo, same goes for Deus Ex, they don't have any companions. They're great games but not the style of game I want to try now (BG1-style).

DAO and KOTOR fit though, I played the second game and got bored of the first level (the ship), it felt like too much grinding/killing enemies - is the beginning of the first game less tedious? Why do you recommend to play KOTOR2 with mods though, how much does it improve the game? Is there any party banter in JA2, Ultima 7 and Wizardry 8? I thought U7 and W8 have user-created characters without backgrounds/party chat, unlike the other games you mention.

JA2 has shitload megatons of banter and basically lives off it (and there's only 1 user-created char). There's even romance/hatred between mercs, in its way actually more elegant and engaging than BG1/2 have it
W8 was made by the same studio and also has tons of banter - humorous and ironic. Cue anthropomorphic wolf(or was it cat?)-like looking samurai citing poetry of his own on various occasions (including dying)

Wizardry 8 lets you choose a personality for each character, each with different lines for different situations. (My favorite line is "I just don't feel like it right now", which the specific character says if you try to perform an invalid action, like casting an offensive spell outside of combat, or one the character doesn't have enough SP to cast.)

Ultima 7 doesn't have you create your party; all you choose is the main character's gender. With that said, unlike many other people I don't like this game because the combat is horrible, and the game makes things like feeding your characters annoying.

That sounds really great!
I've heard that Wiz8 is a great game but I didn't know it's so great regarding the party banter! Which reminds me, Realms of Arkania occasionally has party banter or comments, but it's more like any party will make the comments (you create all characters), it might decide to choose one or the other to say the line based on the class though. Wonderful, I really like the sound of that! Have you played Kingmaker and POE btw? How do you like it?

Unfortunately, I can't tell which part of my post you're replying to because you deleted my text in your quote of my post.

I haven't played either POE or Kingmaker, mainly because they're real-time-with-pause and I happen not to like that style of gameplay. (Corollary: I don't like either BG1 or BG2 for this reason.)

I'm currently playing Wasteland 1, which doesn't quite have what you're looking for (there really isn't any party banter); I suspect that Wasteland 2 and 3 might, but I'm not as interested in them because they took away the ability to improve skills by usage. (One other thing: Wasteland is pure post-apocalyptic sci-fi; guns are common weapons in the setting, magic doesn't exist, and there's no way to revive dead characters (barring a glitch in the first game that can only be done once per playthrough); it is *not* fantasy like the other games mentioned in this topic.) I'm pretty sure characters don't say anything when they die. However:
* Somebody else in the party may say something when there's a death in the party.
* A character who is resurrected will say something.

One other interesting detail, though one that you don't see that often, happens when a silenced character is supposed to speak; it will sound like they're muffled but trying to say something.

(Also, Wizardry 8 has captions for every spoken line, except for the intro and ending cutscenes.)

I was responding to your W8 recommedation, since the other part was more negative and I assumed you wouldn't think I think it's great you think it's not such a good game. :D

Yeah, I know about Wasteland. It's a pity you don't like BG, I really like it! I know the majority of old classics, like the other Infinity Engine games and most of the games that were mentioned, so I was looking for something I might have overlooked, since BG3 has really weird storywriting - like the Loviatar bit at the end. I prefer different style of storytelling, more like those from 2000s or Hero-U. And good, likeable main characters. Not jerks.

I love games with skill systems, but so far I don't feel that drawn towards Wasteland. Personally I'm a fan of RtP, but maybe you'll enjoy BG3 then - how are you liking it so far? There are some things I like, but I feel like (from seeign LPs), that they overdid it with the various skill checks and often they give you really hard sequences of checks, that one character usually would be hard to make - eg. succeeding at an Int check gives you an immediate Game Over unless you succeed a Wisdom check, which many character who did the Int check wouldn't make it, as most chars with high Int who would pass the first check (like Wizards) wouldn't have high enough Wisdom to pass it...so it's like the choice is there to screw you over. And I read that later on you have more unrelated/hard checks, and some say teh RNG seemed really skewed. I prefer POE's and BG's RNG/choice checks, those seem more fun to me. Or having checks (in addition to rolling), where a stat minimum would give you an automatic success, in order to prevent save scumming.

I don't think I have a machine that can handle it. I know that my laptop wouldn't even meet the ludicrous disk space requirement, even if I were to remove everything (even the OS!) from the internal storage. There's also the fact that the OS I use isn't supported by the game, so it would be too risky of an investment. The problem with this is that, in games where stats are hard or impossible to increase, a stat minimum can mean that you can *never* get past a certain point, and that is determined on character creation. I actually don't like how the 3e and 3.5e based games have stat minimums for casting spells; the result is that characters may discover much later that they can't use higher level spells, and this can be quite frustrating since it's not something you can fix without starting a new character from level 1. (Remember that not every player will be familiar with the game mechanics; not everyone is familiar with the rules of the tabletop game.) 2e's dual classing, as seen in BG1 and BG2 (and IWD1, and some of SSI's Gold Box games) has a similar issue; if you didn't think to start with the right stats, you can *never* do the dual class you want to do.

I have a qualified love of skill systems; the qualification being that the system must not make it harder for one skill to increase simply because you've already invested in a different skill.

In particular, I don't like the skill point system that's become way too prevalent in RPGs. Typically, each skill level takes the same amount of skill points, and you get a certain number of skill points at each level up. The problem is that skill points get harder to get later on, as higher levels (usually) require more XP (or you get less XP from the same tasks later on, or some games have finite XP); this makes it harder to develop a new skill later in the game. In particular, this means that you can't play with a skill you've been ignoring for most of the game without having to start over, and it can also be an issue in sufficiently challenging games where you can't continue because of a bad build, and the game doesn't allow you to fix it.

As for what I *do* like, that would include games where skills can improve by use, like in:
* Wasteland 1 (skill points only needed to learn the skill in the first place, but note that you need to choose between skill points or raising non-IQ stats at level up)
* Wizardry 8 (a few skill points at level up, but skills can improve by using them; Wizardry 6 and 7 did this to some extent, but only for some skills and not others)
* Final Fantasy 2 (no XP/levels at all; skils improve by using them, with stat growth also based off your actions)

Also, a system where skill points are earned separately from experience without limit, and higher skill levels cost more skill points to get, would also work well for me. (Final Fantasy 5 does this with its job levels, and later FF games adopt mechanics of this type for learning new abilities.)

Alternatively, a no-cost respec option would also help with the issues that skill point systems have.

Kingmaker has been patched to include turnbased combat (it could be modded in before that)

Out of curiosity, how were they able to mod in turn-based combat before the patch?

That's because BG3 is made by Larian Studios, who seem to like the genre of cRPG, but I kinda feel that they've never really understood it.

Their characters are consistently obnoxious, self-centered, superficial and unlikable and their stories and personalities seem to seriously lack in depth, or at least that’s my experience with their products.

It really is a shame that they bought the Baldur's title.

My favorite isometric RPGs are:
1. Torment
2. Dragon Age: Origins
3. The Neverwinter Nights series.

I'd suggest giving Dragons Dogma a try but be warned, its not a short story