Morrowind

I haven´t been able to post the message in one go. I had to use some magic fu to post everything one piece of the message after the other.



I´m affraid you are mixing things.

And yes, there are few interactions between party members in Baldur´s Gate 1. But take into account that these games are old. It is in Baldur´s Gate 2 where banters between party members was implemented. And yes, some of the characters had some importance in the story. But none of the characters were a must have, really.


Well, yes and no. There are certain protection and offensive spells that no matter which high level monster or wizard you had to face, were very important due to their versatility (but never mandatory). And yes, certain enemies require certain kind of spells too (not really, if you have played the game a few times and you know what you are doing). But I don´t really see the problem.
You are talking as if Baldur´s Gate 2 were the only game in which certain combats against certain bosses needed to be played more than once. You can know what the enemies do, just by reading the combat/dialog board in which everything is detailed: the spells that are cast by everybody during the combat, their effects, who is attaking who... Although for this to be activated, the player has to activate it in the options menu because I think it was not by default.

Combats are not that complicated. Not as much as you seem to believe. HIgh level enemies or wizards always use protection spells. The same way you would do. Yes, the enemies, overall, use the same spells you have available as a player. So, start the combat by erasing the enemies´ protection spells. It´s only logical, isn´t it?

In my opinion, the combat system in the Baldur´s Gate saga is far superior to the one in the Diablo games. The ammount of options, personalization and versatility is waaaay superior. But of course, one has to think about what´s happening during the game and during the combat.

Don´t get me wrong, I like Diablo 2 and of the likes like Titan Quest, a lot. But these kind of games don´t require to think much. Very different games in that regard.

what? durlag's tower is the best thing about bg1

I disagree very much, although it was fun. The town and the island though...

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I have the opposite experience with it.

In turn-based combat, there's a nice rhythm going on. You enter your commands, then they are executed, along with the enemies performing their actions. Furthermore, there's no risk of the combat "running away" so to speak; you're guaranteed to get back control (barring situations like your entire party being put to sleep).

This is not the case in real-time-with-pause combat; the pauses are irregular, causing the rhythm to be lost (and you don't get the fluidity that real-time combat brings). Plus, there's the issue that things could go out of control, at which point you're scrambling to press the pause button before something terrible happens (and it may be a situation that the auto-pause settings don't account for).

Also, one problem with the system used in the Infinity Engine games is what I could call "normal attack bias"; it is significantly much more work to perform any action other than movement (which suffers from being controlled by a pathfinding algorithm rather than being fully under player control) and normal attacks. In particular, if you like casting spells a lot, doing so is significantly more tedious than just using normal attacks all the time, and that discourages the use of spells and other special attacks.

I'd rather select commands for the beginning at each turn than have things run automatically until something happens.

By the way, my favorite RPG from this time period might actually be SaGa Frontier, even though it suffers from the issues of pre-rendered backgrounds, the game being made at a time Square did not care about game balance, and the game turning into an action game when you don't want to fight enemies.

The problem, though, is that things can go too fast, and it can be a pain scrolling up to read messages that you missed (not to mention that the combat log is only *2 lines* by default; what were they thinking there?). There are some other issues that come up in the Infinity Engine games specifically:
* Sometimes it can take time between when the action is performed and when it is executed. You might have a character die and have to scroll upwards quite a ways to find the Finger of Death cast that killed them. (I remember a video where this happened, except that it was the dragon boss that was the victim.)
* If the game over condition is triggered (in BG1 and BG2, this happens when the main character dies, for example), the combat log is not accessible. Hence, you can't check the log to see how your character died.

I prefer BG1. First I much more enjoy the feeling of a travelling and adventuring party to lead and I prefer the tactical combat over hack and slash. Secondly the game world: There is such an interesting and believable world to explore, so many secrets to discover, lore to digest, lovely places to visit. It actually feels like a real world to me: In Diablo (which I really liked when younger) you have battles around every corner, in BG1 there are many battles, but also many situations where you simply explore peaceful parts of the Sword Coast. The whole world is set up in parts, but they fit together so it gives me almost an impression of being an "openworld" RPG. It's a world with character and not randomized (which may limit replayability for some, but makes the experience more consistent).
I also strongly prefer BG1 to BG2 by the way: BG2 throws epic quests at you at every place you visit, in BG1 you have one great quest and many smaller quests, many of them quite menial (for example saving a cow from attacking Xvarts!). Additionally BG2 doesn't continue the concept of a "openworld" and replaces it with some kind of a "sightseeing tour" in the southern Sword Coast where you hop from one location to another instead of exploring. I also found BG1 to be not only more believable but also much less stressful than BG2 (I finished part 1 at least a dozen times, part 2 only 2-3 times).

I like both the Baldur's Gate series and Diablo 2, but I prefer, by far, Baldur's Gate. I never played Diablo 1 and I'm reluctant to try it nowadays, I've seen some "let's play" videos and I don't think I would enjoy it.

That's how it works also with Infinity engine RPGs, as long as you have optimized the autopause settings a bit. Then you really don't have to use the manual pause (with spacebar) at all; the combat pauses whenever something happens that needs your attention.

Or at least it is very rare you need to pause manually. I can think only one such thing, like you notice that your weapon is not doing much of damage to the enemy, and want to change it to something that works better.

You can make them regular by enabling "autopause when a round is over", and disabling all the other autopause options. Then the combat will pause whenever the round is over, and nowhere else. Regular, right?

I personally don't like that, even if it is regular. I like it more that the "turns" and "rounds" are blurred, and instead the combat autopauses when something interesting actually happens that might need my attention (like an enemy was killed so I might want to choose the next target for my party members (instead of letting the game autoselect another target), or a ranged weapon has ran out of ammo so I want to maybe change to another weapon, or one of my party members reaches critical condition so I might want to heal him next round, or my scout sees an enemy, etc. etc.).

I find the whole "rounds" and "turns" irrelevant and kinda fake anyway, so I don't see why I'd want the game to pause after each "round" or "turn" anyway, if I'd just click skip at that point anyway. Also, turn-based combat games tend to have too much irrelevant micromanagement anyway.

That like never happens, as long as the autopause settings are set correctly.

It is all your fault Geralt :D First time in my life to play Diablo, I will kill all demons I guess ^
note to self: remember not to drink blood of every demon I met down there ; )

Played both, liked both, noticed the ingenuity and unique style behind both, yet i 've always preferred diablo. Strictly talking about 1 + 2. Diablo 3 = Grim Dawn in my books

D3 is awesome once RoS is installed.
I prefer D2 over D3 though.

Grim Dawn's really good too.

I would not say that D3 equals Grim Dawn. Grim Dawn is a lot more complex looking at builds you can come up with than Diablo 3. Grim Dawn is the next step of Titan's Quest's system and in my opinion not really influenced by Diablo 3.

To the OP: Hard to say, depends on what sort of game I want to play. So I would not say, that I prefer one more than the other, but like both.

Aye, Grim Dawn is really good! And 90% of people approve: D2 >>> D3! About Diablo 3 though, RoS or no RoS, i wouldn't touch it, even if they gifted it to me for free!

No no no no no, you got it wrong! I HATE diablo 3 and do not even consider it a game, worthy of that title.

I LOVE grim dawn and both its atmosphere and artwork, as well as complexity and fun, reminds me of diablo 3, or rather, what the latter *should had been*! Sorry for the misunderstanding, i should choose more apt wording.

Yep, I'd also take both Grim Dawn and Titan Quest: Gold/Anniversary over D3 with ROS.

Yeah but grim dawn is also pretty crappy in it's own way.
Like how every character basically has to start from the position of being a kitchen sink type to be any kind of useful.
How the creators just simply don't like single damage type stacking, or ranged by their principles and mechanics.

What made d2 great is firing at things off screen, & the unlimited feeling of teleportation and stacking cold on blizzard.
Would grim dawn the largely solo adventure 'really' be hurt if they suffered stunning?
Fact is they kind of designed around the hardcore minmaxers especially evidenced in the malmouth expansion targeting the popular builds at that time; and it's to the regressive demise of character diversity.
Don't get me wrong you get a lot of choices; they just don't mean much when every character is forced to really play multi AOE elementalist tanks instead of being op in their own unique way.
Oh and I hate the magic item system being random sets instead of truly random values (the scholar prefix adding lets say mana & spell absorb %; instead of those values being independent and being able to be rolled with something better for your build [noticeable with corrupted aether ray builds]).

Diablo 1 i think is the better choice of the 2 options; i keep trying to get into BG, but travelling round aimlessly in dnd setting isn't really that good for my interest.