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Went ahead and reinstalled BG1 and the expansion, and I'm having quite a bit of fun.  It's been so long that I've forgotten a lot of it, particularly regarding the later stages of the game.  Decided to play on the dark side, so I made a lawful evil fighter and recruited Xzar, Montaron, Shar-Teel, and Viconia.  I kept Imoen just because I want a thief besides Monty, and Safana is a pain in the ass to get in the early game.  If I do things like I believe I did years ago, I'll spec Monty for stealth and traps and use him as a scout and backstabber, while Imoen gets pickpocketing and lockpicking and does all the actual thieving.

If I go with a good party at some point, I don't know who I'll take.  Main character, Imoen, Branwen, Minsc, Dynaheir, and... someone.  Don't know.  Khalid and Jaheira both piss me off in the extreme, not taking either of them.

Anyway, what was your lineup when you played this?  Who's a good sixth member of the good party above?

I got the itch to play Baldur's Gate 2 again this week and I've discovered a wonderful variety of unstoppable crash bugs thanks to running it in XP.

I've tried pretty much everything including compatibility modes and all the solutions listed on Bioware's forums, and no go.

I always went good since the more evil party members were a pain in the ass to keep happy and some of them flat out suck (Xzar sucks ass IMO) compared to their good-guy counterparts. Jaheira and Khalid I keep around since Jaheira isn't too bad and won't stay without Khalid in the party.

When playing the good side Jaheira is actually quite useful. So I'd drop Branwen and take Jaheira and Khaleid.

Jahiera isn't nearly as good at healing as Branwen is, though they're both prone to complaining when you have max reputation (but don't actually Leave the party).

My first playthrough was: Main character Paladin, Khalid, Jahiera, Branwen, Imoen, Dynaheir. I had Minsc for awhile, but he got bugged or something and turned on me, so I killed him. I was still able to get Dynaheir though, who I think is the best mage in the game.

I had an aborted evil side run with: Main Character mage, Xzar, Montaron, Sharteel, Viconia....and I probably had Imoen for awhile, until I could get Safana.

This has almost inspired to me to reinstall Planescape, since I never finished it.

For some reason I never got into it.  Probably because I kept getting my party wiped out by that first asshole with the magic missiles.  Not fun.  I am sure it was my fault somehow, since everyone else loved this game.  I think it is actually installed on my machine, waiting for the day when I suddenly realize what my error was.

I spent most of the weekend playing Symphony of the Night.  We can't remember where the Alucard Shield is.

Go for the eyes, Boo!

I basically come up with an idea of what general classes I need in my party, then fill out those slots based on alignment and personality.  Edwin is the best mage in the game, in terms of intelligence and constitution, but Xzar is way more fun.

"I wanted infravision like the elves, but 'tis more than just taking their eyes.  Muahahaha."

One thing that pisses me off is the prevalnce of the Good Thief.  The game is positively packed with them, with a couple of neutrals here and there, and NO evil thieves except Montaron and Tiax, both of whom are split-classed.  Enough with the Robin Hood shit and the thieves who just "steal for the challenge" and just give me a dirty bastard who likes stealing for the money.

And Jaheira... no.  I just constantly want to punch her in the face.  I don't care how leet she is.  :-P

Chopped Imoen to bits and recruited Safana now that my party is a little more competent.  Nothing amps up the evilness like murdering your "little sister" so you can add a total slut to the party.  So now my party consists of...

My fighter, the sister-murdering prick who reacted to Gorion's death by shrugging and going off to have adventures
Shar-Teel, the man hating angry lesbian
Viconia, who can't stop screaming "THE LIGHT! IT BURNSSS!"
Montaron, the homicidal backstabbing midget
Safana, the skanky whore
Xzar, the raving lunatic necromancer who hints at being a cannibal

Screw powergaming, in terms of putting together a fun evil party, this is the perfect lineup.

Sometimes, I liked playing the IWD series more, if only because I had complete control over the makeup of my party. I had already discussed this in Eve, but I'll repost anyway.

Bard, Fighter, Dual Class Fighters -> Mage & Thief, Cleric, Paladin (to use the Paladin weapons that are always included somewhere).

I've given myself the peripheral goal of murdering all the potential party members who are either good guys or who just plain piss me off.  I used Algernon's Cloak to charm everyone in the Friendly Arm Inn, so I could kill Khalid and Jaheira without all hell breaking loose.  Khalid got gibbed.  I've whacked Minsc and Garrick as well.  I'll kill the rest as I meet them, though I may have to go out of my way to get to Dynaheir.

Think I'll save the encounter with Drizzt until I learn of some way to kill him too, so I can take all his leet shit.

"Tell us a story Monty, something with bears and gold."

I loved that game.

My last runthrough in BG2 was a badass paladin. I beelined for the paladin in the sewer (forget his name). It was a cool interaction and just great for the frontline. I gotta play more BG2.

Having a Githzerai in Planescape rocked my world in a geekster way, because we ran a few campaigns centered on Githyanki when I was a kid (we used Fiend Folio like crazy).

Drizzt may be nigh unkillable, especially because of the low level cap (level 8 or 9, depending on class).

But I would definately steal whichever weapon he has that flagged as "stealable."

You underestimate the appeal of phat lewtz and ingenuity of players who've had six years to figure out how to get them.  There are threads on other boards about how to solo Drizzt.  Think careful pre-positioning, crappy pathfinding, and a shitload of arrows or that magic axe that returns to your hand.

Yeah, bows were WAY overpowered in that game....I didn't use ranged weapons much though.

Yeah, I definitely killed Drizz't, but it's been so long I don't remember how.  And then the cockmunch has the effrontery to go and be alive again in the sequel, and be a bad sport about the whole thing.

Oh, and I considered it cheating on the part of the game to demand I return the little slug's stuff in the sequel as well.  I fired up an editor just to give myself the loot back after it got confiscated, just to thumb my nose at that BS.

Can you kill him in the sequel?

I loaned Shadows of Amn/Throne of Bhaal to a friend who's never returned it so I'm again hazy, but I think you can.  If my memory isn't faulty, it was my possession of Drizz'ts junk that pissed him off at me in the sequel.  Iif you kill him again, then in addition to pissing off the goody-goods like Jaheira if she's around, the game later sends a repo man around specifically to take the stuff away from you.

Or something like that.  Anyone remember for sure?

Boots of Speed (or something like that, it's been a loooong time) while the gnolls are pounding on him and a bow.  I killed him fairly early in the game for yelling at me for not helping him kill the gnolls.  I was like, "They're not even scratching you and you're getting all prissy that I won't act as your cannon fodder?  Screw you."

And it was definately solo.  I camped my party far away so he wouldn't wander by during the chase and shred them.

With a bunch of peeps stuffed full of ammo and firing away from the other side of the water, even relative newbs will eventually crit enough to bring him down.  Monty likes his new mithril armor, and my main character is owning asses with the +3 frostbrand.  Unfortunately the +5 defender can only be wielded by good-aligned characters, so I had to sell it.  What the hell, it paid for the temple donations needed to get my rep back up to a survivable level.  And the +2 longsword was freed up for Shar-Teel to use, so I'm still pretty well armed to the teeth.

Meanwhile I've put Xan to the sword, and I'm going out to kill Dynaheir next.  Edwin forced me to kill him, too.  I'd have just as soon given him a pass since he's one of the badguys, but whatever.  Think I'll go after Kivan next.

EDIT:  Also, as the commandant of Drowschwitz, it pleases me to no end to have punked Drizzt "Oh my God I'm so fucking leet!" Do'Urden with a level 4 fighter.  Eat that, you bitch.

LOL....WUA are you actually doing any of the story line or just on a murderous rampage?  :-D

I'm following the storyline intermittently, but basically I'm on a Terminator mission to take out everyone who pisses me off, which is almost everyone.  Like Kagain can live, and Edwin could have if he hadn't felt like attacking me, because those are guys who I'd have put in the party if I didn't like Shar-Teel and Xzar slightly better.

But Minsc?  I just don't find his act as amusing as the rest of the world apparently did.  "Go for the eyes, Boo!  Go for the... BLARGH!" followed by a shower of gibs was intensely satisfying.  Jaheira was a cunt and Khalid was a weenie, charming Bentley Mirrorshade and making him help me gank them was a hoot.  Oh, and Imoen.  "Puffguts would always tell me a story!"  The fuck?  You look like you're about 23 years old, stop talking like that.  Better yet, just die.

And anyone who can click on Xan three times in a row and not want to murder him is some sort of robot.

I wish I could kill Elminster, but whereas Drizzt is just a really powerful character who still plays by the rules, Elminster apparently isn't even theoretically vulnerable.  Pity, I bet he has phat lewt.

Wow for being such a huge long time D&D fan Ive never actually played BG.
Would you recommend I try both BG and BG2? or just 2 or what? I also didnt know there were such notable figures in the game.

Having given up on DDO I loaded NWN back into the ole HD but having only a 2 person party is boring the hell out of me.

Also did you play ToEE (Temple of Elemental Evil)? If so how would you compare it to BG/BG2?

My question being...is it worth buying for me? and if so should I buy both or just #2?

Both, they're worth it and you're character transfers.

Yeah, eminently worth it even after all these years.  In BG1, Elminster turns up a handful of times to blather at you cryptically and then vanish.  I'm always rude as hell to him.  Drizzt shows up exactly once for a cameo and is then never seen again, but if you can whack him at the time the loot is well worth it.  I guess he and the whole Salvatore crew turn up in BG2, and if you splatter them you have to either exploit a bug or outright download a mod to be able to keep all their loot.

Think of it as "outwitting crappy DM plot railroading" instead :)

Edit: to point out that running roughshod over your DM's plot NPCs is a fine, time-honored D&D tradition.  Nay, virtually a requirement, even.

Along with Planescape: Torment and the Icewind Dale series, the Baldur's Gate saga is one of THE examples of what a great PC RPG is. It may be a bit rough around the edges by today's standards (especially the low res in BG1 and that damn border, like damn), but I think they gameplay can still stand on its own.

I remember pickpocketing him one time for the hell of it, and turning up with some sword of pwnage for a while.

Good times.  Damn, you guys make me want to play that really bad, never did finish BG2.

EDIT: I def. agree with Strazos on that one.  I wish that there was an easy way to just update the graphics in those games.  I'd buy them for $29.99 a piece if the graphics were sexy.

They let you mess with the UI in BG2...I wish someone would go back and do it for BG1...also, IWD.

I picked up IWD1/2 a bit late and never could get into them just because of the gfx.

Shame on me and my whoreness.

Well, here's a shot I had posted somewhere years ago. I think it looks alright. The UI can be obtrusive, but I can live with it. (Note: I generally left the text box big so I could see things. It goes smaller)

(http://users.rowan.edu/~astill71/pics/IWDstarfish.jpg)


Also, I really wish some of these games would make Battle Modes, or something, where I could pit my party against yours. Kind of like in FFTA (I guess, never tried ii).

I think I speak for everyone when I say:

Shannon Elizabeth?

Lot's of games from yesteryear are great, just some updated graphics is all they need. Someday when I'm rich I'll finance remakes of tons of old games.

If you haven't played these games before, it's worth it to just suck it up and deal with the crappy little sprite graphics.  They're artfully drawn crappy little sprites, and the gameplay is simply unparalleled.  I love the way your party members occasionally bicker with each other or remark upon their surroundings.  I select my crew based as much upon personality as anything else.

Anyway, Dynaheir and Ajantis have both tasted poor murdered Drizzt's sword, bringing my tally of slaughtered good guys up to nine.  I'll go deal with Kivan, and then I'll start getting to the point where my recollection fails me.  I know I have to go waste a bunch of bandits in the woods, and drown a bunch of miners, but once I get to Baldur's Gate itself, I'm lost.

lolz

I always feel the need to have a good mix of genders in my parties....and you have to name them Something, so I figure I might as well give them names I like. Cori Nadine, Shannon Elizabeth, and Jeri Ryan. The guys were Strazos, Tizor (I think), and Perinod Von'Suvar.

Edit: Damn quote function.

A fitness model, American Pie actress and 7 of 9...ok.

I guess I can't make fun because I know who all three are without having to look them up.

So did anyone play ToEE (Temple of Elemental Evil), which was bugged all to hell on release?
If so how does BG/BG2 compare?

Favourably

I still say the Engine on ToEE was the fucking business.

It's the ONLY proper port of D&D that I've really seen.

That said, they chose the wrong module to code and the bugs were quite literally on par with KOTOR 2.  As in a totally fucking unfinished game.

Oh it was horrible. Depending on what class you chose to start with the game would crash out in the first 5-20 mins.

The bugs were too abundant, the story was kind of meh, it was too short and streamlined (no great incentive to explore). Only the battles were better.

I don't know about it being the only proper port. I still have a soft spot for the gold box titles.

Any system that can handle tumbling, dual weilding, attacks of opportunity and all the rest of that old/cool shit (delete as appropriate) gets the thumbs up in my book.

The combat engine was the total biz.  Further, having mages able to actually scribe scrolls from the outset meant that it was no longer 1 magic missile and that's you through with fighting unless you brought your crossbow.

Coup De Grace after a failed throw against sleep ?  I'm loving it.

Dunno about BG2, but I've never been able to crash BG1 on my system.  Not even when I was running around with an uber-hacked character, teleporting into places three chapters early and insta-killing major characters.

EDIT:  ToEE may have all that fancy stuff, but BG has giblets!  I don't know how hitting someone really hard with a sword makes them detonate in a shower of bloody chunks, but it's pure awesome.

Hey, please don't mistake anything I say as anything other than PURE 100% UNCUT LOVE for the Baldurs Gate series.  Hell, I'll even shower Icewind Dale with liberal amounts of Jizz.  Though Icewind Dale 2 was, in fact, the exact same game and I've no idea how they got away with that one...

Easy, its an honored tradition. There are many RPG series where the sequel is just the same game with a different story. Hell, I don't think SSI ever changed their engine all the way from Pool of Radiance to Treasures of the Savage Frontier.

Well, yeah, I get that.  But IWD2 was THE EXACT SAME.  Even down to the dungeons, monsters, bosses and whatnot.  It was like '20 years have passed but mysteriously a band of adventurers find themselves doing the exact same shit as last time, except with Sorcerors.............scroll screen'.

Um.

I had installed the Circle of Eight mods to fix all the crashses on ToEE.  It is great, plus they had editors if you wanted to buy low level stuff and equip your party.

Linkage:  http://www.ataricommunity.com/forums/showthread.php?t=501212

So in IWD, the party is all player-made characters, right?  Do they talk at all, BG-style, or are they like Dungeon Siege's personality-free battledrones?

Battledrones.  But the game is pretty much just a straight battle-to-battle, story-lite dungeon romp.

If I get the urge to play a dungeon-crawling killfest, is there a compelling reason I should bargain-bin IWD and not just throw in Diablo 2?  Curious.

Anyway...


If you mean that first asshole waiting to kill you at the steps of the Friendly Arm, yeah, he's a bitch.  One nice thing about playing an evil party was that I already had six well-armed characters by the time I got there, and that guy died in a hurry.  If it's just you and Imoen, though, it can be tough.

What you do is have one of your characters stand down in the courtyard where a bunch of guards are walking around.  Then you send the other up to the steps, and as soon as you hear the "Hi friend!" that tells you he's going to approach, you have them run back down to where the first character is.  Once he walks over, completes his dialogue, and attacks, have Imoen hit him with her magic missile wand to burn through his mirror images and/or disrupt his spells, while any guards in the area also aggro on the guy and pelt him with arrows.  Quick-save is your friend.

You'll be ambushed by assassins repeatedly throughout the game, but once you have a few well-armed party members, most of them are pretty easy and have nice loot.

More tactical oriented battles? A six character hand-crafted team of eventual badasses?  Love of hasted, dual wielding warriors tearing through a group of lizard men?

The combat experience presented by both games is rather different.  Sometimes you just want epic BG/BG2 quality battles (there's some really cool fights in IWD/IWD2) and none of that bothersome plot (ok, there's some plot, but that's not what you play the game for).

I play most of these style of games "backwards".  That is, I start with a full custom party, or I perhaps leave a slot open to temporarily pick up characters if they're required for the plotline.  None of this wandering around finding the people I need.  I save that for a second run-through to get the flavor.

And weapons.  Some nice equipment in that game, some of which was totally random drops.

The D&D combat system annoys the shit outta me, particularly at lower levels.  Too much "enemy misses five times in a row, ruins your shit on the sixth" and "save vs pwnage failed, instant death" bumfuckery.

QFT

Though some of the really high-end mage battles in BG/BG2, particularly with the Throne of Bhaal , were really irksome. You had to chew through a LOT of spell defenses. If you didn't have the right spells at your disposal at that moment, you were screwed.

Spells? What're those? 

Bhaalspawn-SMASH

Fair enough. But if you are basing your game on D&D, shouldn't you be as faithful as you can to the source material? If you don't like D&D, playing a D&D game and not liking seems like a self-fulfilling prophesy.

I generally like D&D games, at least the ones I've played.  I just don't like the fact that the primary goal in the original design of the combat system was keeping it simple enough to be operated by one guy behind a cardboard screen with a handful of dice.  Go ahead and give me the "source material" in terms of characters, settings, and story.  But THAC0 and all that crap?  That isn't "source material" that's mechanics, feel free to rip it out and replace it with something better now that it's being run by my PC and not Larry the DM.

Then it just becomes "Generic Fantasy Game X" with some proprietary settings. The entire game is based around the combat system; the rest of it is just filler.

I don't know about anyone else, but I enjoy BG for the story, the characters, the interactions, and the branching conversations.  Maybe you just really like seeing musty 1970's tabletop game mechanics played out with 1990's sprites, I dunno.

Agreed. I kind of touched on this in the NWN2 thread (http://forums.f13.net/index.php?topic=6965.msg187221#msg187221).

Using the D&D battle system is easier than making up something new to govern how things work in your game world.

There, I said it.

There is something beaetiful about a game built around a 5% increment. Imagine if EQ-type games had spectacular failures/crits 10% of the time? People would hate it and love it.

I keep checking back in this thread in the vain hope of someone finding some magical patch to make BG2 work on my PC again.

I check back hoping for a derail.

I don't understand why it Doesn't work.

Does it work for others of you on XP?

BG1 does. The main menu had some messy graphics, but the actual game worked fine.

BG1 works flawlessly on my XP system, it's 2 I'm curious about, because I want it bad.

For me the game crashes whenever I equip a two-handed weapon for some reason. The crash fixes thread on Bioware's forums says to disable 3d Accelleration and run the game a the same resolution your desktop is set to. I've done both of those things, it doesn't help.

I've tried running the game in 95, 98, and Win2k compatibility modes as well. No dice.

That is...weird.

I dunno why, but I never have compatibility problems.

Worked all right for me, as I recall, for the most part, though there were a few glitches (Jaheira's romance plotline was terminally bugged, I think, and some other occasional random glitches which made for a huge list of backup save games).  It was glitchy, but playable.  I think I just saw a collector's edition on the shelves at EBGames last week; I ought to pick that up and see if it works better.


As a side note, has anyone ever noticed this helping anything?  Every game I've had win95/XP compatibility issues with (Shadow Watch, Battlezone 2, Slave Zero, probably a few others) I've tried this, and it has never done a thing.

There is a mod effort called BGTuTu that ports BG1 into BG2, basically.  You play the BG1 story in the BG2 program, so you get all the goodies that BG2 added to the interface and such (BAG OF HOLDING).  I've never tried it, but I keep 'meaning to'.  Knowing me, I'll get around to it sometime around winter....2025.

The one reason I never managed to solo my way through BG1 was because I didn't have enough inventory space to carry my phat lewt.  When I have 3 billion kobolds to kill and each one of them drops a bow, and I NEED the gold from selling those bows, I am not running back and forth to town every 10 kills or so.

OCD

I beat BG2 with one mage who cast Haste 99% of the time and the resistance stripping spells for Kangaxx and the like.  Every enemy could be beaten by casting haste and having everyone else run up and hit them.   

Unless they have, I dunno, Immunity to Magical Weapons on.

Here is a great source for mods, fixes, editors, and cheats, and has a good message board.

http://www.tgeweb.com/ironworks/baldursgate2/index.shtml

If I remember, the lich and other immune creatures could be damaged with +4 or better weapons.  That is one of the ways to beat those bad monsters.

They were only resistant....there were actual defensive spells which made the user Immune to Magical Weapons.

Derail, dammit.