General Impression

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Yesterday, I posted that the main story sucks, which is true IMO, but it doesn't change my general impression of the game: it is great.

I'm sure it has been discussed at length, but if I compare BG2 to BG1, I find that BG2 is even better than BG1 (which I really like very much), far more addictive, with more atmosphere.

It is simple, but the raised rate of walking of chars, the far better pathfinding, the added quick weapons do much to it. Also, wizards are very powerful here!
The pause allowed during battle is not so good.
The story is less linear on the whole, but once you go for Imoen...
There are some battles more impressive than in BG1. It is longer, it is... it is...
I stop here, it's fantastic.

 

In what way does the story suck? Sure, it wasn't particuly good in some places, but it wasn't downright terrible.

 

Why is the pause option "not so good"? With an up to six player party, controlling everyone, there's no chance that you can give everyone orders every round without pausing. It's not logical that characters just stand around doing nothing in a battle, just because they aint got no orders. If you don't play round-based, then the pause is quite indeedly neccesary.. imo

 

And where is this amazing story I keep on hearing about in Baldur's Gate. It has a nice generic story, that fleshes out at the end (Granted I like the game, enspecially since I installed BGT) but its story and dialouge and character interactions all are lacking in my opinion to the much higher quality story and writing that is found in BG2

 

To be fair, I think playing BG2 first diminishes the BG1 story. The first time I played through BG1 there were a lot of twists and surprises and a general feeling of "why is this happening?" Since the events of BG1 is explained to you at the beginning of BG2, you lose a lot of the intrigue that differentiates the BG1 core story.

The lack of NPC interactions, though, hurts BG1 quite a bit. I'm eagerly awaiting the BG1 NPC banter project to finish.

 

Sorry, I wasn't clear about the pause: I wanted to say you can fiddle in your inventory while the game is paused, even during battles, I prefered the BG1 rule.
I explain why the story sucks in this post: you think that Jon really can unleash your potential, or something, not that he's just going to steal your soul and kick you, not caring about you anymore. You think he wants to make something of YOU, not only of him. That it would be a trick seems too big to me.
I never said the BG1 story was better! (But at least it's more logical)
Let me repeat that in all other areas, BG2 is superior, which is not so bad for a follow-up.

 

We're making pretty good progress with the BG1 NPC project, but we're still not going to state a release date.

It'll be worth playing through BG1 again once this comes out, trust me on that.