Small thing, but it was better in BG1!

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While the developers were concentrating on NPC interactivity and tons of quests (which will actually find you if you have not found them yet) etc. (I will not continue, Taluntain has perfectly described the truth in his post), they eliminated the good little things, the ideas which made BG1 so good.

 

For me the best thing about the BG series is the emotional invovlement with the characters. In BG1 Minsc got the odd smile, as did "Oh what's the point" Xan, but that was about it. In BG2 I acually laughed out loud during Minsc's unfinished business "where is boo?" quest, and i wanted to throttle Keldorn when he ruined my plans with the sculptor! I was genuinely sad when i couldn't find room for Haer'dal'is in my group and actually find it hard to be nasty to characters during conversation.

The single greatest thing i can find to say about BG2 is that i will definitley be replaying with a different party, something i couldn't say about BG1. The story and exploration were nice in BG1 but you could find nearly everything first time. In BG2 with banters, character quests etc. there is actually a reason to replay!

 

That is true, you have many quests in BG2, especially those who belong to NPCs who can join your party. So players will often replay it in order to play with new NPCs and thus quests. But I could not say that I cannot tell similar about BG1. There are many good quests there too (but far not so many as in BGII), and I like to replay BG1 only for its feeling, its specialty. But I am a BG1 fan anyway...

 

Ok ok, you may stop now. You've done it. I planned on going through IWD2 once I had finished IWD, but now I will throw in a game of BG1 (never played it with TuTu, but will try to do so). I guess I will never manage to beat all of them, there's still Torment and the Neverwinter saga ARGH!!!

 

I think the individual party quests were one of BG2's shining lights. Okay, there were a few in BG1 - Minsc rescuing Dynaheir, Edwin wanting to kill Dynaheir, a few others besides - but for the most part the NPCs were faceless entities who could have been replaced with different characters and you might never have noticed.

I kept Minsc around in BG2 from the start of SOA to the end of TOB because he was so damn hilarious; I didn't find Jan an especially useful character but I loved listening to his stupid stories so kept him around for that. In BG1, I tended to kick NPCs out of the party every time I came across a new one and never felt the same kind of ties to them that I felt in the second game. I remember Minsc dying in a particularly difficult fight in BG2 and I kept reloading from my last save because I didn't want to miss out on any of his dialogue in the space it would have taken me to get him to a temple and resurrected. Now *that's* what you call a memorable game.

So while BG1 might have a few nice features that BG2 doesn't, BG2 has so many other things that make up for it that it's hard to care at what *has* been missed out.

 

You mean I have turned all people to BG1-fans?!

 

some places in BG1 took quite a time to explore and they were almost empty, some creatures were quite tough for so little xp points...But I assume some things were made better, mainly because BGI was released as scheduled and BGII ahead of time.

 

I think it is sad that in BGII you just keep getting quests after quests after quests, you don't have the time to remember what you have to do, or what you just did.
In BGI, you can complete in a better way, not so chaotic.
Another thing, why did they didn't gave you the opportunity to play with all the characters from BG1?
I always complete BG1 with Jaheira, Khalid, Minsc, Imoen, Dynaheir and a Paladin.
But when you import the save game to BGII, Dynaheir and Khalid are lost, as well as many others. (Dsotsc not included)

 

"To each his own." (in Tal's post, by the way). This sentence is aptly proved by the the two posts above. The same thing from different aspects.

 

here are my thoughts, A. bg1 is 1000000X better then bg2, in bg1 you start as some little guy and work your way up in the world, one of your first fights you can do is vs a wolf, and their is actually a possibility of dying to 1 wolf even if youve accepted imoen in your group. also in bg1 the fights were 1000X times better also, and the spells seemed better when they were not as complex, one reason i hate time stop and stuff, and the one thing that made me absolutely hate bg2 compared to bg1, is that they went and changed my favorite spell, entangle! WHY DID THEY DO THIS, THIS SPELL WAS AWESOME, now it has to effect everyone so that i dont even wanna use it anymore, reminds me of web too much. anyways ill post more stuff later, its late, and i wanna read other peoples posts. this is ten minutes after i posted this, thought i should add something, i also hate the amount of exquisite rare items in bg2, in bg1 you had to really work for your items, and noone of your characters really had everything on them as some rare item with a history behind it unless you were soloing the game or took everything from everyone of your party members. i know that i always got 3 weapons at some point in bg1, the first id get was the gold electrical damaging hammer south and west of beregost from the guy who thinks that the skeletons are his relatives, then the sword from greywolf when he tries to kill prism, and lastly that sword spidersbane from the cloakwood areas, where you have to kill that fat arachnid looking thing and its army of other 8 legged freaks, what a fun battle that was with a few fireball spells, char broiled thats how i like em

[ February 24, 2004, 18:25: Message edited by: cadderly ]

 

Two Small things that I found annoying in BG after playing BG2
1. You cant multiple buy items in the shops so you have to click on the item you want click buy and repeat which is annoying if you want 10 healing potions or loads of arrows and bolts etc.
2. No bag of holding, scroll book (or perhaps I just haven't found them) for keeping all the scrolls, potions and letters you get through the game that tend to fill up you inventory.

 

I like BG2 because of the higher power and high-level abilities, and because you're finally respected for the power you hold. In BG1, EVERY LAST ENEMY taunts you with such blind arrogance and it is *so* annoying!

 

Once again, in Bg1, you are just developing your powers, you led a sheltered life, of course enemies are going to taunt you with blind arrogance, they have not yet heard of your past exploits, because you have no past exploits, and inventory wasn't as big a problem because their were not as many great magical items lying about that you just HAD to have.

 

Sintryst, don't you think it would be kind of strange if seasoned adventurers started showing oodles of respect to some kid straight out of Candlekeep that no one has even heard of?

In BG2 you're a force to be reckoned with: you saved the city of Baldur's Gate, averted a war and killed Sarevok. But even then, most enemies don't give a damn about you. In fact, it's not until a certain enemy in TOB that I've known anyone show you any kind of proper respect.

 

David w we are on the exact same wavelength with those 2 posts.

 

I actually quite like all of the taunting in BG, every enemy tells you that you will die by there sword and then you prove them wrong
It would be strange if enemies just came up to you and said "Your dead"

 

wish that was an option for dialogue for the main character, id say that to everyone i met, elminster included!

 

Has anyone managed (or bothered) to import the original Baldur's Gate paper dolls into BG2?

I honestly can't stand the dolls in BG2, to me they are the single most annoying part of the game. I want my Imoen-in-a-skintight-purple-...er...thing, damnnit!

 

The elvish/half-elvish paper dolls are quite possibly the worst thing in BG2. How could the publisher look at that and say, "Yup, that's the look I want." Ugh...absolutely terrible. They remind me of the dude who could shapechange on Star Trek-DS9, and trust me, that is not a kisser you want to see.

 

I'll take BGI over II anytime, if only for the wilderness areas which I sorely missed in BGII. In fact they just got a whole lot nicer with bgtutu.

I found Sarevok being a better badass endboss, without cheese he is a lot more difficult than jon.