Author Topic: Impressions of Baldur's Gate and Tutu  (Read 2231 times)

Offline Soltaris

  • Planewalker
  • *****
  • Posts: 13
Impressions of Baldur's Gate and Tutu
« on: September 29, 2004, 03:05:07 PM »
I just made it into the city of BG last night so I think I'm 90% done with the game looking at the map.  Here's a couple observations I thought I'd share.

* The tips at the bottom of the screen are awesome and really helped me out.  One of the items I liked in particular was the one about starting a multiplayer game so you can have more of your own rolled characters in the group.  I created a paladin inquisitor, a ranger archer, a thief swashbuckler, a sorcerer, and a cleric.  I'm thinking after getting to level 10 with my swashbuckler I might dual him in SOA to a mage (I used to play AD&D so I planned ahead and put 17 into int).

* Being able to use the broader character creation choices of BGII is awesome!  I'm loving every one of my characters (with exception to my cleric which is mostly just used for healing), and I'm especially impressed with the performance of my archer.  He almost always hits for big damage and is especially nasty against mages and other archers.

* The game does crash to desktop once in a while.  I'm pretty sure that has to do with the BGII game engine.  One time it even corrupted my quicksave and set me back about 3-4 hours of play.

* As for playing BG1 content I think it's awesome overall but there are a couple things I hoped would be in it but weren't.  First, I felt the game disadvantaged many character classes by offering very few options to avoid combat encounters through use of high ability scores (e.g.1 if your wisdom was over 16 you could have a chance for a message to pop up saying it looks like the path ahead appears to be a risky place for an ambush.  e.g.2 if your dexterity is over 16 you get an option to quickly put a blade to the opponent leader's throat before he could swing at you and thus force his surrender).  I also wish there were more post-creation character development choices like offering subquests to join various factions or guilds that would have a lasting impact on many NPC encounters down the road (it would've even have been nice if more NPC's would even recognise if you had a character of a certain class or who worshiped a particular god in your party and would be influenced by that).  I longed for more npc dialog choices as well because most of the time I only had two options: to do the quest or leave (there were many instances where I wished the dialog options I picked could influence how that NPC felt about me).  There was never anything that affected alignment towards good vs evil or order vs chaos (choices could only affect reputation and there were probably less than 30 opportunities in the entire game that could even effect that).  Too many maps used kobolds, gibberlings, and gnolls and these encounters got rather old.  There isn't much dungeon crawling and I would have loved to see a lot more.  Thief skills could have been used a lot better by having stealth missions required for some sidequests and allowing to to have at least a small chance of robbing items from merchants.  Inventory is very restricted and I felt it would've been great if I could've purchased a pack mule.  Even without these things this is a great game and it's still one of the best D&D computer games I've ever played.

Offline Echon

  • Global Moderator
  • Planewalker
  • *****
  • Posts: 1944
  • Gender: Male
    • The Fields of the Dead
Re: Impressions of Baldur's Gate and Tutu
« Reply #1 on: September 29, 2004, 03:20:27 PM »
You say you have just made it to Baldur's Gate and that city has specific quests for thieves.

-Echon

Offline Soltaris

  • Planewalker
  • *****
  • Posts: 13
Re: Impressions of Baldur's Gate and Tutu
« Reply #2 on: September 29, 2004, 10:58:25 PM »
Sweet, I'm looking forward to it :)

Offline SimDing0™

  • Back In Black
  • Global Moderator
  • Planewalker
  • *****
  • Posts: 3496
  • Gender: Male
  • Word Enhancer
Re: Impressions of Baldur's Gate and Tutu
« Reply #3 on: September 30, 2004, 11:31:01 AM »
Quote
There was never anything that affected alignment towards good vs evil or order vs chaos (choices could only affect reputation and there were probably less than 30 opportunities in the entire game that could even effect that).
Look out for Virtue for Tutu at some point, which will add dynamic alignment, more opportunities for change, and so on.

Quote
There isn't much dungeon crawling and I would have loved to see a lot more.
Have you done Durlag's Tower yet? It's the best "dungeon" in the entire series.

Offline Andyr

  • Dance Commander
  • PPG
  • Planewalker
  • *****
  • Posts: 3178
  • Gender: Male
    • The Gibberlings Three IE mod community
Re: Impressions of Baldur's Gate and Tutu
« Reply #4 on: September 30, 2004, 11:35:32 AM »
Durlag's Tower is as good as it is hard. Very. :)
"We are the Gibberlings Three, as merry a band as you ever did see..." - Home of IE mods

<jcompton> Suggested plugs include "Click here so Compton doesn't ban me. http://www.pocketplane.net/ub"

I am unfortunately not often about these days so the best way to get hold of me is via email.

Offline Soltaris

  • Planewalker
  • *****
  • Posts: 13
Re: Impressions of Baldur's Gate and Tutu
« Reply #5 on: October 01, 2004, 01:32:27 PM »
Thanks for the advice :)

I haven't gotten to Durlag's tower although I've been completing quite a few quests in the city of BG now.  There's a lot to keep track of there and it's pretty time consuming plotting my way through.  I've filled up front and back of 3 legal pad sheets already.  The majority of the quests are to either kill someone or find an item and bring it back to someone and  I do wish there were more strategy involved with figuring out how to aquire an item once you know where it is.  That's an area where Planescape Torment excels.  Still, BG1 definitely has some pretty interesting and fun quests like the one with the Nymph, the thieves guild stuff, and now I'm into some investigations for Scar.

 

With Quick-Reply you can write a post when viewing a topic without loading a new page. You can still use bulletin board code and smileys as you would in a normal post.

Warning: this topic has not been posted in for at least 120 days.
Unless you're sure you want to reply, please consider starting a new topic.

Name: Email:
Verification:
Type the letters shown in the picture
Listen to the letters / Request another image
Type the letters shown in the picture:
What color is grass?:
What is the seventh word in this sentence?:
What is five minus two (use the full word)?: