/vr/ - Retro Games

oh shit nigga i almost missed this thread

Have you played BG 1+2 yet?

Well, they are certainly better than that disaster in the center of that picture there. By a very huge margin.

>>367531

I played BG 1 a few times, and I've said it once and I'll say it again:

fuck games that pigeonhole you for balanced parties. I couldn't even leave the goddamn town without getting raped because I tried playing a thief.

Then someone on /v/ tells me playing a thief is a bad idea, I should have played a strength character.

>game says you can be any class you want

>lies

this shit will not fly

I'll play again but fuck all if I'm going to be a stereotype in my own goddamn rpg. I figured Bioware played tabletop rpgs, I didn't know it was the generic "balanced party 1-sword 1-bow 1-mage 1-healer" variety. Fuck that noise.

>>367546

>NWN 2

I've heard terrible things. I've always loved NWN 1. I have 2 on steam, but I haven't gotten around to it yet. Fortune Cookie on backloggery hasn't picked it yet. I'm braced for it though.

>>367531

OP here no, I did a couple times, my only thoughts while playing it were "damn this shit is YE OLDE."

Then again I've always loved interactive fiction, so I figure when I play it I'll like it.

Currently playing Fallout 1 atm, loving/hating the fuck out of it, but overall loving it.

>>367656
Thief isn't good, but it isn't good in AD&D, either. If you knew the pen and paper game, you'd know this.

You can play as a thief just fine, though. Use a bow.

And you don't need a "balanced" party. You just need to know the mechanics. The mechanics don't favor balance, they favor stacking your party with what is strong, which is, in Baldur's Gate 1, ranged attackers and summoners.

>>367682

is it possible to beat the game using all available builds that are NOT:

>ranged attackers and summoners

because I'd rather go that route

hipster and hardcore as FUCK nigga

>>367698
Using other builds just means you'll either be quickloading a ton, or taking many, many trips to the temple for resurrections.

But yes, you can. I never used cheesy builds when I played the game back in the day. I just raged constantly as I died yet again and then did the fight over until I won.

>>367734

and here I thought I was the only one who did that...

>>365978
Ever tried planescape OP?

>>367531
>>367791

OP here

well I bought all of them except Shard (looked utterly stupid) and NWN 2.

So no, I haven't played Planescape but I will!

>>365978
doesn't seem like anyone really answered your question.

i would say yes. the games are fantastic, and both play well, though i would highly recommend playing the first one first, even though they aren't connected by story (much), because once you play the second one, you'll miss the added mechanics too much going back and playing the first. both are amazing games though, with hundreds of hours of content between the two. and that's just with one playthrough each.

>spend money to save money!

>>367934

no

don't listen to the skull

>>365978
You do. All Infinity games are good. IWD are very combat heavy, but they great atmosphere and most beautiful art of all Infinity games.

Goldbox Engine > Infinity Engine

>>367674
NWN2 is better than 1.
It starts very bland, but gets better and better as it goes. MotB expansion reaches PST levels at times.

>>367682
>>367698
Thief is underrated since no one really bothers to set up sneak attacks. If you're not sneak attacking as thief, you're doing it very wrong, and you're just going to be a super shitty fighter. But even then they're not particularly strong early on.

>>365978
IWD1+2 are great. 2 is much better, due to using superior mechanics, but 1 is worth a playthrough.

Play Planescape: Torment after you play the other Infinity Engine games, due to it being the superior game. The combat is probably the worst out of the three, but everything else more than makes up for it.

Also, if you're not at all familiar with D&D mechanics I strongly suggest using a character creation FAQ or something to point you in the right direction. You don't have to copy builds or anything, but making a 10 STR/18 INT/18 CHA fighter will make your life a living hell.

>>370229
I can't get past the interface. Coming from the Infinity Engine games, it just feels so lackluster and unintuitive. I guess the same could be said about IE, but that system just makes way more sense to me.

>>370246
Oh, you're definitely right here, UI and camera controls are horrid.
If you get used to them and survive the shitty 1st act it's actually starts being a pretty good game.

>>370197
that's pretty much a fact, but we live in bizarro world so it's like you said something controversial

>>370278
I want to like the game, since I just love 3.5/Pathfinder so much, and I've heard the game is really enjoyable once you get going (and MotB is pretty amazing), but fuck if I just can't play it without getting aggravated. Like, fuck, do we really need to be able to "control" the camera?

>>367656
Thief is hilarious if you're going to actually play like a thief, otherwise you just have a bad fighter that occasionally opens a door or disarms a trap. Backstabbing is incredibly satisfying, and it only gets more cheesy in the sequel. You also get traps at that point.

I think the better argument against making a thief in BG1 is the fact that the game already has so many you can make a full fucking party of them.

IWD is what you play when you say to yourself "I don't really give a shit about Baldur's Gate's lore and just want full control over my party's parameters and more combat." Also, IWD2 is 3e.

>>370319
They added a shitload of camera options with patches, but you can't get a one good angle for combat/exploration/city no matter what. Best you can hope for is that you find an optimal setting and get used to it.

Just thinking how good NWN2 on Infinity engine would have been makes me mad.

>>367682
>>367698
Also, this is really not true, though summons are very useful and there are many good candidates for archery. The pitfall many people fall into is not taking advantage of everything a class or character offers. Like, if you bring a ranger, and you're not using Charm Animal or stealth to scout, that character is (like I mentioned in my last post) now just a gimped fighter that hits one specific type of enemy really hard. Same with paladin, same with cleric.

To so many people, every character is just a variant of fighter or mage.

>>370389
The reasons summons and archery are so good is because they basically break the damn game. Summons provide free meat shields, and ranged attacks allow you to kite forever. Considering some of the enemies you encounter in BG1 hit pretty damn hard for their level, there's good reason it's commonly used, even if it is cheesy.

Also,
>paladins not being in charge of best tank in the game

Hello /vr/, I have already played all Baldur's Gate games but this thread made me wanna replay them.

Problem is that while I said that I "played" them, all my 10/11 year old self did was autoattack everything to death and use cheats when the enemies fucked me up.

Since you guys already gave some tips for BG1, can you also give me some tips for BG2 and Throne of Bhaal?

>>370456
Are you familiar at all with AD&D 2E?

It's hard to go wrong with a human kensai 9/mage X.

>>370431
There's always going to be a way to break the game. Even in the sequel, you can do silly shit like covering dragons in absurd amounts of Cloudkills. I was only pointing out that it doesn't have to be this way. You can play within more sensible parameters and succeed rather than turning the game into a Starcraft match where you're constantly dancing out of enemy range.

>>367698
Yes, after the first few levels. Bows are very powerful in low-level DnD (at least in IE games) because characters have so little HP and mages have very few spells, they become less OP as the game progresses. I've beaten BG2 and I don't think anyone besides mages ever used ranged weapons in the whole game.

>>370456
In BG2, you want:

A "real" thief -- either your player character, Yoshimo, or Jan, or be prepared to compensate for Imoen or Nalia's stilted skillset later on.

At least one cleric.

At least one mage.

When in doubt, choose a simple class or kit. For example, paladin kits are pretty straightforward with lots of passive bonuses and utility-type spells.

>>370468
I mean, I agree with you. You can play through every IE game without an overpowered build or cheese strategies, and that's personally how I prefer to play, too. I was just pointing out that there are mechanical reasons as to why summons/ranged attacks are so powerful in BG1, refuting your (minor) point about the claim being 'really not true'.

Ultimately, though, there's really only three roles in the vast majority of RPGs: melee, ranged, healer. I don't fault people for comparing oddball classes like ranger to the archetypal fighter, because they fill the same roles. In particular, I don't mind when people find something like the ranger lacking when compared to the fighter, because mechanically, fighters are basically strictly better than rangers. There's a few classes that manage to eke out specific niches that those main archetypes don't cover (paladins in particular; dem saves), but overall it's hard to argue that fighters, mages, and clerics aren't the best classes in 2E.

That said, going back to the original point, these games aren't super difficult as long as you don't specifically try to gimp yourself, so it's not really a huge deal either way.

>>370467
>Are you familiar at all with AD&D 2E?

Nope.

>>370493
Thanks. I understand Cleric and Mage but why is a thief so important?

>>370518
BG2 is full of flesh-to-stone traps. If your MC walks in one, you have to reload.

>>370490
>low-level DnD
It's really only true for 2E games. Bows aren't nearly as powerful early on in 3E/3.5E, and there's zero reason to use a bow as most classes in 4E (which is just one minor reason out of many as to why I hate 4E).

>>370493
There's no real need to have a dedicated thief in BG2. Imoen gets enough skills per level to do basic trapmonkey duty, though Nalia is slightly lacking in that regard. Still, all it generally means is some missed XP and minor loot, and maybe the aggravation of having to reload if the PC is hit by a particularly nasty trap. Considering how annoying it is to try to set up sneak attacks, personally I just always use Imoen as my thief since she's really just a mage that happens to have thief skills.

Paladins are great, but never choose the base paladin class, since pretty much all the kits are vastly superior. I personally really like Inquisitors, but there's a pretty good NPC Inquisitor you can recruit for your party, so personally I rarely make the PC a paladin.

If you're doing a good playthrough, I'd recommend playing a wizard. There's a wizard NPC you can recruit who is better than a PC wizard could ever be without hacks, but he's evil and thus a pain in the ass to keep around if your other members are good. The other wizards in the game are either multi or dual classed, and thus are generally weaker at pure casting than a pure wizard.

>NWN2 complete

fuck finally. first steam took it off and now based GoG gets it.

>>370497
oh lord

I think there's a crash FAQ on GameFAQs that gives you enough information to understand the system enough to where you actually know what you're doing.

I mean, you've played the game before, so you more or less know how it works, but having knowledge of how the mechanics work allows you to generally build better characters and make more tactical decisions in combat.

>>370518
>>370535
Having a thief will save you a lot of headaches. While there are technically other ways to deal with locks and traps (using mage spells like Knock or using Death Ward or something to make sure you don't get one-shot), it's not like these are games where every party slot is precious. Sure, they spend a lot of the rest of the time idling if you're not comfortable with backstabs or trap-setting, but I've really never regretted taking one.

>>370550
All down to personal preference, really. While you can have slots for non-combatants, I always liked having all of my members do useful things during combat, since I really enjoy the tactical combat aspect.

Though I think it's hard to argue to make a pure thief. Swashbucklers (if you hate backstabbing) and assassins (if you love backstabbing) are pretty much completely better than the pure thief class, and dual/multiclassing is typically even better.

>>370550
>playing IWD1 without a thief
>Dragon's Eye

>>370584
Well that was kind of my point. Thieves don't have to skulk in the back when they're not being called upon for sleight-of-hand maneuvers. Certainly, if one is doing that with a plain thief, it's hard to argue that it's really worth a party slot.

Fittingly, this is also the best argument for making a non-kitted thief. That is to say, if you want to enter the battlefield with a resounding backstab, then lead your victim's cohort into one of your pre-set snares, then finish the encounter by disarming and unlocking his chest of valuables.

At higher levels Assassin accumulates enough skill points where the pure Thief's versatility is less of an advantage, but you get the idea.

>>370615
Yeah, that's the pain with the assassin: the kit basically requires you to max move silently and hide in shadows, which means you can't get the skills that make bringing a thief in the first place so damn attractive. Indeed, that's my major complaint about thieves in general. It's virtually impossible to make a thief that can actually do all the relevant thief stuff, which is why I always prefer to dual or multiclass them.

Still, I think there's one thing we can agree on: Bounty Hunters are fucking terrible and Valygar is a piece of shit.

>>370647
Bounty Hunter's traps are actually kind of nasty. They're not insanely useful in general combat, but against groups of several stronger mobs having more crowd control is always good. Plus it gets more thief skill and its "primary" skill doesn't require two fucking things like with Hide/Move Silently. But I never feel compelled to make a Bounty Hunter, no.

Valygar is underrated. 17/18/16 and he has good personal items, plus BG2 has a ton of stupid golems for him to cleave. But then the backstab is never going to be what a thief's would be, and unlike benign goods like Mazzy you can't mix him with evils.

>>367934
>except Shard (looked utterly stupid) and NWN 2
You fucked up. The base game (NWN2) is poor but MotB is great.

Hm, alright I think I'm gonna start as a wizard and then get Jan.

Anything I should watch out for in Throne of Bhaal? The epic level abilities were way over my head when I first played it.

>>370750
>start as a wizard
This is 2nd edition rules. You will be at least three times stronger if you start with a physical class und dual class to a wizard.

>>370758
>no 9th level spells
nice try fagget, no thanks.

>>370832
Dual-classing doesn't stop you from getting 9th level spells.

>>370535
Sorry for not specifying editions though I don't consider 3rd and 4th edition DND games. >>370550
In most I:E games you only need half a thief at most.

>>371140
>In most I:E games you only need half a thief at most.

What? You mean only 9 levels of thief or something?

>>365978
>can't decide whether I want Icewind Dale 1 and 2 or not.

of course you fucking want it

>>371160
I meant half-thief. Non-human thief/something useful.

>>371181
Those backgrounds

Is NWN 1 and 2 worth getting? I'm accustomed to the IE games and afraid of getting turned off by the graphics of NWN.

I also read about game breaking bugs in NWN2, but those posts were dated back to when the game was still current. Have all the bugs been smoothed out?

>>371690
>I'm accustomed to the IE games and afraid of getting turned off by the graphics of NWN.

Where do you think you are? /vr/ doesn't care about graphics.

>>371690
I was turned off by those graphics when I first started that game up. They look, and have always looked, terrible.

NWN 1 is okay in multiplayer. The single player is bad. 1 character only. NWN 2 is all around bad.

>>371858
>NWN 2 is all around bad.

Ahem.

>>371842
I know. Isometric with pre-rendered backgrounds are fine. Roguelike games with ascii graphics are good too. But when it comes to 3D graphics, there are some things that just don't age well. Adding in bad camera controls to top it off can really break the immersion and detract from the overall quality of the game.

I might as well give it a shot since there are so many mixed opinions on NWN.

I've played Planescape and Icewind Dale 1 & 2 but never really took a proper shot at BG games. I believe I tried the first one years ago and gave up relatively early. As somebody who enjoys the hell out of Planescape and Icewind Dale, what should I do to ensure a good game of BG? I'm aware of AD&D rules fortunately, I'm just curious how those games differ from the ones I've played.

>>373081

BG is kind of the middle ground. It has pretty nebulous appeal, so I wouldn't worry about not liking it if you liked Torment and IWD. It's different from Torment in that you have a lot more companion possibilities and they'll eave you if you piss them off or they get into a fight with your other companions. A lot of them are also shit. Other than that, there's not much you need to know. Like I said, BG has the widest appeal of the IE franchises. It was pretty much the Morrowing or Oblivion of its time.

>>371690
NWN 1 has some fun user-made modules (including infamous rape-filled Dance with Rogues) and people say that HotU is fan. NWN 2 has Mask of the Betrayer one of the best recent RPG experiences. Avoid vanilla campaigns like a plague, they are boring generic fantasy bullcrap.

I'm trying to get into cRPGs, so right now I'm playing Fallout 1. I've never played D&D, but I have played Fallout 3 and NV, so I figured at least with Fallout I would be familiar with special and most skills. Four hours in and I'm finally starting to enjoy it.

My plan is, after I'm done, to either play Fallout 2 or Planescape: Torment, since I hear Torment is more dialogue-focused anyway.

The other D&D games I have are the ones from this deal and Arcanum. Is there an order I should play them in after that to more effectively ease myself into these games?

>>371903
I found Mask of Betrayer worse than the original campaign.

>>367656
Play BG2. It's better in every way.

And yes, you can play any class, but some are more challenging than others, so play something simple for your first playthrough.

>>373273
NWN's default campaigns are not actually terrible if your main interest is building a character all the way through high levels, just because most user modules tend to have less content and/or more difficult leveling curves.

>>373334
bump

>>373635
Does your question only pertain to the games you mentioned in your post, or all the ones in the image in the original post, too?

>>373653
Image in the OP as well. I'm not sure which ones would be the most noobie-friendly.

>>373674
Torment has the most simple combat. Icewind Dale is very straightforward.

Fallout and Arcanum require slightly more gumption. They're not that complex, just a bit more open. I never played the two on the far right.

NWN is pretty basic, but it's 3.5 ruleset so it's different than the other games (IWD2 is 3e also). I would just go with BG2 or Torment, really.

>>373718
My issue is less about figuring out where to go and what to do, and more about just garnering interest in the games. It's hard for me to figure out appropriate times to use magic in BG, for instance, since I have so little of it, but at the same time I feel like I'm doing something wrong by just having my spellcasters sit off to the side while my fighters do all of the heavy lifting.

So far Fallout's combat is simple and familiar enough that it's not as much of a put-off, although it is kind of tedious to have to pull out my gun every once in a while to make sure there's not an enemy chilling behind a wall or something. I hear a lot of F1's problems were fixed in F2, though.

I've been told ToEE has the best combat, so I was thinking it would be best to save it for last so I don't spoil myself.

How large are the differences between the rulesets?

Whelp, bougt the whole pack. Well, it's only like 17€

>>373832
bought, even

>>373809
Yeah, it's like "Megalixir syndrome" where you realize upon hitting "rest" that you never used all your spells you were saving for that weird encounter that never came.

The difference between 2e and 3e or 3.5e is sizable, though the end product will play very similarly. I mean, combat still unfolds in terms of attacks per round, dice rolls for damage, etc. It's more just differences between how armor or chance to hit is calculated, plus different arrays of spells and more or less races and classes to fool around with. Plus IWD2 and the NWNs have skills and feats, so you feel like you have more "options" in a sense.

I hope you stick with Fallout. I never could, but most people love them.

Any love for Temple of Elemental Evil?, Troika made it and they did that awesome vampire the masquerade game.

>>370246 here
I just reinstalled NWN2. I'm willing to give it another shot.

However, I'm stuck on what build I want to do. I really, really like the idea of making a Swashbuckler/Duelist/Weapon Master, due to my preference for smart, finesse-based melee builds, but I've heard the campaigns are heavy on the crit immune side. Does this make the build idea completely worthless?

>>373889

If you're expecting VTM:B out of ToEE then you are going to be disappointed and you will only have yourself to blame

Neverwinter Nights has lots of replayability with the custom modules (there are a shitload of custom campaigns).

You should get BG.

Pic related.

>>365978
why not buy all of the games?