/vr/ - Retro Games

>>5255347
Avoid the Enhanced Edition like plague

It's coming
I can feel it coming
>Beamdog won't let me bleach Hexxat what gives?

>>5255350
Aside from the shitty new areas with new quests, what else did they change? I saw the UI and it seems fine to me.

>>5255352
They fucked up BG1 way worse than the others. If you plan on playing the first and importing a save, play the original.

>>5255357
How did they fuck it up, exactly?

My save is like 10 years old and it's on my 80gb HDD that's been handed down to the recycling center.

I'm playing this with no import.

>>5255352
It was fine before their shitty SoD game, then they fucked up even UI and made it with a lot of scrolling for tablets.

>>5255347
>>5255351
Beamdog is guilty of a number of different crimes. Here are the major ones.

1. The Enhanced Editions are essentially a collection of free mods that had existed for nearly twenty years. Beamdog gathered them all up, slapped "Enhanced Edition" on it and resold it as a new product. There's very very little in the Enhanced Editions that wasn't already out there, and most of it is stuff you don't want (like obnoxious character outlines).

2. The games didn't sell so well and the originals were still far outselling them, even twenty years after their release, so Beamdog had EVERY digital distributor stop selling the originals and ONLY sell the Enhanced Edition. If you want to buy a digital copy of the originals now, they're "bundled" into the Enhanced Edition. Now these scumbags can claim sales from people just wanting to buy the originals as their own.

3. The infamous 600+ bugs on launch. The game is still riddled with bugs (as even a perfunctory glance over their forums show) but the fact that it took nearly two years for them to get a game that had been working fine for 20 years to reach playability after launch is telling of their wild incompetence.

4. This is where we get to the ones that really piss people off. Beamdog couldn't just remaster the game, they had to fuck with the content too. New dialogue for existing NPCs like Jaheira, Viconia, Safana, Kivan, et cetera was written in to make the characters more progressive and leftist friendly. Beamdog shills will argue that "adding content isn't changing content XDDD" but it is when the new content changes the core personalities of the existing characters. This is in addition to adding a slew of their own LGBT (hitherto there were none in Baldur's Gate) NPCs, all flooded with OP attributes and magic items to encourage people to play them despite their cancer.

5. Siege of motherfucking Dragonspear.

>>5255358
I'M A TRANNY CAN YOU DEAL WITH THAT? NPC added

>>5255358
>TuTu implementation is only a slight bit away from the mod itself, so it doesn't fix the balance issues contained so much.
>New content is shitty, and actually forces you into a battle with one character.
>The less said about Dragonspear, the better.

At least the characters can be modded out in both BG games.

>>5255365
Rewritten characters? Welp, I'm getting out of that one.

So what mods should I be installing for a standard, non-EE BG2 game?

>>5255347
Essential first timer mods :
BG2 fixpack, unfinished business (also for bg1), and maybe widescreen (1600x900) and higher res font (go light at first, keep the rest for when you understand the basics)
You should start with unmodded BG1 because there is honestly nothing like completing the entire trilogy for the first time, but whatever floats your boat

>>5255358
I just want to know one thing
How is it possible to still ask this question if it's not your first day on 4chan with a vague interest in crpg.
Every thread EVER where baldur's gate is even mentioned has at least one post talking about one of the many EE fuck ups. Also google.

>>5255382
You're replying to the same guy. I have played BG1 many years ago. I don't have a save.

I don't usually hang out at /vr/ to know all about the drama. Hell, I don't even visit this site regularly anymore.

I googled it and what I found out was people crying about the UI and that tranny NPC, nothing else. To me that seems that I can just skip the new "content" and be on my merry way. I've never read about rewriting existing characters.

>>5255385
>I've never read about rewriting existing characters.
How is it possible, the new shitty fanfic tier banters of the original cast are one of the most vocally criticized things about the EE

How do I into full SCS Ironman?
Just got my fucking ass handed to me by the fucking Warden and his gang of yuan ti mages yesterday
FUCK

>>5255378
I think GOG's modding guides are useful in this aspect. When it comes to the "big" mods, TuTu puts one game after the other, while Trilogy allows you to play them seamlessly. This is important because you get to keep the same ammount of XP you had when you finished BG1. The xp "roof" for BG1, especially when importing a character to 2, didn't considered the extra room that TOSC added to the base game, making you less powerful than what you were before. And certainly, it's very likely that you will end up reaching the xp limit before you even finish bg1+tosc, for me it happened one third into TOSC. Trilogy just lets you keep playing, your character is "moved" from Sarevok's dungeon to Irenicus', leaving as it was when you completed the first game (iirc). Both games apply the BG2 aesthetics and classes to 1.

Then you have stuff like Stratagems, which amps up the combat. Some people think it's mandatory because to be fair these games are piss easy.

Also I think it shold be mentioned that they applied bg2's classes to Icewind Dale, which is absolutely infuriating to me because the fun was in playing it as it was, with limited classes and options. It's not like the game was that hard anyway, although fights like Yxunomei or Poquelin could get intense... however, with bg2's classes and spellbooks those could become trivial as shit.

>>5255373
>>TuTu implementation is only a slight bit away from the mod itself, so it doesn't fix the balance issues contained so much.
They just asked the modders to apply their stuff into the game, it's not like Beamdog did any work on that.

>that Ascension + SCS endgame

>>5255358
>>5255365


for me, the main crime is changing the gameplay of BG1.
Using the updated engine I don't mind, but adding class kits, and all the stuff that WASN'T in BG! completely changes how the game plays.

>>5255526
To be fair it existed before the EE existed and it's a great way to expand the gameplay imo, apples and oranges and shit. Tutu or BGT (which convert BG1 to the BG2 engine too) are also the only way to play BG1 with scs and for me, that seals the deal in the end.
However it fucking sucks for new players who won't play BG1 as it was originally designed at least once and that indeed fucking sucks.

>>5255538

well, I'm lucky to have a digital release bundle of BG1 and BG2 + respective expansions in the kickass Polish dubbing (done by CDProjekt)

Basically, CDP got 1st class film and stage actors to record the lines for the game, and reading the credits was as much of an event as the game's release. Here's what came out of that:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=O3982_40vyU

>>5255526
Even changing stack sizes, especially with quivers, and introducing scroll cases, potion bags, etc, changes the game completely.

>>5255409
play a tanky character, either a Berserker dual (for 9 levels of full HP and massive defensive boons on Enrage) or any Dwarf / Halfling / Gnome for those saving throw bonuses.
prioritize survival
read up on all the tactics
get 2-3 arcane spellcasters
either inquisitors and druids are really good to have (Cernd is really underrated, if you can believe it)
keep contingencies on your characters at all times so that you can bail, a stupid potion of invisibility on quickslot can go a long way
don't be afraid to run away
remember that every combat you fight is potentially "the final battle", so don't forget your consumables, hoarding full charges on your wand "for the future" when it could have saved your bacon in some random fight earlier is bad
play defensively
learn every single intricacy of how spells beat spells
possibly skip areas or fights that are hard as shit and/or not worth it, particularly if running a gimmicky setup (e.g. Karoug and the werewolf island)

>>5255394
It's also somewhat misrepresented by some posters because those banters only ever pop up in EE between members of the old and the new cast, e.g. that one Viconia dialogue everyone is up in arms about. If you don't get the new NPCs then you don't get any rewrites.

>>5255347
Things you should be worrying about considering what version to play are stuff like, if you wanna heavily mod the game you'd do better playing the old version because the ee gets updates and of the old mods not all of them get updates for the ee, so the mod library is running better on the classic, it's been years since I check the sources to download them though. Added content on ee will be 3 more NPCs with their respective quests and items, ignore them if you don't like them. They don't change the original characters.

In case of 1 it's the same deal except the engine has changed as it uses the one from the second game; that's a big difference, so if you wanna get the original feel of the first, you'd have to play the classic. In case of the new content it's the same, they'll add 3 NPCs, others are the same.

The expansion for the 1st, in the engine of the second, is a whole new game with content compeltely written by the staff of beamdog, so this is the one that you could feel different and here you'll find shit the annoys some people, like dialogue threads and NPCs that feel kinda outta place considering the vibe of the first 2 games.

I'm not sure if old saved games will load on the ee's 1 and 2, you'd have to check the forums at beamdog. Remember that the new game is separate from the 1st, it doesn't come together in the first like Tales of the Sowrd Coast.

oh and Lurk more if you're taking seriously fakenews pastafags and other shitty replies.

>>5255725
>so the mod library is running better on the classic
If the game is auto-updated through Steam, the update fucks up your entire save file if you had a modded playthrough between updates.
>I'm not sure if old saved games will load on the ee's 1 and 2
They won't.

>>5255725
>They don't change the original characters.
they do because there is new dialogue for them that is mostly shit and wildly out of character
>fakenews pastafags
literally nothing fake in the pasta though

>>5255647
I've got most of these almost figured out, I'm playing a berserker 9 -> mage, never got less than 3 or 4 mages in the party
I occasionally take keldorn with me and have Cernd mostly figured out because of that almost forced fight with faldorn (which of course i had to reload a fuckton of times on my first scs playthrough), but haven't used him much beyond that I must say.
No problem understanding how spells beat spells or finding weaknesses that may allow to bypass a complete debuff sequence and kill them a bit faster, no problem understanding how to maximise damage output with my current go-to party or having them efficiently protected and micro to minimize chances of perma death, no problem (at all) using consummables liberally (athkatla council really should investigate on why potions have mysteriously vanished from merchant stocks in the entire city)
I always keep invisiblity potions close by, and i've (mostly) understood how to retreat when needed

I'm probably still lacking in tactics though, if you know where I could read up on them I'll gladly take it. I have mostly figured out stuff on my own so I'm probably still missing some stuff here, although probably not anything critical.
The thing I lack the most is maximizing XP I guess, I was way too low level to take on the warden yesterday (berserker 9 mage 13, rest of the party around 1 mil xp, I beat him at this level the last time but wasn't ironman), all jokes aside I knew it quite well but I really wanted these sweet boots of speed and that sweet kundane early on. Too much risk.
Just forgot for a minute that you can't get the fuck out of this zone once you get in until you killed the fucker, and that you can't really retreat either because he is constantly hasted and (apparently) sees through invisibility.
But yeah if you have any good sources about "advanced" tactics, maximizing xp early on, or any other thing that I might not know really, I would gladly read all of it!

>>5255347
Skip the mods for your first playthrough. The game is good as it is. And as a guy who probably had about 500 hours in vanilla BG2 and 200 hours in EE, don't listen to the fanatic purists. The new characters aren't amazing but they're not THAT bad. Just ignore them if you want a purist run. Plus you get some new character specific quests, new zones and EE exlusive items if you have them in your party.

>>5255887
>The new characters aren't amazing but they're not THAT bad
no they're unironically and unequivocally all fucking trash.

>>5255475
>They just asked the modders to apply their stuff into the game, it's not like Beamdog did any work on that.
True. They could have done some more work on it though. Beamdog did add some stuff to the game for those who use the new weapon types, so it's not like they weren't realizing this issue. Or even better, they could've just made it optional.

The majority of BGEE's issues could be solved with a toggle instead of us having to mod them out, honesetly. The new characters were once DLC, it's not like they couldn't have an option to turn them off.

>>5255894
I agree for everyone except Dorn and Wilson. Dorn's tolerable, and the bear's implimented exactly how I wish everyone else was.

>>5255905
apples an oranges, but I really can't stand Dorn "can't shut the fuck up" Il-Khan

>>5255868
There's a huge thread on the Beamdog forums that used to be on BioWare forums until they stopped existing, which deals entirely with people Ironmanning stuff. They also have some subset threads on powergaming and figuring out the perfect setups for such an endeavor.
I'd look around on forums in general, because usually pearls of SCS-related wisdom are distributed around help threads rather than in a single, unified guide.
As for Cernd, he's generally underrated because people overfocus on his low stats and comparatively the weakest Druid kit, but any Druid is worth a lot in BG2 because Insect Plague is just that good, and most of the Druid's late game spells and abilities is genuinely underrated.

>>5255919
Thanks for the tip, I should have done that earlier.
Stats aren't really a problem imo since you can fix pretty much any stat in bg2 anyway, and I also have no problem with his kit (especially with rebalanced shapeshifter), I just don't really enjoy having him around as a character, and I still like some measure of RP in my game (otherwise I guess I'd go munchkin party).
But maybe I'll abandon ironman for now and just focus on a better understanding of party minmaxing to learn to use him and others appropriately in more situations.

>>5255936
Jaheira is solid too.

>>5255347
Unmodded BG2 is fun until you get to later levels then it just becomes insect plague/creeping doom or timestop + horrid wilting spamming, the game. Or when you get Finger of Death you can just reload the save until you 1 shot every Dragon with it.

>>5255939
Yeah her multi class is really good. But since I'm already not that much of a Cernd fan, you can imagine how I feel about that jobber cunt lol
Fucking druids man.

>>5255347
Only thing you need to know is this: 30 min into the game you get access to the worldmap, make one more step along the main-quest and won't get access to it again until the final hour of the game basically.

>>5255970
>make one more step along the main-quest
You mean gather enough gold to pay Bodhi or gaelon without buying anything, do the respective follow up quests, and then explicitly embark on what is pretty obviously a one way trip?
That's quite the one step tbqh

>>5255976
looking back, i wonder if they put those obstacles due to people either having companions walking away because they were taking too long to go to Nashkel or them getting killed by stronger enemies while being level 1, like the ankhegs

>>5256043
>not going to kill ankhegs right after cutscene
>not getting to lvl 2 or 3 till much later
>not steampiling the game

>>5256357
Honestly if you want to power-level it's much faster and easier to go to Mutamin's Garden and have Korax farm Basilisks for you.

>>5255365
Based, redpilled, presidential medal of freedom winner

>>5255475

Last time I played IWD EE Heart of Fury I had a Dwarven Defender with 100% resistance to physical damage. Added a few buffs that protect from magic damage he was standing in the last fight against the dragon and his nagas (?) taking zero damage while all three were hitting him constantly.

tl;dr you are right about IWD EE

>>5255837
>they do because there is new dialogue for them that is mostly shit and wildly out of character
if you recruit the new characters the dialogue threads appear
>literally nothing fake in the pasta though
literally yes you stupid fuck, the first point is bullshit, the 5th point is a fucking troll and not an argument, and the 4th was written by a 15 year old triggered pepe the frog /pol/ poster cringier than all the new beamdog content combined.

>>5256514
Is there anything like SCS or Tactics for Icewind Dale?

>>5256773
>the first point is bullshit
the EE includes components directly taken from Tutu, SCS and 1pp (see their respective readme for reference)
Not to mention that most things added by the EE already existed in one form or another on G3 (see cdt tweaks, fixpack and the aforementioned mods)
how is that a bullshit point, again?

About the 5th, sadly I really don't see what there is to add, SoD is just a ridiculously bad fanfic mod on all fronts
And as for the 4th, if mentioning the clear political message hamfisted in this retarded fanfic triggers your /pol/ PTSD, well too bad, it's still not factually wrong though.

>>5256821
no

>>5256869
:(

>>5256887
this but unironically

Gonna replay bg1 soon, what should my party be?
Last time I had a fighter/mage mc with the typical Imoen, Jaheira, Khalid, Dynaheir and Minsc party.

>>5257113
Go evil with Kagain, Edwin, Montaron, Xzar and Viconia (later Tiax).

>>5257241
I would also recommend Shar-Teel as she's genuinely a strong NPC that can be dualled to a Thief if need be, but you might want to spice it up and try playing with two full spellcasters from the start.

>>5256863
Its bullshit because its a misrepresentation of the product done to belittle the work that has been done, simply because you dislike elements of the remake. Yes there are elements of the remake that have been done via mods in the past, but considering the full description of the ee, including the added content you dislike, calling it "essentially a collection of free mods that had existed for nearly twenty years. Beamdog gathered them all up, slapped "Enhanced Edition" on it and resold it as a new product" is a fallacy, plus adding the phrase "and most of the new stuff are things you don't won't" is the fakenews seal of approval for your shitpost.

By saying the new content is more progressive and leftist friendly is just getting baited; so some fags that like niggers wrote the new characters and it kinda shows on the writing... cry me a fucking river you child, it's not political "enough" to warrant a "serious business" response such as the one in the pasta. In the end it's points made such as that one in the pasta that bring the politics into play, I don't remember anyone making a fuss about the belt that changes your sex or Edwin becoming a woman, everything was taken lightly back in the day just as this new shit should be taken, how about you keep on killing the monsters and follow the story, remember what you're doing sitting on that chair of yours in front of the screen, instead of feeling that you're being brainwashed into liking niggers and fags becuase some appear in your gaming session.

>This is in addition to adding a slew of their own LGBT (hitherto there were none in Baldur's Gate) NPCs, all flooded with OP attributes and magic items to encourage people to play them despite their cancer.

someone do this miserable faggot a favor and put him down, please

>>5257326
t. Amber Scott

>>5257326
>this point about mods is entirely correct, it is thus a fallacy
lmao best reasoning ever.

> I agree with the political point of view of beamdog thus you are unjustified in criticizing it
lmao
You also don't remember anyone criticizing edwin or anything in the original because it has nothing to do with what beamdog did and you know it perfectly well.
Beamdog inserted flavor of the month twitter polemics into its fanfic, bioware did not ; no matter how hard you try to make a false equivalence between edwin getting turned into a woman for comedic purposes with no ham fisted moral or political message and minsc hammering anti-goobergate retardation for twitter cred points.

But yeah sure, keep melting down about being brainwashed about niggers or whatever the fuck you're on about. I'm sure strawmaning everyone who doesn't like beamdog's shit writing into a fascist while you're having a seizure is totally proving that I am the one obsessed and that you angry and dishonest defense of this trash is purely apolitical lmao
As if anyone needed to be a poltard to be appalled by shit writing sold for actual money and added to a classic by a bunch of hacks who were still shitting their diapers when the original game came out. For fuck's sake... Artistic integrity isn't a fucking political debate retard.

What weapon proficiency should I pick as a mage/theif?

>>5257670
Staves have the best magic weaponry for backstabs, otherwise just pick anything with a solid damage dice (1k6+ and up) that's on the list of Thief weapons and that can backstab. Remember that you can abuse Mislead for repeated backstabs and that you can summon the Black Blade of Disaster as well.

>>5257670
>>5257698
this, also short swords, scimitars and two weapon style for belm/kundane and later scarlett ninja-to dual wielding under improved haste (8 APR), can be a less micro intensive way of dealing quite a lot of damage in melee

my game lags so fucking bad with SCS when i fight a lotta monsters,or when i sleep/fear a lot of monsters
anyway to fix this?

>>5257750
download generalized biffing on shsforums

>>5257748
While SNT is a main-stay rogue weapon with UAI, I'd just like to quickly note that it can't backstab because it's not a "core" Thief weapon within the game mechanics. Otherwise, yeah.

>>5257753
i did and i biffed all the files but i still have lag problems when too many AI's try attacking me

>>5257763
if you play the originals, I have a slight lag at the beginning of battles when all the pre-casting is calculated, which is relatively normal but shouldn't last more than a second.
If it persists longer, and if you use the originals, it's probably because the game can only use one core of your CPU and it will probably use it pretty heavily. So check if your cpu is not undercloked and if you don't have any programs running in the background that take up CPU power on your first core (the one BG will use ; if you don't have monitoring tools, task manager allows you to check). Either turn them off or change the affinity (in the task manager, right click on the processus) to have them running on other cores than the first.

BG1:
PC mage/thief multiclass
Kagain
Shar-teel
Edwin
Viconia
Faldorn

BG2:
PC mage/thief multiclass
Haer'dalis
Korgan
Edwin
Viconia
Sarevok (in ToB)

are these parties good nuff to complete SCS+Ascension?

>>5257885
Yes and yes.

>>5257326
>>This is in addition to adding a slew of their own LGBT (hitherto there were none in Baldur's Gate) NPCs, all flooded with OP attributes and magic items to encourage people to play them despite their cancer.
>someone do this miserable faggot a favor and put him down, please
They DID introduce the first LGBT characters. Dorn is rampantly bisexual and the inexplicably African Vampiress is obnoxiously lesbian.

The average stat spread for BG1 NPCs is 79 points. The absolute strongest is 88 points. The EE introduces two characters above average: Neera and Rasaad (80 and 85), and two well above the highest: Baeloth and Dorn (89 and 90).

So half the EE are stronger than literally all the others, and the other half are in the top 50%. Then you factor in that they come with some of the best equipment in the game. Rasaad's +2 AC boots, Dorn's power-up magic greatsword, Baeloth's Robe of the Archmagi, etc.

>All this shitflinging over gay characters
>meanwhile, Edwina

SoD is a pile of shit, but don't pretend that there wasn't anything in there already.

>>5258502
Context matters. Edwina was a late-90's comedic event, not a social commentary on transgendered inclusion.

>>5258428
They are slightly more powerful, but its also Baldur's Gate, a really easy game where that stuff doesn't really matter. Almost all deaths are instant, and the only NPC who really interacts with that is Baeloth with his drow magic resistance.

>>5255365
Don't forget the great intro replaced by shitty flash animation.

>>5258502
>trans is the same as gay
i can smell your cisgendered toxicity from a mile away

Let's say i want to play original, but in widescreen and with bugs fixed. Should i just pirate the old GOG version (i bought the remasters of almost everything for pocket change anyway because Linux support)? Does GemRB works good enough as new engine?

>>5258820
just get the old gog versions, or try to look for one of those compilations on amazon, they should be easy enough to find and dirt cheap as well

>>5258874
What about the GemRB and widescreen though?

>>5255553
Nzchsishsh zadrotshzshshzshsh shzzuzushuchizzuzhh

>>5255553
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=t-fcrn1Edik

>>5258502
The Edwina thing only highlights Beamdog's retardation. In a setting where there are a thousand ways to get switched to the opposite sex, "trans" characters shouldn't even exist. One of the first fucking magic items you come across is the genderswapping girdle.

Beamdog's trans bullshit was an effort to inject real-world political bullshit into an incompatible fantasy setting. It would be like having Valygar start complaining about racism when there are half-orcs and drow and shit running around everywhere.

Another day, another BG thread ruined because people who are already uniformly in agreement need to have contests over who hates the enhanced editions the most.

>>5259338
t. Amber Scott
your deflection tactics to get people comfortable with the EEs don't work here

>>5259338
Take princess dust and fuck off

>>5259338
lmao
Why is there always that one faggot to come in and vocally defend the EE using every fallacy in the book, lie through his teeth for a few posts, start shit while crying about /pol/ and other boogeymen, and then complain that the thread is ruined because of those damn EE haters
If you shut the fuck up, no one will answer your retarded posts, shithead.

>>5259428
>>5259432
>>5260019
“Look at how not gay I am, you guys!”
“Yeah, I’m so not a fag!”
“I have sex with like 30 girls a day, I couldn’t be less gay!”

“I dunno, I just don’t really care what they do. Why are we even talking about it?”

“Look at this guy, he must be a queer too!”

>>5261749
Dude, I'm so drunk right now and I don't even care if you enjoy having gay sex. I tried it too at one point! It wasn't my thing, but I could understand why some others would. Happy New Year!

Where the fuck do you even find the GOG version of the original version of the game (don't post a link, I'm just asking for someone to point me in the right direction)? I'm not going anywhere near the fucking "Enhanced Edition".

>>5261796
Too bad because the original version is now bundled with the Enhanced Edition and has been for awhile now.

>>5261796
>point me in the right direction
there are
free gog pc games
out there

>>5261796
>don't post a link, I'm just asking for someone to point me in the right direction

over there

>>5261749
Wow you sure are doing a great job at not ruining the thread, keep making great posts like this and acting like a passive aggressive cunt, I'm sure it'll eventually prove your point about who ruins the threads lmao.

>>5262479
Aaaaaand I’ve struck the nerve.

gg

>>5262521
Worthless posting

>>5255347
>>5255350
>Current 2019 year. Still playing SJW games

>creating character in BG1
>40 skillpoints spent, moving on
>hmm, better go back, i feel i can go differently
>suddenly, 40 free skill piints in addition to ones that i already have
>repeat as many times as you like
Kek. Is that a GemRB bug or what?