Baldur's Gate 1
 

Hey! You know...i've had Baldur's Gate I ever since it came out in 1998 but I never finished it. I always got about halfway through it and then another RPG would come out and i'd ditch it because the controls weren't up to snuff and I didn't feel like my character was making enough headway.

NOW however, i'm playing again and it looks like i'm going to finish it! I'm even excited about it even though the graphics (entire engine) and D&D core rules are old in the game...i'm still really digging it. I'll finally be able to have a character go from the first game all the way to the end of BG II:Throne of Bhaal.

Did anyone else finish this game and take their character all the way through to the end?

I finished BG I, but I did it too fast. I didnt do enuff of the side missions to gain enuff levels to beat, whoever it was at the end. So I wound up using cheats on the final level. :(

Awww. Well...you could've just gone back to the beginning with whatever level your character was at and then just went from place to place and did the side quests then. I'm very anal so I scour every single area of every single map and talk to everyone with a name.

So...if you have the inclination, you could load up the saved game right now that's right before you get to the final dude and start scouring the countryside.

Taking your character into BGII presents only one problem: say goodbye to your items!
I loved BGI and finished everything, including TotSC, but for some reason BGII didn't suck me in.

NO WAY! Well that sucks!! <sigh> Oh well....at least i'll still have my stats.

And you know what though? BGII sucked me in a lot more then BG1 did. I thought the storyline was more compelling. In the first one I feel that you're just kinda running around trying to solve a problem while at the same time someone's trying to kill you. In the second one though...the story gets bigger and you really find out more about who you are.

Yeah, i recently went back to BG1 and played it trough again, its an excellent game. I found i enjoyed it much more in multiplayer though, so i can create the whole party of the classes and stats i choose, instead of getting stuck with whatever ones the game has.

So question. Instead of meeting the group of people that join up with you like Minsc or Khalid...etc, you play with a bunch of friends that have their own characters? Or...did you create all of your party and went through the game that way. I guess that could be fun as well! Hadn't tried that. But...on the other side of that, don't you miss all the interaction that you get with having the other members in your party that have their own agendas?

Also, if you created all of your characters and played through the game that way...did you import them all into BGII as well?

I beat it with a friend,each controlled two to three characters each.(High level clerics > everything ).

My main guy was a half-orc fighter,completely min-maxed.

If you like to create the whole party rather than rely on NPCs, try Icewind Dale. Much less story, just hack and slash, and no NPCs -- you make the whole party. It's really quite fun if you want that. I can't speak for IWD2, as I didn't get it, but I imagine it's more of the same.

Sounds like a swweet party. :)

Actually I played IWD and IWD2 and created my whole party. I finished the first one but didn't finish the second. The second was rediculously hard. You would basically go from one epic battle to the next and sometimes not even being able to rest between them which sucked. I can't tell you how many times I had to reload during IWD2. Finally I said "screw it" and put it up.

I don't really enjoy Icewind. the Baldurs Gates have intricate plots, and involve more than just fighting; you have to talk and develop your character, whereas Icewind is just fight, fight, fight. It gets pretty repetitive after a while, especially when all the battles just seem the same.

Exactly Eviltree. That's why IWD series isn't my fav either. I like my games a little bit more cerebral which is why I loved the Baldur's Gate series.

Man, I played that game for a long time before I even got out of the first dungeony area you start in. Some big boss presented too much of a threat, so once I finally beat him it seemed like there wasn't much more to accomplish...

You could try to install BGTuTu, which basically lets you play the first game in BGII's engine. You get the advantages of being able to use a character class that wasn't available in the first game. The gameplay is also improved, as well as the graphics. It's a bitch of a thing to install though, it took me a few goes to get it to work properly. Now all I need is a way of playing my BG1 saved game...:(

Exactly. The whole game was like one gigantic battle scene after another and it became too repetitive. It started feeling a lot less like an RPG and more like an Action game. Don't really dig action games.

Ya know...I tried that. After about 3 hours of futzin' with it and still not being able to get it to work...I gave up.

I loved BG1 and TOTSC more than any other RPGs. I had the sweetest fighter-magic user that I started playing in BGII until my hard drive went tits up. What great games!

After completing BGII (couldnt find the expansion at the time) I went out and bought Icewind Dale I and II thinking they would be awesome,completel let-down.


I don't even think my friend and I left the first village,the game just didnt feel right.(Icewind I and II~)

Ah! I love it! I'm currently playing BGI and this time I actually think i'm going to finish it and i'm having the best time! Then i'm going to install TOTSC and play that. Then i'll import into BGII. Right now i'm a plain fighter...but I want to also start playing a mage so..we'll see what happens. ;)

BG series rocked!!! I HOPE they do a BGIII!!!

I agree. IWD was more for those who liked more action and less RPG. I finished IWD but not IWD II because the second one was just ridiculously hard. But I didn't like the IWD series much at all. I would rate it about a 5 out of 10.