The GWJ CRPG Club - Game 7: Baldur's Gate (In Progress)

Played ... quite a lot over the weekend. Did some questing and exploring around Baldur’s Gate, did some damage to the Iron Throne then ended up back at Candlekeep chatting to “Koveras” - why does that name seem familiar

Redherring wrote:

Played ... quite a lot over the weekend. Did some questing and exploring around Baldur’s Gate, did some damage to the Iron Throne then ended up back at Candlekeep chatting to “Koveras” - why does that name seem familiar :)

I love how this supposedly unmatched schemer and evil mastermind basically stole the naming conventions for his alias from Castlevania games. I bet his vault password is 12345.

12345? That's amazing. I have the same combination on my luggage.

I had the quick collect box, but it seems lost now.. anyone knows how to get it back.. I probably toggled something when I bumped my whisky on the keyboard

*nope i had it totally wrong

It's the little button bottom left, next to the "dialogue" button i think?

Peoj Snamreh wrote:

I had the quick collect box, but it seems lost now.. anyone knows how to get it back.. I probably toggled something when I bumped my whisky on the keyboard

Should be a red button to the left of that bottom command bar.

imbiginjapan wrote:

Getting to the Friendly Arm in for the first time is still a great moment. While the Nashkel mines themselves are mostly just annoying, clearing them out is still a great feeling.
The outdoor areas still feel wonderful and charming, though the walking speed got to me a bit this time. Prior to the EE I usually kicked up the fps to 45 with the config and that sped things up nicely. I didn't see any way of doing that in the EE.

And there is still that part of me thinking, 'maybe this time I'll play a Paladin'. There's not been a point where I have felt like I couldn't go back to this one.

Great write-up, buddy! There's something special about BG1. It honestly always feels like you're setting off on a grand adventure when you're playing it.

And... done. Sarevok is down. That final battle was ridiculous, I had to bend the rules in all sorts of directions to get through it. A cloudkill scroll finally broke the stranglehold, and I was able to pick off the minions individually then go outside and rest before taking on Sarevok.

As always I finished the game with a massive pile of unused gold, scrolls, wands..

Just dropping by to say that... I've fallen a bit off this after the summer. Got through to Baldur's Gate with a fighter/mage, and kind of just stopped.

Good thing there is more time left, I'm sure it won't be harder to pick it up (without restarting) as time goes by. Why do I always do this...

I got distracted as well, but I think I’ll try to jump back in this weekend. I’d like to finish in October so I’ll be able to play the next game as well.

I think my biggest issue with the game is how slow movement is. I feel like I need to uncover everything on each map, which sometimes leads to funny events or side quests, but often just leads to a lot of aimless wandering through uninteresting landscapes. I still haven't made it to Baldur's Gate. I'm interested in the plot and uncovering what's going on, but every time I think about walking into a new unexplored region I feel a little tired.

I restarted my game today. I was only just barely past the first Inn though, so really didn't lose much time, and I'm already back to that point. I'll keep chipping away at it.

Started on Siege of Dragonspear, the prologue part seems a bit awkwardly tacked on to chapter 7, even has unresolved quests still in the journal. Collected a few party members but haven’t got to the main event yet.

beanman101283 wrote:

I think my biggest issue with the game is how slow movement is. I feel like I need to uncover everything on each map, which sometimes leads to funny events or side quests, but often just leads to a lot of aimless wandering through uninteresting landscapes. I still haven't made it to Baldur's Gate. I'm interested in the plot and uncovering what's going on, but every time I think about walking into a new unexplored region I feel a little tired.

That's the one loss from the old game to the Enhanced Edition. The original version has an 'update rate' in the config that speeds up the entire game. Over 45 fps it clips audio at times as there isn't enough time for the voice acting to finish during timed scenes, but going from 30 - 45 is still a 50% speed boost. It really makes things snappier.

After not playing for more than a month, I finally dug back into Siege of Dragonspear and knocked that out this weekend. By the end, I was skipping over most of the sidequests just to beeline to it and not leave it unfinished. On the whole, I thought it was a cool expansion. I tend not to worry about whether these things are "necessary" (I mean, what is necessary?), but it gave me a nice little yarn and a new adventure with some very old friends. Hard to complain about that.

RnRClown wrote:

Is anyone to attempt a late effort with the console release?

Yes and it better not be buggy on release.

I tried to argue against BG for this vote because that release wouldn't be out until late, but nooooo.

Fortunately I played through all of the Enhanced versions of the IE games a couple years ago, so I know the mechanics well enough to power through a fresh BG playthrough pretty fast. If it was my first BG run, it probably wouldn't be enough time.

Done! I'm not too proud to say that I turned the difficulty down to Easy for the final fight. Jesus, the game coasts you along and then throws THAT at you...

Math wrote:

Done! I'm not too proud to say that I turned the difficulty down to Easy for the final fight. Jesus, the game coasts you along and then throws THAT at you...

Congrats, Math!

I might keep that tip down for the last fight, too, although I've found things challenging at different points along the way as well. Part of that is probably just my unfamiliarity with the system though.

When I beat BG a couple of years ago, I didn't reduce difficulty, but I definitely cheesed the final fight. I remember doing a whole bunch of stuff before walking close enough to engage the dialogue to start the battle, and I remember doing something like standing somewhere specific to keep one of the minions from engaging in combat when the fight started.

And done! Managed to get through that last battle just as I was ready to bump down the difficulty. Not that I can take full credit, honestly I'm still not quite sure what happened - Imoen got confused just as the first minion went down, wandered up toward the rest and died almost immediately while the rest of the party hung back. Suddenly there were explosions and a bunch of stuff firing off up in the fog, and moments later the combat log registered two more minions down. It wasn't too hard from there, thanks to the stockpiled potions and scrolls.

All in all, I enjoyed revisiting this after so many years, and was amazed just how much of it I had forgotten.

*Legion* wrote:

When I beat BG a couple of years ago, I didn't reduce difficulty, but I definitely cheesed the final fight. I remember doing a whole bunch of stuff before walking close enough to engage the dialogue to start the battle, and I remember doing something like standing somewhere specific to keep one of the minions from engaging in combat when the fight started.

Back in its original release they didn’t have a cap on the number of creatures you could summon, so in the final fight I just used about a half dozen summon creature wands to keep a wall of expendables between me and the bads.

*Legion* wrote:
RnRClown wrote:

Is anyone to attempt a late effort with the console release?

Yes and it better not be buggy on release.

I tried to argue against BG for this vote because that release wouldn't be out until late, but nooooo.

I'm with you on that. It came a single vote too early. Boo! (The dissenting sound! Not the adorable miniature giant space hamster.)

I doubt I'll make it under the wire with the date having been pushed to October 15th, when it was originally September 24th, as I'm generally slow to progress in video games.

The kicker is that I'm now pondering whether a keyboard and mouse may fatigue my hands and wrists less than a controller. I've noticed my left straining under considered d-pad or stick use. Time constrains limit my desktop computer usage to the point I've effectively retired from the platform. Unless I purchase a laptop...

benign1 wrote:

And done! Managed to get through that last battle just as I was ready to bump down the difficulty. Not that I can take full credit, honestly I'm still not quite sure what happened - Imoen got confused just as the first minion went down, wandered up toward the rest and died almost immediately while the rest of the party hung back. Suddenly there were explosions and a bunch of stuff firing off up in the fog, and moments later the combat log registered two more minions down. It wasn't too hard from there, thanks to the stockpiled potions and scrolls.

All in all, I enjoyed revisiting this after so many years, and was amazed just how much of it I had forgotten.

Nice work, benign! You all are motivating me to dig back in.

RnRClown wrote:
*Legion* wrote:
RnRClown wrote:

Is anyone to attempt a late effort with the console release?

Yes and it better not be buggy on release.

I tried to argue against BG for this vote because that release wouldn't be out until late, but nooooo.

I'm with you on that. It came a single vote too early. Boo! (The dissenting sound! Not the adorable miniature giant space hamster.)

I doubt I'll make it under the wire with the date having been pushed to October 15th, when it was originally September 24th, as I'm generally slow to progress in video games.

The kicker is that I'm now pondering whether a keyboard and mouse may fatigue my hands and wrists less than a controller. I've noticed my left straining under considered d-pad or stick use. Time constrains limit my desktop computer usage to the point I've effectively retired from the platform. Unless I purchase a laptop...

I really, really wish they would implement cross-platform cloud saves.

Civ 6 has this now and it's AWESOME (still waiting for the expansions to release on Switch, but they're coming soon)

Divinity: OS 2 apparently has it as well.

I see this has finally popped up for pre-order on the Nintendo Switch eShop. There's a few screenshots. No video(s).

I bought the BG Switch port at a little past midnight Pacific yesterday, when it released for digital purchase.

Played through Candlekeep before bed, then played last night after work up to the arrival at Nashkel.

My initial thoughts: this is a good port. They put a lot of thought into how to control BG with a gamepad. Nothing was going to be perfect, and there are quirks for sure, but the routine stuff works well. We'll see what it's like later in the game when I want to be more fiddly with combat positioning and the like, but the game has passed all the early tests, IMO.

They got looting right by having the selection cursor snap to loot spots based on the direction you face. I was worried looting was going to be a nightmare. It could have been a little better, but it's not that painless.

The direct movement control of your character works well. With a party, though, it looks odd, because your party members will scamper at faster-than-normal movement speeds to stay in formation as you rotate. If you spin your character around, it looks... pretty bad, to be honest.

The other issue with direct movement control is that you quickly discover just how narrow some movement paths are. With mouse control where you just click a destination and the characters auto-navigate around obstacles, you didn't even have to think about it most of the time. Here, you will bump into tables and chairs inside a tavern and have your movement stop. You'll find some areas where the art isn't super clear where the movement barriers are, especially in tight indoor locations. You always have the ability to switch to "cursor" mode and point somewhere to engage auto-navigation, which is helpful.

They did some subtle things right. Like on the minus-button menu, which is where the load/save/options/quit kind of stuff is, the game remembers which submenu you last chose, and keeps that one highlighted when you return to the menu. So when you pop back into that menu and want to quickly save your game again, "Save Game" is already highlighted for selection, saving you some thumbstick twiddling. Makes it easy to quickly pop into the menu and save, then pop back out.

The biggest pain is just that so much function is buried behind non-obvious button presses that you just have to develop the muscle memory to remember. That's pretty much inevitable for these kind of ports of mouse-heavy PC games. There are things that could have been done better for a game built from the ground up with gamepad support, but for support shoehorned into a decades-old PC title, it's pretty damn good.

I'm playing docked right now, so I don't know what visibility is like on the small screen. They did include a font size slider, which I wish had the option to go even bigger than it does.

The two biggest nits I have right now:

1) the journal has a yellowed-paper background, and the highlighted cursor color is yellow. It's ridiculously hard to see from the couch. At minimum, the cursor color should be something that stands out on the yellow. But really, the paper background should just be sacrificed in the name of visibility.

2) seems like a bug, but if I have all of my characters engage one enemy that's in a crowd, once that enemy dies, much of my party will retreat back into formation rather than immediately engage the rest of the crowd.

Regarding number 2 on your list, I've noticed the same thing on PC. I have to manually tell my party to switch to new targets. The exception seems to be they will fight back if they are targeted by an enemy.

Text size is a part of the mobile releases too, so if they had dropped it from the Switch released I think there would be pitchforks and the like.

beanman101283 wrote:

Regarding number 2 on your list, I've noticed the same thing on PC. I have to manually tell my party to switch to new targets. The exception seems to be they will fight back if they are targeted by an enemy.

Weird that I don't remember this from my playthrough a couple of years ago, although that might be just because it's easier to quickly redirect someone with the mouse when they go AWOL.

*Legion* wrote:
beanman101283 wrote:

Regarding number 2 on your list, I've noticed the same thing on PC. I have to manually tell my party to switch to new targets. The exception seems to be they will fight back if they are targeted by an enemy.

Weird that I don't remember this from my playthrough a couple of years ago, although that might be just because it's easier to quickly redirect someone with the mouse when they go AWOL.

Isn't there a setting for this?