So finished Siege of Dragonspear - which was decent, but it would've been better if they hadn't try to shoehorn so many BG2 connections to into it. I also imported my character into BG2 and started that up. Now I just have to decide on what my party is going to be - and who to romance.
I thought the whole point of Dragonspear was to better connect the stories of BG1 and 2. Not so much “shoehorning” but rather intended.
I definitely enjoyed it including the not too shocking reveal.
I’m just finishing up the Unseeing Eye quest. Amazing how much crazy sh*t goes on in this city, I sure wouldn’t want to live there. Those Gauth groups wiped my party a few times.
I'm still working my way through Dragonspear. Not much to report, other than the density of some of the maps is far higher than what I remember from BG or BG2.
Hello! Just checking in from the front with my status report on playing BG2. Morale is low, so I apologize for that.
I've been struggling with BG2:EE. I played and loved it when it first launched. Then every handful of years I would dip back in and play again for a bit. Sometimes BG1, sometimes BG2, but it was a recurring game for me. I only every finished BG2 the first time though. And I've never finished BG1.
This club had me looking forward to another dance with an old friend. But it turns out that old friend has a lot of frustrating quirks. Inventory management is quite unpleasant (even after editing my client to allow for unlimited item stacking and what not), so that is a big factor. Another bummer for me is the forced removal of Imoen from my party. It bothers me to be forced to play without a party member for a chunk of time and then have to fit them back into my party later on. I quite like Imoen, and also managing my party is a big part of the appeal for me. I suppose another issue for me is "the chosen one" story line. I'm a bit overdone with being the chosen one after years of games leaning on this narrative crutch.
Wrapped up Dragonspear. Overall enjoyed it when I sat down to play, but sometimes I really did have to conscientiously make time for it. I thought its exploration of what it means to be Bhaalspawn was interesting enough, though I was indifferent to the main storyline itself. I did think that the transition to BG2 was relatively smooth, with the exception of companions: it kinda shoehorns and Minsc, Jaheira, and Imoen at the very last moment to stay canonical.
Anyways, onward to BG2! Planning to take my level 9 berserker and dualclass him to a cleric.
Oops I forgot to start playing this. Just restarted Dragonspear, from my vague memories I hadn’t left the starting area. Just vanquished Korlasz with one fireball. The hardest part of picking this up is remembering what all this stuff is and why I have it. Everyone has full pockets and I have to sort and organise everything so I can loot everything before moving on.
I've made it out of Irenicus's dungeon and into Athkatla proper. Going slow if not always steady.
Feeling pretty torn because on the one hand I want to experience the good writing of the companions (and see the new EE ones) but on the other I want a party of actually interesting and complementary character builds. This isn't helped by the fact that I'm going the Evil route and the companion choices are... limited.
The good thing about the EE is there are definitely more companion options for Evil players, including romance options I believe. At least two come to mind.
Speaking of evil parties, I never did BG2:EE because it's not compatible with the Virtue mod, which is compulsory for me. For those not aware this mod makes it so public reputation is affected separately from internal morality. Choices that impact the world can reduce reputation but increase virtue or vice versa, or evil acts that aren't publicly obvious may reduce virtue but leave reputation untouched. Party members and alignment can be affected by virtue but you don't run into the problem of shopkeeps and guards hating you for stuff that was completely invisible to them. Makes lawful evil/neutral evil alignments quite viable. It also makes it so playing a good party doesn't mean you get you to 20 reputation super quickly.
That does sound neat. I've had to manually adjust my reputation down in the past (using the save editor) just to shut certain characters up.
After going down a Dark Souls hole, I've finally started making some progress. Rolling with Jaheira, Minsc, Jan and Anomen, and rotating the last spot according to quests.
I've gotten my Ranger stronghold, I have the money I need to clear chapter two, but I'm doing the other quests first. And progressing Jaheira's ludicrously convoluted romance.
Aaand the main campaign is done! Irenicus is defeated, Jaheira is wooed. Since i did all the main class quests I started hitting Throne of Bhaal levels, and Jan's trap abilities made the final fights pretty easily exploitable.
Still a really good time, even if fighting Mind Flayers is such a pain in the ass - mass stun is already a giant pain in the ass, but add their two hit kill brain eating attack to it and you have a recipe for pain. Generally though, going back to such a streamlined ruleset after the unending feat lists of the Pathfinder games was pretty refreshing.
I remember liking the Jaheira romance and...nah. It's too long, convoluted and badly structured, and really doesn't play well with chapters 4-5. I wound up using the pause trick to progress through a lot of it.
If you don't know the pause trick, spoilers for how the romances work:
The dialogues trigger after one hour of real time, and the clock is ticking even when the game is paused, so you can just pause the game, and go for a run, do some chores and come back, unpause and it'll progress. If nothing happens, you need to be in a specific kind of area, rest, or rest in a specific kind of area.
Excellent work. I will update the completion status later on when I get time!
Updated the main thread and have updated to include Alien's completed. Has anyone else finished?
I still haven't gone back after my first session with it. I think I'm on a bit of RPG burnout, as I've been playing just about everything (well, mostly Old World) but RPGs since finishing Mankind Divided. With three months to go, maybe the itch will return. Or maybe it'll be the next club game.
I still haven't gone back after my first session with it. I think I'm on a bit of RPG burnout, as I've been playing just about everything (well, mostly Old World) but RPGs since finishing Mankind Divided. With three months to go, maybe the itch will return. Or maybe it'll be the next club game.
I got half way through Wrath of the Righteous and hit the same wall! Although I've been burning out on tactic turn based games rather than 4x's. Oh well.
I'm putting in an hour or two a week into BG2. I'm dedicated to finishing it, but it hasn't really grabbed me yet.
I'm putting in an hour or two a week into BG2. I'm dedicated to finishing it, but it hasn't really grabbed me yet.
Haven't played BG2 since I posted this a month ago. Judging from the activity on this thread, the game simply isn't interesting to people, despite a lot of professed love for it. (Looking at you, everyone who voted for it.)
If I had to make a hypothesis:
- The AD&D ruleset has not aged well.
- The Infinity Engine also has not aged well, even with the Enhanced Edition tweaks.
- The above two combined make the *gameplay* land somewhere on the spectrum between not very interesting and actively annoying.
- That just leaves the story and/or characters to enjoy, but I, like most everyone I'm sure, already know the story and characters to some extent.
Short version, I cannot make myself slog through the gameplay just to experience a story I already know. I may well turn the difficulty all the way down and blast through it just to hit the story-beats/set-pieces which I have fond memories of.
Math wrote:I'm putting in an hour or two a week into BG2. I'm dedicated to finishing it, but it hasn't really grabbed me yet.
Haven't played BG2 since I posted this a month ago. Judging from the activity on this thread, the game simply isn't interesting to people, despite a lot of professed love for it. (Looking at you, everyone who voted for it.)
If I had to make a hypothesis:
- The AD&D ruleset has not aged well.
- The Infinity Engine also has not aged well, even with the Enhanced Edition tweaks.
- The above two combined make the *gameplay* land somewhere on the spectrum between not very interesting and actively annoying.
- That just leaves the story and/or characters to enjoy, but I, like most everyone I'm sure, already know the story and characters to some extent.
Short version, I cannot make myself slog through the gameplay just to experience a story I already know. I may well turn the difficulty all the way down and blast through it just to hit the story-beats/set-pieces which I have fond memories of.
This is still currently on my backburner, to be completed once I've finished Fell Seal.
I do think it's worth pointing out that a lot of people completed and enjoyed BG1, so I think there's more to it than that. But yes, THAC0 and all the rest of it is not something that endears me to playing it, that's for sure.
I played a decent amount, most of the side content prior to going to the island (and that's a lot - since much of it can be left to post chapter 3). But I quickly found myself way ahead of anyone on the thread so I put it on the backburner. I actually had already done a fairly recent play though of BG1/Siege/BG2 back when I picked up Siege so I probably won't bother to go back to this one. I still think it's a good game but between beating it 3x back in the day, and 2x more recently, I've seen most of the nooks and crannies.
It's just so long and I am having a lot of trouble with super long-form RPGs these days (hence my lack of participation in the RPG Club the last 2-3 times). But I still have my save and I poke at it every so often. I really should write down what my levelling plans are for every one, I have a hard time remembering it between sessions. Or even what I was doing last time I was in.
I'm one of those that finished BG1/Siege and then completely flamed out on BG2. I dunno. I still might go back to it, but I think got burned out on the epic isometric-style RPG. I played a few of them in a row last year or so and found after loading up for a session with it that I was looking for just about anything else. But that isometric itch always comes back, so I might circle back to it once Fell Seal is off my plate.
Right.
We have a little over a month left to play this before it toddles off to the retirement home. We have one confirmed finisher which is by far our lowest completion rate for any game we've played! And it's for BG2!!
I'm going to commit to playing this next month and getting it done. If anyone wants to join me, now is the time.......
And we're off. Sorbitolus is an annoyingly good two shoes Inquistor Paladin. We've escaped Irenicus's dungeon and currently aimlessly wandering around Waukeen's Promenade. One of the things I've forogtten about this game is just how directionless it is at this part of the game. What's going on, where to go next etc. I vaguely remember the Shadow thieves are important and that's about it.
I attempted to check, but I last think I played this in anger about 19 years ago when I first met Mrs Sorb. It's a long time.
Nearly every area of the city has stuff to do and people will run up and pester you from time to time. But I do enjoy the freedom.
Once upon a time I finished BG2 and its expansion.
I tried it again a couple of years ago, doing silly things like rushing to get the Daystar longsword and Celestial Fury katana on a dual wielding hasted multiclass Sword Saint. I think the problem with playing these epic games is that once you've completed a playthrough it's hard to motivate yourself to do it again.
Any interest in putting together a multiplayer playthrough?
Any interest in putting together a multiplayer playthrough?
Time would prevent that for me I’m afraid.
So, I suspect I’m playing this game very sub-optimally. And my memory of the last time of playing is practically non-existent.
So rather than spend a lot of time in Athkatla I’ve instead gone straight off to sort out Nalia’s keep, Trademeet and Windspear Hills. That’s been an interesting experience but has certainly made me learn what spells I need in specific situations, and also handed me my backside on more than one occasion. I think I might have to abandon Windspear hills for the time being as there is a fight I can’t get past at the moment. An annoyingly hard mage that apparently can’t be interrupted from spell casting. Which is very annoying.
I am enjoying it - my lack of memory is both help and hindrance I think - I get flashes in some places and have no memory of others (trademeet for example) but the late David Warner’s Irenicus voiceover is still absolutely superb.
Nalia's Keep is absolutely the map/mission you can do at the start of the game. The other two you'll hit a wall but that's totally fine, XP/loot/recruits that you get from progress that you make can help you progress in other areas and around it goes.
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