Baldur's Gate (1998)

I decided to give the Baldur's Gate series a full run in anticipation of Baldur's Gate 3. I'd last played the game 3 years ago, and it seems that my opinions haven't changed a bit. With a bunch of mods to expand the characters, round out some of the rough edges (good god were traps handled horribly), add some more variety to classes and itemization, and generally fix bugs, the game is completely alright.

I'm a huge fan of Baldur's Gate 2, but Baldur's Gate 1 just doesn't have the strong narrative and good character writing that Baldur's Gate 2 has. It's got a nice open, adventure-y feel that has its own appeal, but ultimately runs a bit thin for me with the stiff, old-school real time with pause combat. On that note, I left out the much-lauded Sword Coast Stratagems mod this time, which definitely improved my overall enjoyment. I don't like the combat well enough to want it to be harder or "more tactical" haha.

The other big thing that stuck out to me is how goofy the game can be at times. Most every map has at least one silly encounter, and, of course, Minsc is a giant goofball the entire time. I mainly mention this since Larian generally has a high goof factor in their games, and I wasn't sure if I felt they were the best fit for a new Baldur's Gate. I think I'd still rather a Josh Sawyer led sequel, but Larian is a much better fit then I had remembered.

Just defeated the Iron Throne's Mine, the story is picking up, it is interesting how a LOT of the narrative lifting of the game is done through letters to the various villains.

The wizard fight in this mine was the first confrontation that truly felt like a boss fight, with him teleporting around.

Also, Lightning Bolt bouncing around erratically with no control is brutal.

I just beat the Bandit Camp, my party is a blend of lvl 4-5.

I am hitting a flow with the game where I am actually having a decent amount of fun. The switch port has been perfect to play curled up in bed, or during lunch breaks at work.

This game excels at creating interesting exploration and dynamic/weird monster and NPC interactions. I still think the story is mediocre at best, and I am well over 10 hours in now, so I am not expecting it to "kick off" at this point, but that is ok.

Overall, enjoying myself, interested to see what the next act of the game brings.

I have been playing this on the Switch during my lunch breaks and at night before bed. Few quick observations:

Likes: I like how varied some of the rumors and kernels of info are in town. The dialogue is surprisingly well written at times, and there is a lot of variety in how to interact with NPCs.

Minsc is awesome, as is Jaheira, their personality bleeds through their voice actors and actions.

An archer main character has been surprisingly useful.

The switch has largely been really solid to play on, particularly once I figured out how to highlight interactable stuff on the map.

Dislikes

Leveling is incredibly slow, and often underwhelming. I turned on max HP at level gains to try to offset some of the difficulty of the game, and to make leveling up at least feel rewarding health wise.

Combat, in part due to the lack of real abilities at low levels, feels very untactical, minus occasionally trying to focus down enemies, or chose when to use spells.

This game is a dream for players who love exploring, I'm not certain that is me though

What the hell is a Xvart?!

Finally managed to finish Baldur's Gate after nearly 20 years of abandoning runs! It took a lot of mods, a bit of console use (mostly ctrl + j to hop around previously explored cities) , and some early game cheese, but I had a good time in the end. It's certainly still not a favorite of mine, but mods (and EE fixes) really filled in a lot of the roughest points for me. I just wish Beamdog fixed the darn pathfinding. Firewine Ruins were a bridge too far (get it ha ha ha).

I actually wouldn't be adverse to playing a similarly modded set up with a different party and a bit less early game cheese at some point in the future, though. Getting to over 32k experience via basilisks and easy quests before recruiting a party let me sail a little too easily for a little too long. Worse, I ended up hitting the XP cap with my main character without even doing Tales of the Sword Coast material, so I ended up skipping all of it. In my defense, I'd had to restart due to mod set up issues a couple of times, and wasn't about to fight low level SCS BS a third time lol. Or I could just skip more optional content and still do that... hmmm.

Anyway, I'm excited to dig into Siege of Dragonspear. I enjoyed the first hour or so that I've played. I can see where the negative reviews come from, but they seem to value different things in games than I do, so I'm not too worried. I'm even more excited to get back to BG2, which I still consider an all time favorite, and see if it holds up to my fond memories. It's been almost 15 years since my last play through now!

Whelp, after around 20 years of failed attempts I've finally beaten Baldur's Gate.

I think I always struggled with this game, not because it's difficult but because it's so long and drawn out and tedious at times.. a lot of reading and slowly uncovering the fog-of-war on hundreds of maps and dungeons. At times it's a peaceful and meditative experience exploring forests and caves and fighting monsters.. other times it's more boring than trying to read the phonebook cover-to-cover. The last third of the game is a real tough slog, exploring the 9-map city of Baldur's Gate itself, inventory management, mages casting fear/paralysis at you around every corner, and then the bloody thieves labyrinth full of traps. I'm completely done with this genre for now. O_O