Baldur's Gate Retrospective | A History of Isometric CRPGs (Episode 3)

Baldur's Gate was Bioware's first-ever RPG despite Bioware's lack of experience with the genre baldur's gate now as many of the RPG basics that threatened to be lost to history as RPGs and action games blend into one incoherent mess of unnecessary skill trees and loot grinds most notably board escape manages to tell a clear and complete story within the game without relying on a wealth of law for things to make sense if you want additional information on the founding of borders gay or the land of arms or the south then it is there for you to dig into as part of the Forgotten Realms universe however you don't need it Baldur's Gate there's an excellent job following the doctrine of I like to call the separation of story and law it's a crucial foundation of good storytelling borders gate almost manages another rare feat and that's keeping the story more grounded than typical safe the world narratives I say almost because right from the start it's made clear that your character is special in a way clearly linked to the identity of your birth father from the first minutes Baldur's Gate story looks like a chosen one story and sure enough by the end the stakes are huge however the majority of the 50 plus hours it took me to complete borders gate was spent doing low level adventuring the toughest enemies you face are powerful mages who are often capable wrecking your entire party with a few spells despite borders gate being a licensed Dungeons & Dragons game there are no fights with dragons many modern RPGs have narrative inconsistency because your character is simultaneously forced to go online this fetch quest to kill 10 goats and also one of the most powerful people in the world tasked with stopping an impending threat borders gate doesn't have that problem you never become an all-powerful god and the stories focus is on a political problem plaguing the sword coast and threatening to start a war the southern nation of arm as you can probably tell I enjoyed most of borders gate it isn't consistently strong line to you the immersive first that drew me in so much like wondered why people always bang on about baldur's gate 2 when the original is so good by the end that made a little more sense the second act is slightly dull one new conclusion rushes you through story points so quickly or make your head spin I'm aware that the sequel is generally considered to be the far superior game however that doesn't mean you should skip the original in an ideal world we would all be able to devote the 50 hours to games historically important as baldur's gate however that isn't realistic and the point of this series is to narrow down the list lately and help you decide which ones you want to devote your time to if you want to avoid spoilers any short and simple answer is yes I do recommend you play borders gay even if you're unfamiliar with DND in particular i recommend the enhanced edition that i'm playing in this video it contains special modes and tutorials for beginners that I'll talk about later which helps you get up to speed with the rules or ignore them if you just want the story spoilers will be fairly light until I start directly discussing the story so feel free to keep watching until the time marked on screen now Aldersgate isn't Bioware's first game that honor belongs to shattered steel however it is BIOS first RPG and first mainstream success Bioware was incorporated in 1995 it was the brainchild of two doctors Ray Muzyka and Greg Zeschuk with over the time by where was officially incorporated they had brought on Trent and Brent Auster who both left soon after Marseilles s check-in Augustine yep another doctor note that I didn't describe music and Zeschuk his former doctors both continued practicing for a few years after forming Bioware but eventually had to pack it in when the realities of game development took hold shuttered still may not have been a huge hit but it did well enough that his publisher interplay entertainment gave Bioware the resources to begin development on the game initially called battleground infinity battleground infinity was going to be an MMO of sorts which back in the mid 90s would have been well ahead of its time during development it became clear that battleground infinity would be a great fit for the Dungeons & Dragons license the interplay just acquired so the name was changed to Baldur's Gate a city in the world of the Forgotten Realms where Dungeons and Dragons takes place the ad in the second edition rule set was adopted for combat and it transitioned over to being a single-player game with bored escape Bioware broke new ground in a couple of ways first Baldur's Gate was one of the first native Windows games perhaps more significantly borders gate was created and he now infamous infinity engine my video series on life symmetric sea RPGs will contain a lot of infinity engine games including boulders gate to Planescape torment and ice wind outs modern C RPGs such as pillars of eternity have newer engines which are clearly inspired by the Infinity engine in a GDC presentation music and Zeschuk state that not one person on the Border's gate team would ever made a game before which makes this all the more remarkable one hand we just kind of made it up because we didn't really know what we're doing much at that time we nobody on the team had ever made a video game before not one person of the 60 people that eventually had launched we had on the team Baldur's Gate was a huge hit selling over a million copies in a year and over 2 million in total those might not be massive numbers now but it was a huge deal back then especially when you consider the relatively depressed market for Western RPGs back in the mid to late 90s fast forward to 2009 and Trent osto one of those founding members of Bioware launched a new publisher called bean dog with the remit to remake the classic infinity engine games Aldersgate enhanced edition which his diversion I played was released in 2012 on Windows and iOS coming to steam and Android shortly after the enhanced edition is much more than just an HD update not that the transition to HD was easy it probably won't surprise you to hear that an important baldur's gate data tape was lost in a garage flood given that this seems to be the cause of 90% of the lost video game history if my anecdotal evidence is anything to go by the beam dog team reverse-engineered boulders gay as much as possible after the painstaking process of getting the assets being dog realized that not all of them could be up Reds to 1080p one example cited by beam dogs lead designer Philip Tiger in an interview with Nathan Grayson of Kotaku was that of a cobblestone street Daigo states that the street was quote just a close-up picture of coffee beans and they just repeated over and over again in 98 you had a 15 inch CRT so you're not going to notice or care probably nowadays when you've got an HD screen you're like oh those are coffee beans we have to render out new streets and then lay them into the original 2d are and then paint over it end quote in addition to the HD update beam dog also added quality of life updates so I can't imagine playing boulders gate without my favorite is the quick item pickup bar that lets you see all items close by and pick them up by clicking them in the quick menu instead of separately going up to each dead enemy and clicking on their loop only the phone they have the same short sword as everyone else I spent a good 10 hours playing with this because they serve I managed to forget about it between my second and third attempts at playing boulders gate I have no idea how a close second is equipped save button tight to the Q key which my finger hovered over the entire time you can also highlight nearly all interactive items in the area by holding tab this cuts out some of the pixel hunting from the original so it's now easier to find hidden items in trees which can make a big difference to the early game I'm sure this option has its detractors but the fan it's not like those hidden objects will now jump out at you and they still tend to be tucked out the way enough that it constitutes a reward for exploring the highlight option also shows you the names of people nearby or gives them generic labels such as commoner which makes it easier to know who you should bother talking to strangely holding tab doesn't always highlight doors including when this feature would be most useful such as when their door is not visible on screen stairs could also be easy to miss in certain environments and I spent a ridiculously long time looking for the entrance to the sewers and so I noticed what I think is supposed to be a tiny set of stairs leading down or they might just be coffee beans one quest leads you to a potential companion denier who is at the bottom of a pit the stairs looked like part of the scenery but you can walk down them something it took me an embarrassing amount of time to realise other minor changes include the ability to zoom in and out slowly with the mouse wheel and improvements to inventory management such as better item stacking which is apparently based on the system in Baldur's Gate 2 speaking of inventory management I have no idea how anyone plays this game without the bags were holding loads of potions scrolls and gems keep an eye out for these bulldoze game would be a nightmare without them being an enhanced edition you'd expect many of the originals bugs to be cleaned out and most of them probably are but there are still plenty left in Boulder's gatecrashed roughly once every four hours which is far too often for a game that at its core is 20 years old at this point even the enhanced edition has been out for more than five years after writing the first draft of this script beam blog put out huge new paps which according to the patch notice at least has cleared up some minor complaints I had a few of which were in my initial script so I can't guarantee that all the bugs have been removed so be sure to save regularly the patch is also supposed to fix an annoying issue with the music that pops up during fights it has a tendency to continue long after the fight is finished including over the voice acting for NPCs pathfinding is still terrible at times one or two of my companions often got lost or were just refused to move with the others even though I'd used the select all command the team would try to head down dead ends at times although they would often realize their mistake and correct themselves part fighting becomes most hideous in the dungeons with narrow paths if you're not incredibly careful in how you select the destination the game I think you're trying to place five characters next to each other one just the other side of the wall which given the maze-like nature of these sections means that the character will often end up taking a completely different route strangely pathfinding can even be an issue on the overworld map about halfway through the game you need to travel from cloak wood line to the city of Baldur's Gate you're forced to travel on a roundabout fashion which makes sense because you have to take a specific route to get there doing this puts you in loads of tough random encounters which isn't ideal however if you choose to first go to a location near borders gate and then weave north from there you can do so of barely any delay companion AI has issues in combat as well I had my companions set up to attack on sight and they did however range combatants would often stand around after defeating the nearest enemy instead of pushing on and taking out the rest of the pack the enhanced edition isn't a perfect version of Aldersgate the little quality of life tweaks make a big difference the experience for newcomers but probably aren't enough by themselves to pull in those who are already well-versed with the original well that's where the extra content comes in there's a new mode called the black pits which puts you in an increasingly challenging set of battle arenas I barely touched this mode it's not what I play these games were I'm sure there's an audience for it and then there's beam dogs most controversial addition to Baldur's Gate the new characters and story content within the main game itself the new characters are nearer dawn and restart one feature of the good neutral and evil alignments the only one I spent any major time with it was Nero you meet her early on when she is attacked by some red wizards this used to be an unavoidable counter however that new patch I mentioned apparently makes this optional Nero is a wild mage who is seen as a danger due to her unpredictable magic as a companion she'll occasionally talk about her past and ask you to help her with a lengthy side quests with the goal of eventually controlling her power in theory the new content is a perfect fit for modern-day Bioware's MO namely characters with their own side stories who also happen to be Romance Abul the thing is these additions aren't in keeping with the Bioware that made baldur's gate the original baldur's gate companions had an initial task they'd like help with however is often generic and something you'd likely do anyway there's also little in the way of character development for companions for example you meet your hero and co-lead early on that the friendly arm in they are both a you get to get to Nash care and remind you about it if you delay Nashik how just so happens to be where you need to go anyway so it isn't much of a side quest other characters ask you to clear up van de Kamp's and the like this wouldn't be a problem if the companions felt connected to the side quest in question but you rarely get any development at all once the quest is complete these quests often feel like glorified tutorials giving a guiding hand to new players who might be a little lost with all the wilderness to explore and the lack of Direction beam dogs new characters have much deeper side quests and everything is fully voice-acted whereas the original conversations between companions usually won't in other words the new stuff really stands out quality wise I don't believe the new stuff is any worse than the original content although I don't believe improves things much either the new writing feels a little more modern and perhaps lack some of the tongue-in-cheek charm of the original but some of the feature I've seen for the new content is a touch extreme I mean come on the most memorable line from the original is a man yelling orders to a space hamster we need to line up a bit from a game preservation standpoint it does feel a touch odd that we can't play the baldur's gate story without the new content this is all highly subjective of course but there seems to be a big difference between patching bugs adding a separate game mode and making quality of life changes compared to adding a new story content which tries to blend in seamlessly with the original I played the entire game with the companion who didn't even exist in the original and for better or worse that would always be part of my impression of the game however all that said maybe we wouldn't have got the enhanced edition at all if it weren't for the new content it's a selling point for those who have the original which already has mods to remove many of the bugs and add resolution options I also understand the desire of developers to stretch their creative muscles a bit something we'll see more of a siege of Dragon spear it's an open secret that beam dog wants to make borders gate 3 and this new content is likely a test run to prove their the writing chops to do it justice last but not least is the major Edition that makes baldur's gate enhanced edition an easy game to recommend regardless of your experience with D&D there's a story mode where you cannot die in combat I mean I talk more about it later but if you don't like the sound of the dice rolls behind combat baldur's gate then just know that you don't have to worry about it all that much story mode is not how I'd recommend you play the game but I can't blame people for wanting to skip all the complications especially when even the creator character screen is daunting to newcomers and by newcomers I am including myself because I stared at these screens for a long time and still didn't entirely understand the consequences of my choices I blamed my first abandoned 30 hour attempt and the choices I made on these initial screens everything starts off innocently enough with a gender selection that makes absolutely no difference to your character then you choose your race which takes a little more thought you can be human elf half elf dwarf halfling gnome and half hawk human is the least interesting with no special attributes as such it's basically the default race elfin half elf or similar with both having advantages with bows and certain swords resistance to some magic and abilities typically suited to rogues or thieves dwarfs halflings and gnomes have beneficial saving throws more thief skills and adjustments both positive and negative to key attributes like wisdom and dexterity orcs have bonuses to strength and constitution with corresponding decreases to intelligence I strongly suspect most people will go with human but if you want to play as a rogue then you might want to be more adventurous next up you pick your class and this is where things get really confusing apologies for the lengthy lists but I want to give you some idea of just how many choices there are if you play as a human the race which has the most class option so you can play as a fighter Ranger piloting cleric mage thief bard sorcerer monk or shaman other races are limited in what they can choose once again there's a default class of sorts which is a fighter other classes are restricted in what they can wear and wield in combat with certain weapon proficiencies attempting to keep things balanced through my various playthroughs I trade out mage thief and fighter which were the classes I had a decent grasp of through other RPGs the footage you will see in this video is of a fighter I'm sure the other classes have their admirers but they look more appropriate for veterans of the series who know what they're doing speaking of needing to know what you're doing after choosing your class you need to choose your class kit which is perhaps akin to a subclass I spent ages on the screen and eventually ended up choosing a subclass of Fighter 4 Mike fighter I know it's boring but my character is a human fighter fighter don't worry I'm not going to list every possibility because that would be tedious even by the standards of my videos I'll just give some examples coming from the human choices you can be a human paladin undead hunter a human major illusionist a human cleric priest of Tallis or a human monk of the Sun soul faction your choice of class kit helps you make some incredibly specific choices for your character which again is great if you have a clue what to expect going forward a human fighter hoop XD berserker classkick st once a day ability to rage but can't specialize in ranged weapons and must be of a non lawful alignment choosing the Kensei class kit gets you a bonus to your armor class but prohibits you from wearing armor you might like the sound of that compromise or you might not know what the hell armor class is at this point Aldersgate like many games from the 90s maybe not entirely unreasonable assumption that you would have read the manual before playing you then choose your alignment of lawful good chaotic evil or somewhere in between this affects your starting reputation in towns all companions you meet have an alignment of their own if you act evil around someone who is good they will likely kick up a fuss and may eventually leave the party next is the ability screen which gives you a random amount of points to allocate based on dice rolls I suppose in theory you should go with the first number you're given but there's a handy little re-roll button right there so you could just try two three four hundred times and so you get a nice high number around 90 I would prefer a system with a set number points to allocate although the ability to effectively choose the total number adds in another way for you to control the experience by making life slightly easier or harder than yourself each attribute is capped 18 although strength goes up to 18 point 9 9 most of this is self explanatory strength is melee attacks and carrying capacity dexterity is ranged attacks and a thieving intelligences for spells wisdom is for clerics and charisma plays a role in dialogue checks finally you pick your skills again new players are flailing around in the dark here because you don't know what good gear you're gonna find all when my approach on an earlier playthrough is to focus points on swords and the sword and shield style during that playthrough I found a great early armor set and some excellent morning stars which made the sword and shield largely unnecessary when starting another new character I took that knowledge and focused on the morning stars and two weapons attack style this decision needn't be make-or-break for your playthrough so long as you don't do something stupid probably not a good idea to specialize in two-handed swords in combination with these sword and shield style for example the only challenging part is knowing what good gear you are likely to find and what gear your companions will end up having that's another advantage of picking the morning stars because my companions of choice don't use them and therefore I don't have to share the good loop likewise my protagonist wouldn't need a shield which freed them up for my companions who would only hurt themselves if given a morning star combat is governed by the second addition rule set of D&D I'm going to take a shot at explaining how it works so those of you who are as clueless as me about this stuff can at least vaguely understand what you're looking at in the video it's not all that complicated if you take a bit of time to study the rules however a couple of bizarre terms and rules are front-loaded which likely has people flipping on story row before they've even left the introductory village let's start with fatto which perhaps more accurately would be pronounced vac zero it stands for to hit armor class zero your characters that go is the number they need to roll on a 20-sided die to hit an enemy with an armor class of zero that begs the question what is armor class just think of that as armor quality the odd bit is that you want both Darko and armor class to be as low as possible it makes sense when you think of how the two numbers interact but it's counter intuitive or something like armor to be stronger when the number is lower a quick example might help let's say you have a thak of sixteen and an armor class of three you're fighting an enemy with AK of 18 and an armor class of seven you need a roll of at least nine on a d20 together hit your opponent needs a roll of at least 15 regardless of taco and armor class a roll of 20 will always be a hit there's nothing overly complicated about this but the interface and in-game explanations do more to confused and help as we've seen certain types of carrot to get bonuses to that go in armor class likewise certain weapons armor and accessories will adjust that go in armor class either for all attacks or certain types such as piercing attacks given that a lower fat Cohen armor class is always better you'd expect items that improve these stats to be a negative number such as - 1 - that Oh however it's actually the other way around if you want to improve your fat go buy one to move it from 16 to 15 then you need to equip an item that gives you a +1 tooth a KO or an item that has a higher positive attribute than your existing piece for example you could replace a +3 piece with a +4 piece that Co is off-putting to newcomers but it isn't complicated once you understand how the game is presenting the numbers it gets easier from here on out well kind of the DD rules can get insanely complicated if you want to get into the nitty-gritty of each number every dice roll and the interactions between spells buff status effects and the like button understanding of that ko is enough for you to complete Baldur's Gate on Normal difficulty after rolling the d20 in determining whether or not an attack has landed you then calculate the damage which is depending on the weapon with varying types of dice used to calculate an attack number while the you ideas about job presenting the information for newcomers I have to give by aware and being dog credit for including plenty of tutorials and guidance in the early stages in the original game you start off in candle heat with incredibly basic quest such as finding items for hungover guards and helping a sick cow NPC strongly encourage you to complete training scenarios such as fighting while dealing with a surprise attack from an archer or handling multiple enemies there also scholars dotted around candlekeep to explain the rules and user interface beam dog took it one step further introduced a new tutorial section before you even start a campaign teaching you to use different classes of character so you're not completely confused when you pick up a thief and don't know what to do and face with the trap I'm not convinced it's actually possible to gradually ease players into the DMD we're all set in one game without completely ruining the pacing but I appreciate both developers attempts at trying with melee fighters you can pretty much set and forget though head into battle and deal as much damage as possible while soaking up whatever the enemy has to throw the real creativity comes in with spellcasters like to hear and nearer all this Kate has an insane amount of spells to choose from the really good stuff is saved until you've leveled up a bit but even at level one you can cast spell such as sleep and magic missle this isn't as exciting as summoning monsters to fight alongside you or turning of skin to stone but mages are certainly useful from the get-go majors also take the most skill and patience to use efficiently you typically have to keep them out of danger which is easier said than done when the AI is seemingly tasked for treating them like suicide of red shirts even if they do stay at the back of the pack you have to worry about them casting area of effect spells such as fire toxic or webs which can affect your team as well as the enemies in any half way challenging encounters you take personal control of your mages to stop them doing more harm than good when used correctly mages can make the toughest encounters into a snoozefest literally there's nothing quite like having your mage cast to sleep spell and beating people to death while they sleep toxic clouds still serious damage without having to get closer to the enemy but keeping your own team out of the clouds is more challenging than it should be it's also 9 impossible to know the exact area of effect for these spells the description gives you information like the AoE being 40 feet but that isn't particularly helpful I struggle to gauge distance in real life when a foot in this context is about three and a half pixels it becomes even more challenging it might look a little cheap but a marker showing the area your spell will hit would have been incredibly helpful given unlimited attempts mages could keep spamming spells until one of them worked and make your party practically unbeatable RPGs usually limit spell usage to a mana system that needs to be replenished either by waiting for cooldown timers to expire or through the use of consumables baldur's gate takes a different approach by giving mages a carrying capacity of sorts spells have a level and each major cleric can only carry a certain amount of spells at each level if you want to cast the spell more than once then you'll need to have that spell take up multiple slots once you've used up a spell you won't get it back until you rest likewise you can't change up your deck of spells until you sleep I believe this is part of the D&D rule set so this isn't intended as a criticism of Bioware just an observation that perhaps this system doesn't work so well out of the typical DD setting I'd have preferred a typical ap or mana system planning out your spell's before a battle is fine if you know what type of battle is coming up if you know you're gonna be fighting mages you like to cast fear spells then stock up your own taury with resist fear spells the problem comes when you don't know what you're going to face which is most of the time you can try to stock a wide variety of spells but you can't possibly prepare for every eventuality this meant I was often fighting without the spells that could have made light work of encounters the alternative of course is to quick save before you encounter and load up again once you know what spells you'll need take a quick nap and you'll be good to go this is a feasible burn a little satisfying way of playing to be clear you don't need to do that often for most encounters a decent mix of spells will get you through just fine over there were a lot of major encounters that I simply couldn't get through without leaving and coming back again with a refresh spell inventory this is perfectly within the rules it just doesn't feel within the spirit and becomes a slippery slope once you get into the habit of planning for major encounters it becomes easy to expect perfection for each fight if you win but get a beating why not just reload a saver make better use of your knowledge of the enemy's skill sets you also need to keep identified spells handy to use on magical items you find if not you might find yourself equipping cursed items that you can't remove you can identify items at temples but there aren't that many of them and you usually want to know what sweet gear you found straight away there's a fine line between learning and choosing and I'm not entirely sure I always stay on the right side of it occasional decide to stick with what I had and try to push through in the spirit of role-playing and then I would come across an enemy that felt like a puzzle encounter specifically designed to make you leave and come back later with the correct spells the best example of this is the basilisks if you fight these guys with a full party at least one member of that party will get turned to stone probably too if that person happens to be your protagonist then it's game over otherwise you can always come back later with a stone to flesh scroll or a spell to bring the companion back to life that's clearly a hassle and besides there's likely to be more than one basileus to fight anyway the solution is to have a mage cast protection from petrification to prevent your team being petrified assuming that the mage has that in their spell inventory without their main attack the vast risks are pretty useless so you only need to send in one person to deal damage once you're properly protected I would also lure enemies away from the group this is obviously taking advantage of limited enemy visibility but they could have been placed in a tighter group if by way didn't want us to do that I see it is similar to distracting enemies by throwing a bottle and watching as one with a death wish goes to investigate berghain is a slippery slope you get situations where you climb a set of stairs and walk into a room full of enemies before quickly nipping back down the stairs with only one enemy choosing to follow and then repeat and repeat and repeat until they're all dead this is cheap I'll admit that much however when there is a wizard on the other side who can confuse your entire squad within a few seconds of the fight starting it often feels like the only way to win speaking of those confusion spells I really wish they would wear off immediately once you've won the encounter likewise for certain traps like webbing it's tedious to have everyone standing there for a minute with nothing to do why wait for a timer to take down while I clearly had a lot of problems understanding all the systems at play I eventually managed to complete baldur's gate on normal mode with the exception of two moments in the expansion that I'll talk about later if you're also a newcomer then I'd recommend you start with normal as well but for the most part you'll also be fine with the corrals option as a quick rundown borders gate has the following difficulty options easy normal core rules hard insane and legacy of Baal anyone capable playing on hard insane or legacy of ball isn't gonna need advice from an amateur like me so I'll focus on easy normal and core rules as mentioned earlier there's also a story mode the major difference between the difficulties are in damage dealt by enemies core rules is the base difficulty would damage at 100% normal has 75% and easy has 50% easy also has fewer enemies and a luck bonus the difference in damage received doesn't make as big a difference as you'd expect especially on the more challenging fights when even at 50% a major enemy will be able to tear your mage to shreds in no time likewise if you get frozen in place a 50% damage reduction just means your inevitable death takes twice as long the luck bonus on easy certainly helps although having fewer enemies just means less opportunity to practice and presumably less xp easy isn't a mode you can coast through without understanding what you're doing while experimenting early in my time with Aldersgate I made some truly terrible parties that got annihilated by basic enemies uneasy largely because I had no idea how to use them even an easy you'll need a basic understanding of Flacco and armor class to make it through the reason I recommend starting on normal as opposed to easy is that on normal you'll find out a lot quicker whether you actually know what you're doing with that luck bonus and fewer enemies it's perfectly possible to push through a couple of early skill checks and be lowered into a full sense of security it's better to find out you don't understand combat early on rather than 10 hours into a run once you've already made a complete mess of a party composition you think the same logic would apply to to make a bump up to corals worth while I experimented with core rules a fair bit and it's not all that steeper jump you will lose fights more often but in my experience any fight I could get through a normal mode I could also get through encore mode it might just take a few more tries or extra potions there's a couple of other reasons why I recommend normal / core mode for newcomers first of all companions can die permanently in core mode in the true spirit of role-playing you should probably let this happen and roll with it but this was way too common and occurrence for me in normal mode companions can be revived on the cheek by visiting a temple it's still a pain because you have to take the characters inventory and split it between your party and then give it all back when they revived due to the hassle I'd usually restart fights until I got through without any losses I pretend to myself that this is just to save the time of visiting a temple and isn't choosing at all so ultimately regardless of whether you're playing on core rules or normal you will probably restart fights if companions die there are two other reasons for sticking to normal that are more important or at least justified temporary switches to normal the first is that when you level up on two core rules the amount of HP you gain is determined by a dice roll under normal you get the maximum amount available this can make a huge difference once you get to level seven plus finally under core rules when mages and clerics write Scrolls to their inventory there is a chance the writing will fail and the spare will be lost most spells can be found in multiple locations but getting a rare spell and then losing it before you even get a chance to use it is not fun that's why I recommend normal / core rules and easy as discuss there is also a story mode where your characters cannot die in combat you'll make it through every battle without any trouble although if you don't equip your characters properly then it could take a while as you watch swing after swing missing or barely doing any damage at the risk of stating the obvious story mode is there if you just want to experience the story and don't care about the combat or don't care enough to learn if I weren't doing an entire video series on C RPGs and I certainly would have been tempted as it was I wanted to learn as much as possible to improve my experience with future games I'm certainly not going to judge anyone who opts to avoid the nitty-gritty of combat I didn't find it particularly exciting myself the sheer variety of spells for mages and clerics made them interesting and varied but three members of my party were largely automated I could have micromanaged a little more than melee builds but never felt the need or desire to do so on the harder difficulty settings you need to pause regularly and issue commands to maximize each companions maybe I'll take that approach as I grow more comfortable with these C RPGs and the D and D rule set but for my first time this was enough and let's face it I mainly play RPGs for the story and baldur's gate certainly has a lot going for it in that regard this is when you should stop watching if you want to avoid story spoilers you start the campaigning candlekeep your protagonist has a fixed backstory which I'm not usually a huge fan of however he or she is still largely a blank slate when it comes to personality traits and potential skillsets so it's workable as explained by the deep and foreboding narrator who pops up at the beginning of each chapter you are a ward of Goran and have spent all your life in the fortress of candlekeep candlekeep isn't a fortress in the traditional military sense instead it keeps itself isolated from the political intrigues of the Forgotten Realms and works to preserve history in its centerpiece library entry is only granted to those who pay with a book of historical importance groin is your father figure and teacher he imparted decades of wisdom and yet never told you your true heritage I wonder if that'll be important after acting suspiciously for a few weeks go Ryan suddenly tells you to prepare to travel outside of candlekeep with no explanation as to why you need to suddenly uproot your life it gives you some money to buy supplies but you can add a bit more by helping out the locals with the usual assortment of rat killing and fetch quests these quests are assigned with more than a nudge in a wink towards the fourth wall yes you're doing the same stuff you've done 100 times before but it's strangely endearing and I was in no rush to leave when you do finally leave candlekeep weave grind the two of you are attacked by a group we demand that go Ryan hand you over Ryan keeps them busy enough that you're able to escape but he is killed in the process if you return to groans body you'll find a note from a mysterious figure known as E who tells guarana he must leave candle key with his ward immediately and head to the friendly are men you might already be losing interest this probably sounds like another chosen one story where you have to save the world while also reuniting children with their lost pets and other random nonsense there is certainly a disconnect here that I'll discuss more later but it's worth bearing in mind the borders gates story is fairly low-key most of the time this is best illustrated by the level cap no matter how many side quests you do and bandits who kill you won't get higher than level 10 and some character classes can't even get that high I finished the game at level 7 although the expansion would have got me to level 8 if I'd done that first either way leveling is rare and this isn't an accident typically in RPGs your level was a strong indicator for what level you can and cannot be in combat however often doesn't bear any relation to the type of enemies you can face I'm sure you can all think of an RPG that presents a huge beast for you to fight such as a dragon that is a relatively low level so you can defeat it early on later in the game you go up against small beasts or bandits with a ridiculously high level that technically mean they're many times tougher than the dragon you face 20 hours ago you face the same enemies throughout the game where they have a higher level there's often no reason for these enemies being tougher to kill they just are some games attempt to excuse this by giving them a new name which perhaps suggests a higher level of armour or more venomous attack but as players we know the score we know this is largely nonsense how can we take on a massive drag in 1 minute and then the next we die to a spider barely big enough to raise an Australian eyebrow all just get this this a bit but not too much enemy levels and your level means something for starters you never fight a dragon in this Dungeons & Dragons game the closest it gets is with some wyverns when you're low level you'll be able to deal with dribbling is easy enough but wild dogs can pop an aggressive fight later on those same dogs are a pushover as they should be the challenge builds naturally large spiders are tough annoy insurmountable they don't just get bigger or change color as you level up instead they start using web traps that hold you in place while they attack and poison you face spiders can teleport use a nuisance but when you do land a hit they go down fairly easily human enemies stick to similar rules the difference between a bandit that goes down with one dice roll and one that puts up a fight is the quality of their weapons and armor the same as with you and your companions this never becomes absurd you won't come up against the solitaire guard who is capable of wiping out your high-level team just because he is considered an in-game guard to increase the threat of standard human enemies you have the mages who can make a relatively simple battle impossible by throwing out an early confusion or fear spell you can have a party of 6 with strong fighters a powerful mage a cleric and a rogue pinging arrows from afar but you never become all-powerful your protagonists relative lack of power means you never feel out of place during the smaller quests if anything is the bigger story art concerning your parentage that feels like it belongs in another game you might be destined for something bigger but you don't know what or when and it doesn't help much when you're facing a pack of angry orcs compare this to the likes of Dragon Age Inquisition when every go killing quest you take on means delaying the closing of rifts that threatens to bring about the end of the world you start off needing to defend yourself threats found in the wild you then uncover a conspiracy and it develops naturally from there or at least it does for most of the game the third act gets a little chaotic the first act however is incredible and one of the best I've played in a while when the protagonist meets a new character you often introduce yourself as an adventurer and you actually feel like one you spend hours simply exploring the wilderness picking up side quests and welcoming and rejecting companions in the win a girl you grew up with in candlekeep will be most players first companion although you are free to go it alone if you like regardless of who travel with you'll find it impossible to miss discussion around an iron shortage in the region band is that everywhere disrupting iron shipments and the iron that does make it through tends to be of poor quality prone to falling apart and hardly suitable for use in weapons and armor your own curiosity takes you south to the town of Burgos which acts as a home of sorts for the entire adventure one building is conveniently empty after you cut a bunch of spiders as part of a side quest so I used it to store the loot that I wasn't ready to sell continuing south takes you to Nash cow and then the mines in your first proper dungeon experience dungeons are a core part of not just D&D but many RPGs the Elder Scrolls games are obvious examples and I'd argue that fallout also has dungeons at least in spirit even if they take the form of building interiors instead despite being a core part of RPGs at genre that love I'm not a huge fan of dungeons I'm a story guy an RPG combat is usually something I put up with instead of actively enjoy dungeons can contain decent stories and there's an excellent example of that in the boulders gay expansion however for the most part they consist of narrow corridors and hordes of enemies the Nash care mines offer up a bit of story if you talk to the miners but for the most part is just to trek through narrow corridors running into dead ends and defeating Cobalts the hardest part is keeping everyone together in corridors that are barely wide enough to contain your party once you reach the bottom you meet Miller hey and uncover a little more of the conspiracy well hey can order the cobalt around because he's convinced them he's their God he instructed the kobolds to poison the iron dug out of the mines this infected the iron like a plague in is the reason it's all of such poor quality you have to kill male and upon reading his personal letters you find out he is working under the orders of tasak you know a little more about the cause of the iron shortage and have a new lead but there's still no urgent need to go and save the world I love how the first act lets you uncover the iron conspiracy by yourself the prologue felt a little too railroaded with Goran making you leave in this prompt death but after that you were free to do as you will have no major objective to distract you an iron shortage might not sound all that exciting however there's enough of a conspiracy vibe about it to draw you in it's the perfect balance of intriguing story and freeform adventuring for a fantasy RPG if all of Aldersgate were as strong as the beginning until the completion of the NASCAR mines I'd be dumping more praise on it and critics due for mediocre Nintendo games the second act though is too long and has you repeating an almost identical scenario to the Nash Carmine's you need to hunt down taser kind of told about a bandit camp nearby I couldn't get close to the Bandit camp and so I had leveled up a bit so I spent a fair few hours exploring the sword coast and completing the vast majority of the available side quests the stakes are higher now that we know about the iron plague in the adventuring that had been so captivating before now started to feel like an unwanted distraction once you clear out the bandit camp hazard gives you a lead to a previously inaccessible area called cloak would eventually you make it to cloak with mine and pretty much repeat the process you did in the Nash count mines cloak with mine is under the control of the iron throne which as the name suggests is an organization that deals in iron the iron throne is using slaves to work the cloak would mine which most people consider to be inactive to create their own supply of weapons and armor which are now a short supply the cloak would mind at least contains the opportunity to make a big decision that would decide the fate of the miners why not exactly subtle it was a welcome reminder of the choices that the early Fallout games presented on a regular basis one of the miners tells you about a plug that could be used to flood the mine on the way out when further down you can tell another miner about the plants you flood the mine and instruct him to get the miners out if you're playing a good party then of course you should do this however if you like you can lie to the first miner and tell him that all the miners have reached safety and game to pull the plug early killing everyone down there it's nice to have options as with the Nash combines you get to the end and find the person in charge this time a mage called the veil on who points you in a direction of riot I'll the cloak would mine by itself is no worse than the Nazca lines in fact it's probably better but having two minds as consecutive story beeps means that the second act suffers through repetition at least that next lead takes you to the city of Baldur's Gate it's been there at the top of your map this entire time and only after twenty-five plus hours can you finally go there while there was a little too much meandering for my liking leading up to this every minute spent outside the city contributes to the all you feel if you walk over the long bridge for the first time that's nothing compared to the epic sense of scale from the city itself Aldersgate is massive every town you visited so far is fit comfortably into one zone of the map baldur's gate has nine and that's not including the underground sewers baldur's gate is a city of law and order so you can largely take a break from fighting for a while and just explore perhaps in an attempt to spice things up slightly you're given two side quests that need to be completed within 10 days the time limits might be to stop you constantly leaving combat and resting in one of the many ends one quest as you work with the Thieves Guild to steal bands for halloran sky ships I managed to make a mess of this more than once and had to load a few saves while force is always an option killing the targets will be a hit on your reputation so you're better off sneaking in you need to pretend to be a cleaner and select the correct dialogue options and have your rogue character using visibility potions to sneak around upstairs and steal the required items in another quest you're poisoned while you sleep and will die in 10 days unless you get the antidote this one is completely out of place given all the adventures I've been on with my companions I'd like to think someone couldn't just sneak into our room as we slept to poison me and why use a 10-day poisonous are just killing me outright I strongly suspect with absolutely no proof whatsoever that this quest was just to give players something to do while exploring the city and before the crazy stuff goes down it's been a while since the iron shorty's mystery has gone anywhere but it's wrapped up quickly in the final act gone is the sense of exploration and adventuring replaced by huge story developments that come one after the other with no time to digest what the hell is going on the flaming fists are the peacekeeping force with bold escape one of its members Skaar introduces you to do Kelton leader of the flaming fists and one of the four Dukes of baldur's gate Elton asked you to investigate the Iron Throne believing it to be responsible for the iron crisis which you've probably already figured out by this point Ellison gives you a valuable book which can be used to barter your way back inside candle keep returning to the starting area is another powerful moment in the story it's likely taking you around 40 hours to reach this point and candle he was locked off the entire time in the real world it's likely been weeks since you've been back here it's tempting to wander the village and catch up with old friends but it's hard to resist the lure of the central library that was previously off-limits inside the library you meet Coe Varys who suggests you should attack the Iron Throne leaders one of whom is royalty who was the boss of duvet on back at the cloak wood mine given that we already know real tar on the Iron Throne erupts no good it's tempting to take varys upon his word however other members of the library think he's been acting weird lately I found real town as I'm throwing buddies and promptly killed them before being arrested two sigma after even if you don't kill them you end up getting arrested so it's probably mandatory especially considering the information dump you get from Terrell just before you're teleported to the catacombs kuvira's is actually a man called sorrow of Aquos when spelled backwards is Cabarrus Sarawak has been manipulating everyone crippling the iron supply and setting bandits loose with the end goal of starting a war between the Sword Coast and the nation of arms of the south he's spreading rumors in both nations that the other party is preparing for war and is responsible for the iron crisis just waiting for the right time to light the match oh and Sarawak is the one who killed quraían and he's been after you this entire time instead of killing you outright he's now decided to frame you as an agent of armed who murdered the Iron Throne leaders as part of a mission to spread chaos throughout the sword coast to be fair in my case he was right about the murders once in the catacombs you come across familiar faces including Orion who tries to convince you that he survived the attack after all he didn't it's a double ganger I'd already seen doppelgangers during a sidequest back in boulders game they'd taken over the merchants league in order to make terrible decisions to help Sarawak what I don't know is how long these doppelgangers were in place I did wonder whether my interactions during the prologue might have been with doppelgangers however I don't believe this is the case it would appear that the doppelgangers down in the catacombs plan to take over from those above ground but haven't done so yet you eventually escape and head back to boulders gate to gather evidence in a desperate attempt to prove that Sarawak is behind the iron crisis before war breaks out being an escaped convicts you can't exactly wander the streets freely this time with hindsight this is one of the more interesting parts of the game have the experience of actually playing it was painful if the flaming fist mercenary spot you they will arrest you you can fight them but you take a hit of ten to your reputation which is huge plus they are innocent after all if they arrest you then you'll quickly found guilty in a trial and placed in the underground prisons you can escape these easily by answering a riddle from another prisoner who just casually happens how the key on him for this point on everyone will be after you and unless you're still killing guards you're gonna have a rough time well I didn't realize initially is it you can avoid being arrested I assume this content is mandatory but it's not and life will be a lot simpler if you never get caught so how do you manage that the secret is to use the sewers to get where you need to go without being seen for me this meant constantly entering and exiting sewers and so I lucked out and came above-ground where I needed to be all in all it took me hours to gather the evidence I needed and get some invitations from the palace where I had to convince the Grand Dukes of Sara Vox guilt I'm skipping over a lot of stuff here you meet a former lover of sarawak who wants you to spare his life and the shadow teaser farm who helped you prove that arm is not behind all this the finale really is packed full of huge developments and we're a long way from done you stroll in on Sarawak just as he's about to be crowned the grand cheek he eventually notices you for such an imposing character he's not too observant and might want to cut down on all the headgear here you give you a little speech and prove that Sara Brock is guilty he quickly drops all pretenses and half of the nobles in the room turn out to be doppelgangers sorry Rock escapes and heads to a hidden layer under Bulls gate it seems he doesn't care much about being ground Juke anymore and is confident that enough damage has been done for his plan to go forward Sarawak is the son of Barre the former lord of murder a seer known as a loon day foresaw balls death which prompted balls who father some offspring known as balls born in the hope that one of them would resurrect him you hear these prophecies at the start of the game in candlekeep but it wasn't so I was going back through my video footage that I understood what they were going on about instead of resurrecting Barr Sarawak wants to become the new lord of murder which is why he's trying to orchestrate a wall between the sword coast and arm the big twist is that you are also under the BAL spawn sorry buck wanted you out of the way in case you proved to be a complication or a rival this is why you've spent all your life in candlekeep why go Ryan took you into his care and why you had to leave candlekeep in a hurry whereas you were taking him by the trustworthy groin sarawak was taking him by real tardy member of the Iron Throne you killed back in candlekeep half brother against half brother is a somewhat boring and predictable revelation there's an attempt to make it dramatic with sarawak fleeing to the underground city which is separated from the Thieves Guild by a tedious maze there are a few traps and enemies but most of it is slowly walking down corridors this is either to build tension before the big fight or more likely to stop you leaving underground city to go back and rest between fights I tried this once and let me tell you it takes a long time to get out of here perhaps Bioware fellow Dungeons & Dragons game really needed to finish off in a dungeon of sorts at least the final battle was fitting so a rock doesn't turn into some all-powerful God before your eyes although his armor is a bit over the top the fight with Sarawak is an incredibly difficult fight with a couple of powerful mages there to make life difficult but it's consistent with what we've been doing for the previous 40 or so hours I have to confess this is another fight I slightly forced my way through if you're very careful you can fight one of the mages without Sarovar all the other mages getting involved and then lure Sarawak off by himself the game ends when Sarawak dies regardless of whether you've beaten his companions there's only one minor defense of my actions and that's the absence of a thief to deactivate all the traps here I'll talk about that bit more later after the feasting Sarawak you see a statue of him collapse and the camera pans around to reveal other statues which presumably represent other balls ball bar was a busy guy there's an incredibly jarring moment after the credits where you're thrown straight into siege of dragon spear the new game from beam dog that plugs the gap between Baldur's Gate 1 & 2 I saw I was playing an epilogue for a few seconds Sarah walks dead everything's a mess we should have gotten out of the city days ago I'm gonna do a separate video on siege of Dragon spear later but after playing baldur's gate for over 50 hours not to mention time spent another playthroughs the last thing I wanted to do was jump into a new game looking back on the story I still find it strange how quickly things wrapped up from casual adventuring to taking on a ball spawn the two conflicting tones are a problem throughout the game at the start you tell everyone you meet that you're just out there looking for adventures and seem relatively unconcerned with the frequent assassins who are hired specifically to kill you there are also dark dreams of the gloomy narrator that pop up randomly and often contrasts sharply with the calm campfire around which you're sleeping these moments are here to remind you that go Ryan died for a reason to protect you however your protagonist just shrugs it all off he never seems overly concerned by the assassination attempts all the information you have about his heritage olga ryan dying to save him i can't help but wonder whether the grander parts of the story could have been omitted from the first half entirely perhaps go ryan could send you out by yourself and you don't find out he's dead until later I'm not sure how the story benefits from knowing that you are clearly destined for something bigger right from the outset if you can't pursue those leads when talking to NPCs this would also make the random meetings with elminster more cryptic it's fairly obvious your meetings are not as random as they appear and that here's the one who sent that letter to go Ryan we as the play have too much knowledge of the wider plot while seems oblivious the removal of the big mystery could combined with a slower ramp up towards the reveals at the end and the shift to a more serious tone that doesn't feel quite so jarring the protagonist shouldn't be talking merrily about going on adventures when he's trying to stop a war from breaking out the major thing lacking from borders gates story at least for my taste is the ability to make choices that affect the world around you I mentioned the choice in cloak would mind where you can save the miners leave them behind or even deliberately drown them if you like unfortunately there aren't many moments like this your alignment of lawful good through to chaotic evil affects which party members you can have with you and your reputation in towns it will also dictate how you interact with NPCs the problem is this doesn't affect the world there's no fallout style slideshow at the end where you're shown the consequences of your choices because you didn't have any to begin with five months after the release of baldur's gate Bioware released the expansion tales of The Sword Coast you have to do this before completing the main campaign which is slightly awkward because the two stories are separate and represent the hardest content in the game going to Olaf's beard gives you the opportunity to learn more about bald around the man who Baldur's Gate is named after there's a short mission where you walk to an ice Island to retrieve a Wizards cloak but the majority of the story takes place after being shipwrecked on an island while searching for the remains of Balder ons last voyage Men descends you on a mission to retrieve border runs logbook from Borderlands wrecked ship for the wandering eye and while you're there you might as well help the locals with their wolf where problem and yes there is wolf where not where Wolf Wolf wears awards that can take human form as opposed to humans that can take wolf one you find the wandering eye but it's full of wolf wares which put up a tough fight as discussed earlier I never hesitated to choose the combat where necessary but the fights here were extreme even for me I will try to split apart groups of enemies so I didn't have to deal with an entire floor at once I would also rest right outside the ship between each floor and once even between battles themselves pretty cheap I'm also a clear indicator to anyone vaguely observant there perhaps I was missing something finally I made it to the final boss and defeated all his minions however the boss himself Karuk would not go down I saw my team dealing damage and would watch as he went from uninjured severely injured to injured the seconds later he'd be back to one injured again it was at this point I suspected that maybe I needed to take a different I already had one weapon the - damage - lycanthropes but by itself this wasn't enough to kill the creature before he healed himself I had to find another weapon I searched the entire island and found nothing I worried that I might have missed the weapon from the ice island I visited previously or was just supposed to pick it up from all go speed before boarding the ship however deep down I was knew where such an important weapon would be located Dirac's tower the second major piece of content included in the expansion not that it mattered much because it was impossible to leave the island anyway before now you've always been able to leave an area and come back later if you were under level didn't have the right spells new inventory wanted better equipment or just wanted a rest in this case I clearly needed to get a better weapon but I couldn't leave the island it would have to get through the fight with the weapons I already had switching the difficulty down so easy didn't help in any noticeable way kuru burst away with a hill before I defeated him for the first time I switched over this story mode and got through the fight I guess story mode has modifiers either help you do extra damage or stop enemies healing themselves because otherwise no matter how invincible I was I wouldn't have been able to kill Krug if he just kept healing I don't usually care all that much about what difficulty level I play especially when I'm learning an entirely new system like D&D I like to experiment difficulty settings to see how they change the experience and there are some genres that benefit a lot from harder settings such as survival games despite that I didn't feel great about route forcing my way through this fight on story mode I've come so far without it they're having to admit defeat in the expansion left a sour taste in my mouth I genuinely don't mean to offend those who play the story mode it just felt a touch demoralizing after being relatively pleased with how much I'd learned before that my agony was confounded when I picked up my post battle rewards which included the sword of Boulder on which would inflict extra damage on you guessed it lycanthropes in other words the weapon I needed was right next to me I suppose it's not that bad the weapon was surrounded by traps in a locked chest it was clearly supposed to be a reward you claimed after the fight and not something you took before the fight and you can use it later after all this you discover that the residents of the island are themselves werewolves and were hoping to escape to the mainland you killed them before leaving on a ship I need to find out that Mendez didn't care about Alderaan's journal at all he just wanted you to help the werewolves escape the island as little side stories go this one is fine getting more backstory and border on is an excellent example of how to use law to self and interesting expansions but the werewolf wolf where stuff didn't do however this is only half of the expansion we also have to like star which might represent one of the best dungeon experiences I've ever had I mentioned earlier that I wasn't a big fan of dungeons blast because they often serve as an excuse to abandon storytelling and level design to shove enemies at you in corridors that is not what Durr likes Tower does I was so impressed with this section after completing it I did a quick search to see if there were videos specifically on this topic and found a series of five videos by extra credits that discussed just the first floor of the tower that's how good this area is the extra credits guys explained it much better than I ever could so I recommend you watch their videos however the gist of it is that each floor contains puzzles combat and story often all mixed together the combat encounter could also be a puzzle of sorts and a story is weaved in all the way through the entire place is full of traps probably too many at a certain point even I understand they need someone in your party who can disarm traps maybe after making it through thirty of the things Dale I could have called air day don't like troll killer to give him his full name built the tower to provide a safe home for retirement where he hoped to start a family Durr like was a wealthy man and as such the wealth stored in the tower attracted its fair share of attention he built the tower so that it couldn't be taken by brute force however a group of doppelgangers was able to kill his family and take their place after discovering their stir like double down on the traps and lived out the rest of his life alone watching those who tried to steal his treasure succumb to his brutal traps it's a deeply personal story and one which had much more impact than the werewolves on the island I couldn't help but feel sorry for dead like as I robbed him of everything I could carry including a sword that would have been really useful against the wolf wares most of the puzzles in der like Stour are fairly straightforward if you loot everything on each floor then you won't go to wrong combat in der like style however is the most consistently challenging part of Aldersgate the fourth floor of der like style was the other time I had to switch to story mode I'm still not sure whether this represents a failure in my puzzle solving or combat it's probably both you come across a chess set where you're given a set of movement rules and told that any wrong step represents death the rules seemed simple enough but whatever I moved I got hit by lightning glass or something similar I also triggered attacks from enemies on the other side of the board and it all quickly descended into chaos by rushing the enemies I was able to get through only one or two companion deaths but I really couldn't be bothered to pick up all their gear go back to the ground floor that's how I go to a temple and then come all the way back again trying to micromanage the placement of six characters we'll have a life of their own as soon as they see an enemy is a bit of a nightmare to say the least the expansion comes to an end back at Olga's beard where you try and failed to prevent the ritual resurrection of demon Aquatech this is another tough fight if you want to keep all your party alive although given that it is the last piece of content in the story unless you still haven't beaten so I wasn't too bothered actor Tech is not all that tough to kill however when you kill him he takes over the body of one of the spell casters you either have to kill him multiple times or deal with the mages first that latter option is the best but it then becomes a frantic rush to kill everyone else while defending against spells and strong melee attacks that brings the total to three fights in the expansion that were probably harder than anything in the base game at least it was for my party given that the two stories in the expansion had detached from the main campaign I would have preferred this to be postgame content to avoid the need to take a huge detour from the main questline or refer back to an old safe completing baldur's gate was a long journey including the expansion it took around 50 hours which is hardly extreme for an RPG but there was at least another 50 hours on top of that in wasted playthroughs there's also less variety than you'd get from modern games that you could dump 100 hours into most of the environments are random areas of wilderness which are about generic as they sound and with the exception of der likes how the dungeons are appropriately bland this leads to baldur's gate feeling like a slug at times especially in that middle act when you start to get a little tired of wandering the wilderness without getting any major story developments shave that 10 hours off the run time and correct a few of the story pacing issues I discussed earlier and I'd be recommending Baldur's Gate as a must play even 20 years after release it's important not to underestimate just how much there is to learn if you've never played Dungeons & Dragons even having taken the time to read all the rules and try to understand my decisions I still made major mistakes the biggest of which was my decision to dual class Emaline when you dual class you stopped earning experience points towards your existing class which in a Maroons case was a thief and start earning them in a new class such as mage only humans can duel class other races can multi class with multi class you constantly earn XP towards all of your classes so leveling up is slower but you are multi skilled from the start I wanted to try duel classing my main character but the game threw off a bunch of warnings that made it sound like a big deal so I went out and used him Irwin as a guinea pig after duel classing into a mage it more when not only stopped owning xp towards a thief's class she also stopped being able to use her thief's abilities gets them back when a major level is one level above her thief level but that takes a while this meant I had no way to use her thief's abilities such as lock-picking and detecting and deactivating traps I can live without the lock-picking I already had a lot of money and found the rewards from locked chest to be disappointing most of the time I didn't need to detect traps because Chihiro could do that with a spell and then the party could just walk around it unless they couldn't near the end of the story the absence of a thief in my party became painfully obvious there recorded ores were traps that you simply can't avoid regardless of whether you can see them or not this is one of the reasons the last boss was so tough there are traps all over the place and it's hard not to stumble into them this is probably the most obvious thing anyone has ever said when discussing a Dungeons & Dragons based RPG but please make sure you keep a thief with you at all times it'll make your life a lot easier I still want to dual class my protagonist but I have no idea when to do that I probably import the character into Baldur's Gate 2 and dual class from the start to see how it goes most players will have a moment like this something that reminds you just how little you actually understand even after 30 hours regardless of little teething problems here and there I still recommend you play boulders gave you half the time when recommending games in this series on C RPGs I assume you already have a huge list of games demanding your attention otherwise I'd probably recommend all of them for historical importance alone that's why I picked these games to play in the first place after all that said the presence of story mode plus the quality of life tweaks are enough to make borders gay and easy a game to recommend than the first to fall outs the enhanced edition is regularly on sale on Gog and steam for $10 and goes down to $5 as well sometimes in my video on Metro 2033 I talked at length about the feeling of immersion I experienced while playing Metro 2033 put me in the shoes of the protagonist and made me feel like I was part of the world Baldur's Gate doesn't immerse me in this way there's too much that gets in the way of connecting to my character such as the lack of character and companion dialogue the isometric viewpoint and tedious combat instead Baldur's Gate was immersive in the same way as a good book it's a softer level of immersion but still a special one it's the small touches like the detailed journey nor the keeps track of my activities the way you treat your team to a luxurious room for the night after a tough battle the fire burning as you sleep and even the way you slowly clear the fog of war while exploring I'm immersed in the adventure if not the character I'm excited to return to the Forgotten rail receipt of dragon spear and eventually dive into the Baldur's Gate - for years I've heard people talk about how great Baldur's Gate 2 is without so much as a mention of its predecessor it was as if the first game didn't exist yes combat and Baldur's Gate is duller times and the story suffers both from a lack of meaningful choice and consistent themes but it really is worth playing and I hope some of you consider giving it a shot as you know this series on the history of isometric see RPGs is being done in chronological order to properly track changes to the genre over the years that puts me in a slightly tricky position for siege of Dragon spear which was released in 2016 but takes place between Baldur's Gate 1 and 2 it seems silly to delay siege until I get to the modern era especially when I've heard that the transition from Paul does gate 1 to the sequel is a bit rough therefore I'm going to do a video on siege of dragon spin next in this series but treaty is episode 3.5 or something like that hell maybe I'll go full Kingdom Hearts with the naming call it Aldersgate siege of dragons be a retrospective a history of isometric sea RPGs episode 3.5 HD Baldur's Gate epilogue borders get to prologue oh and / - I like catchy titles whatever I call it the video will likely be shorter than this one I may be covering it for completeness after that it's Planescape torment I'm alternating videos in the isometric C RPG series withstand the critiques to make sure I don't get all isometric C RPG though I'm not going to disclose what the next critique video will be because I'm still deciding between two but I'm fairly sure you're gonna like it whatever it ends up being is one that's been requested many many times and comments if you've enjoyed this video please consider hitting the like button subscribe if you haven't already and maybe share the video if you know an audience that might be interested this legitimately makes a huge difference to how successful any given video is and ultimately the future of the channel so I'd appreciate it I do have a patreon now so if you could throw a dollar of my way that would also be great there is only one rewards here at one dollar a month you get your name in the credits those who give more might get more prominence but otherwise you will get the same thing regardless of the amount you give I explained my reasoning for this in more detail on the patreon page thank you very much to everyone who's given me money so far and those who will do so in the future he's becoming increasingly clear this channel only has a long-term future through donations so it makes a huge difference commenting is also insanely helpful and I'm supposed to ask you questions to drive engagement I don't know how about you try and guess what game you think the next major critique video will be on a couple of clues the two under siding between a both sci-fi based the first in this series and more than 10 years old oh and both franchises have enthusiastic fans who also get angry I said franchise you know what that last one doesn't narrow it down much does it okay that's about it from me in September I plan to stream spider-man shed of the Tomb Raider and Red Dead Redemption plus whatever else catches my eye please consider stopping by the streams to hang out and ask questions until next time Cheers

Channel: Chris Davis

Views: 343,547

Keywords: Baldurs gate retrospective, Baldurs gate critique, Baldurs gate analysis, Baldurs gate review, Baldurs gate series overview, isometric crpgs, Baldurs gate story explanation, Baldurs gate, history of isometric crpgs, Baldurs gate spoilercast, Baldurs gate spoilers, Baldurs gate history, Baldurs gate ending discussion, Baldurs gate making of, Baldurs gate tales of the sword coast, durlags tower, baldurs gate enhanced edition

Id: sTrl1lr_hLU

Length: 60min 57sec (3657 seconds)

Published: Mon Aug 27 2018

Reddit Comments

[u/[deleted]]

I think BG has a plausible claim to the original, epic CRPG.

Sure, it had been done before, but never with that kind of depth, the gorgeous visuals, the sophistication of story, and the (well, by genre standard) accessibility.

BG1, BG2, and BG:ToB remain, to my mind, the finest and most consistently excellent RPG trilogy ever made.

[u/Cragnous]

Man I love this game. I feel that for some reason it holds up better than BG2. While I used to prefer BG2 I just can't go back to it after playing POE1/2. The Pillars game made so much advancement to the UI and the whole system that it's a bit of a pain to go back to old Infinity games.

BG1 is a bit different however, mainly because it's so simple, mostly because you are so low level.

[u/SniXSniPe]

Baldur's Gate 2 and Diablo 2 are probably my two favorite games of all time.

Their predecessor's paved the way, while the sequels perfected the series, in my opinion.