BG2 should be played without ToB

[Incantatar]

The expansion added so much decline to the game and every single new player of the game will never even have a clue, since ToB is default everywhere now. And I don't even mean the shitty linear storyline here.

If you want to play with mods, except some older ones, there is no way around the expansion but in my opinion everyone who wants to play vanilla should play SoA alone first.


-> Tab highlighting makes all those secret locations completely redundant

-> The higher XP cap is absolutely unbalanced in SoA. Playing solo in SoA means something without ToB.

-> Many items you can get with ToB are ridiculously unbalanced in SoA. And I include the bonus merchants which only got added with the last ToB-patch. The game is much better without the Robe of Cheese and the Shield of Cheese.

-> HLAs shouldn’t be used in the SoA portion of the game. Shitty design and completely out of place. Running around with HLAs and lvl 9 spells in Athkatla is exactly like Beamdog’s story mode

-> SoA alone is much closer to D&D 2e/3e. Everyone knows high level D&D sucks, but they managed to make it even worse than P&P in ToB.


People might say it’s more buggy and yes it does have some bugs and wrong descriptions but do me a favor and have a really close look at all those unofficial fixpacks. Many of those fixes are highly arbitrary and don’t even fix real problems. E.g.: Spell X says in its description A but its real effect is B. Let’s change B to A. Take Improved Invisibility, one of the best spells in the game for its level. Giving it the +4 to saving throws, which the description mentions makes it much more unbalanced then in its “buggy” incarnation.


Tl:dr
BG2 without ToB is more difficult, more balanced and has less badly designed shit. Play it instead if you want to know what the original devs made out of the game before you install your My Little Pony mods.

 

[Great Deceiver]

 

[pippin]

He is right, though. ToB is very tiresome and disappointing, SoA is obviously the better half. The added dungeon isn't as great as Durlag's Tower, and ToB's added features cheapen the gameplay way too much. I'm looking for physical editions of BG 1 and 2 to play the true vanilla experience, which is somewhat of an obsession of mine, but in the end I kinda agree with OP.

 

[DraQ]

-> Tab highlighting makes all those secret locations completely redundant

Waving your cursor all over the screen all the time is not exploration.

 

[Incantatar]

-> Tab highlighting makes all those secret locations completely redundant

Waving your cursor all over the screen all the time is not exploration.

In the Infinity engine it is though. You have the clear fog of war exploration and the search containers, etc. exploration. The hidden stuff in BG1 and BG2 SoA is not meant to be easily found.

 

[DraQ]

-> Tab highlighting makes all those secret locations completely redundant

Waving your cursor all over the screen all the time is not exploration.

In the Infinity engine it is though. You have the clear fog of war exploration and the search containers, etc. exploration. The hidden stuff in BG1 and BG2 SoA is not meant to be easily found.

Hidden stuff in IE is badly designed because it can only be found through luck or extreme patience (plus willingness to risk carpal tunnel syndrome) rather than perception, curiosity and intelligence.
Hidden stuff with no indication that it's there is not found neither easily nor hardly - it's found randomly.

Therefore IE has no exploration and anything reducing pointless busywork that's required by the optimal gameplay strategy is welcome.

 

[oldmanpaco]

How easy is it to hit the original xp cap in a non-modded bg2 game? I mean with a full 6 person party like the game was designed for?

Anyway if you use SCS tougher spawns and pre-casting/HLA for enemy mages/priests in SOA is not all a cake walk. I've thought about playing a non-modded game just to see how easy it really was back in the day.

Fake Edit: And as others have said the small hidden containers you find using TAB are just bad design. Its a RPG not a pixel hunt.

 

[Great Deceiver]

How easy is it to hit the original xp cap in a non-modded bg2 game? I mean with a full 6 person party like the game was designed for?

Anyway if you use SCS tougher spawns and pre-casting/HLA for enemy mages/priests in SOA is not all a cake walk. I've thought about playing a non-modded game just to see how easy it really was back in the day.

Fake Edit: And as others have said the small hidden containers you find using TAB are just bad design. Its a RPG not a pixel hunt.

Playing a game 16 years later with all the metagaming knowledge accumulated by billions of nerd-hours all over the world does not constitute a playthrough the see 'just how easy it really was back in the day', regardless of expansion level.

 

[Excidium II]

Never played ToB campaign but fuck not having tab highlight.

 

[oldmanpaco]

How easy is it to hit the original xp cap in a non-modded bg2 game? I mean with a full 6 person party like the game was designed for?

Anyway if you use SCS tougher spawns and pre-casting/HLA for enemy mages/priests in SOA is not all a cake walk. I've thought about playing a non-modded game just to see how easy it really was back in the day.

Fake Edit: And as others have said the small hidden containers you find using TAB are just bad design. Its a RPG not a pixel hunt.

Playing a game 16 years later with all the metagaming knowledge accumulated by billions of nerd-hours all over the world does not constitute a playthrough the see 'just how easy it really was back in the day', regardless of expansion level.

Maybe but I feel like its sort of an equip your best equipment and cast a few protection spells to win sort of game. Probably a few Breach's as well. Maybe I'm wrong.

 

[Anthedon]

I started ignoring the hidden Diamond, Ring of Wizardry, Ankheg plate, etc. after my first playthrough with the highlight feature. Same goes for travelling to Watcher's Keep before ToB and the collector's edition vendors.

 

[Excidium II]

How easy is it to hit the original xp cap in a non-modded bg2 game? I mean with a full 6 person party like the game was designed for?

Anyway if you use SCS tougher spawns and pre-casting/HLA for enemy mages/priests in SOA is not all a cake walk. I've thought about playing a non-modded game just to see how easy it really was back in the day.

Fake Edit: And as others have said the small hidden containers you find using TAB are just bad design. Its a RPG not a pixel hunt.

Playing a game 16 years later with all the metagaming knowledge accumulated by billions of nerd-hours all over the world does not constitute a playthrough the see 'just how easy it really was back in the day', regardless of expansion level.

Maybe but I feel like its sort of an equip your best equipment and cast a few protection spells to win sort of game. Probably a few Breach's as well. Maybe I'm wrong.

It's fine as it is. I only ever played vanilla. Never wanted to try those mods because I find mage battles banal shit boring.

You're obviously gonna find it very easy if you rest and do the pre-buffing ritual dance before every battle.

 

[oldmanpaco]

It's fine as it is. I only ever played vanilla. Never wanted to try those mods because I find mage battles banal shit boring.

You're obviously gonna find it very easy if you rest and do the pre-buffing ritual dance before every battle.

Pre-casting is a pain in the fucking ass. PfE, Stoneskin/Ironskin, and Armor (early game) are long lasting spells that I have up all the time. I sometimes Haste but not regularly.

Anyway anyone who has played D&D or BG before should use SCS at the minimum. The game is too easy otherwise.

 

[Excidium II]

Never felt the need for it. I don't like easy but also don't like some autismal modder's idea of difficulty, since it relies on exploiting the game.

 

[oldmanpaco]

Never felt the need for it. I don't like easy but also don't like some autismal modder's idea of difficulty, since it relies on exploiting the game.

Nah SCS makes the game much better. Autistic modders/players like stuff like Tactics or Improved Anvil. Simply improving the spawn difficulty without messing with the AI or spell casting will make the game better.

Of course you could be playing the game for the story and romances. Brazilians are an inscrutable race.

 

[NeoKino]

Never felt the need for it. I don't like easy but also don't like some autismal modder's idea of difficulty, since it relies on exploiting the game.

The Game is still easy no matter how hard you mod, I use practically most of the Balancing and AI improvement mods as well as set the difficulty to the max setting. The AI can't keep up with human tricks no matter what you do, but it does make the game more fun. At least it makes soloing the game as a Fighter/Mage a more difficult challenge to complete.

PS there is nothing autismal about difficulty, different people have different strokes and skill levels, if a game gives you the opportunity to fix the aspects that you want you should take that chance and do it.

 

[anvi]

How do you play without TOB? Is there some ez tweak to uninstall it but leave the original intact? I'd like to replay sometime. No highlighting would suck though, but I would like all the other stuff.

 

[pippin]

How do you play without TOB? Is there some ez tweak to uninstall it but leave the original intact? I'd like to replay sometime. No highlighting would suck though, but I would like all the other stuff.

buy the original, physical version

 

[Great Deceiver]

the ez tweak is to install the original BG2 and not ToB.

 

[anvi]

I don't think I can do that with the version I have. I am gonna try to get another version again. I tried playing it recently after spending 3 hours modding it and then I got bored in the first hour of Irenicus's crappy dungeon. But I really need to play though it again because I have some good memories of the dragon fights and stuff.

 

[pippin]

Once you get how it's done, the dragon fights are the easiest. The fight I still remember was that one where you fought a bunch of mages in a small room. I think it was some Gauntlet?

 

[Excidium II]

the ez tweak is to install the original BG2 and not ToB.

Does gog/steam give that option?

iirc Gothic 2 on gog gave the option to not install NOTR, but Steam doesn't.

 

[pippin]

No, just bg2 complete. This is why I'm thinking of buying a physical version myself.

 

[oldmanpaco]

I am pretty sure BG Tweaks or something allows you to put the bg2 lvl cap back in place. That would eliminate all the HLA in SOA. The TAB functionality would still be there though.

 

[Shaewaroz]

I remember being able to equip rings of protection with Dragon Scale Armors in the original version. It made them ridiculously overpowered but awesome at the same time. Also I think one of the cloaks worked differently - it reflected back all beholder projectiles, made killing them child's play. I was disappointed to see these features being removed.