Baldur's Gate Baldur's Gate 2 is vastly overrated

[Sykar]

If someone shits on Baldur's Gate while simultaneously praising the second game, major retard alert. I have yet to see anyone make a coherent argument as to why the second is superior to the first. I also haven't really heard a coherent argument outside of "RTwP BAD!" for why the first Baldur's Gate is a bad game either, but that's a second discussion.

Posters like me and JarlFrank have made solid arguments why BG 2 > BG 1 on more than one occasion and I am pretty sure that we are not sole exceptions. Either you are not paying attention or are intentionally obtuse.

 

[ItsChon]

If someone shits on Baldur's Gate while simultaneously praising the second game, major retard alert. I have yet to see anyone make a coherent argument as to why the second is superior to the first. I also haven't really heard a coherent argument outside of "RTwP BAD!" for why the first Baldur's Gate is a bad game either, but that's a second discussion.

Posters like me and JarlFrank have made solid arguments why BG 2 > BG 1 on more than one occasion and I am pretty sure that we are not sole exceptions. Either you are not paying attention or are intentionally obtuse.

Feel free to link the arguments. Could be wrong but I'd be willing to bet they were made in threads that were created before I joined or threads I never posted on.

 

[JarlFrank]

If someone shits on Baldur's Gate while simultaneously praising the second game, major retard alert. I have yet to see anyone make a coherent argument as to why the second is superior to the first. I also haven't really heard a coherent argument outside of "RTwP BAD!" for why the first Baldur's Gate is a bad game either, but that's a second discussion.

Posters like me and JarlFrank have made solid arguments why BG 2 > BG 1 on more than one occasion and I am pretty sure that we are not sole exceptions. Either you are not paying attention or are intentionally obtuse.

Feel free to link the arguments. Could be wrong but I'd be willing to bet they were made in threads that were created before I joined or threads I never posted on.

I don't remember where I posted my opinions about BG1 vs BG2, I probably did so on multiple occasions.
So why not do so again.

I played BG2 first, which set certain expectations that BG1 could not meet when I played it years later (especially since a lot of people claimed BG1 to be even better). So, with that background, it might make my impression of BG1 easier to understand. I expected more of what BG2 gave me but was sorely disappointed.

- BG1 feels extremely mundane and generic. BG2 is wild and exotic. This one comes down to individual preference, but I like my fantasy to be fantastic, not mundane. If I want central European medieval villages, I go for a drive around my area, there's plenty of those here. BG1 has a lot of medieval rural villages, mines and caves, forests, grasslands... it's as generic as fantasy can get. BG2 starts in a Mediterranean-inspired city and leads you to weird places like pocket planes, the Underdark, dungeons carved by mad sorcerers... it's a lot more exotic, so the sense of discovery is stronger.

- In addition to its mundanity, BG1 also has a lot of emptiness and content that never goes anywhere. You walk through forests that are mostly just empty, except for a few generic goblin, skeleton, or bandit encounters. Sometimes you meet a friendly NPC who tells you two or three paragraphs of fluff and leaves. You'll never meet that NPC again. Many of these encounters feel quirky, like the game doesn't take itself seriously. There are some genuinely cool encounters, but they are few and far between. Most of what you can find in the wilderness is generic trash mobs, and trash mobs are never fun to fight.

- BG1's side dungeons are atrocious. Ulcaster is the perfect example. It's made up of labyrinthine hallways that would be appropriate in a blobber, but are a nightmare to navigate in an isometric game with 6 party members, as the hallways aren't wide enough for all your dudes to walk abreast. It's a pathfinding nightmare and not very good design. Some main quest dungeons, like the Candlekeep Catacombs, aren't much better. Mostly just hallways filled with traps Imoen has to disarm. They feel like low effort dungeons, or like dungeons that were made for the wrong game (they'd be ok in a Dungeon Master clone, for example). The exception is Durlag's Tower but that's expansion content.

- There is little personality to anything. The blandness pervades everything. NPCs barely have a personality, even your companions are just stat sheets beyond one or two quirks - at that point you might as well allow us to create our own party from scratch.

- Overall, BG1 feels like "my first D&D campaign" to me. The product of a DM who opened the Dungeon Master's Guide for the first time, went with the most generic area of the Forgotten Realms, and is having some goofy fun with his first time players. BG2 feels like the product of a more mature DM who feels confident enough to step beyond the most generic beginner area and explore some of the setting's more interesting aspects, and who learned how to design good dungeons rather than just relying on random wilderness encounter rolls.

- BG2 has great dungeon design across the board. Gone are BG1's narrow hallways, now there's more spacious interconnected rooms. Gone are hordes of trash mobs, now you usually face groups of tough enemies that complement each other's abilities. Firkraag's dungeon is one of my favorites in the game. And the initial Irenicus dungeon is great, too, especially as an introduction to the more weird elements of the Forgotten Realms. There's little side quests and non-combat encounters sprinkled around, the combat encounters sometimes make use of the environment (first encounter in Firkraag's dungeon, orc archers are behind a wall with arrow slits, so your melee dudes can't reach them; far beyond anything we see in BG1's encounter design). Every side quest dungeon is memorable for its own reasons. The game is just way better designed overall.

- BG2 has just the right level range for D&D. The first game's first half is generic trash mobs where you have to get lucky with your rolls, and can cast three spells before having to rest. In BG2 you're tanky enough to not die to a single critical, but not so tanky that you can rush in blindly. You have a large selection of spells at your disposal - and so does the enemy. You encounter nasty creatures that can level drain, plenty of enemy casters, horrors like the beholders, etc etc. Encounter design is so much more varied compared to BG1's endless slog through generic orc, goblin, bandit mobs. The sheer variety of BG2's encounters is staggering.

- Quests are more interesting and involved in BG2 compared to BG1, companions have more of a personality (even if it's sometimes annoying and cringey, at least it's there), some companions have personal quests for you, some of them even interact with each other regularly (Minsc and Aerie), the first half of the game is incredibly open in its goals (get money! doesn't matter how) and you even get two different choices in how to progress to the next part of the game (side with Shadow Thieves or with Bodhi). The content is just of so much higher quality across the board. The way Athkatla is designed, with only certain (sizeable) districts explorable rather than the entire city, makes it feel bigger than the city of Baldur's Gate while also trimming much of the fat (most of BG's houses contained nothing of interest whatsoever). Not only that, there's more to discover in Athkatla's districts than in the entirety of Baldur's Gate!

- People like to say that BG1 feels like an adventurous journey, but to me it felt like I never left my backyard. You don't really go on a grand journey in BG1: you start in the monastery you grew up in, travel to a nearby town, then to a nearby city, and that's pretty much it. In BG2 you wake up in an unknown place, emerge into a large exotic city, go on a journey by ship, visit an underwater realm, go to a prison island for mad wizards, enter the Underdark... you actually go places and travel widely. BG2 feels much more like a grand adventure than BG1 did.

Every single aspect of BG2 is an improvement upon BG1, it's so massively superior that it's not even close.
BG1 is a bland and boring generic RPG that screams "my first D&D campaign!"
BG2 is a wild journey through the Forgotten Realms' more interesting places, with good encounter design and even some puzzles in its dungeons.

 

[King Crispy]

more interesting places

Yeah like a circus tent.

 

[JarlFrank]

more interesting places

Yeah like a circus tent.

As if BG1 didn't have a circus.

 

[KörangarTheMighty]

Overall, BG1 feels like "my first D&D campaign" to me. The product of a DM who opened the Dungeon Master's Guide for the first time, went with the most generic area of the Forgotten Realms, and is having some goofy fun with his first time players.

I describe BG1 as like the "Disneyland Renaissance Fair" of D&D RPGs. It has everything you'd expect to see (except Dragons ironically), very quirky Python-esque humor with stuff like the Golden Pantaloons and Noober, often breaks the fourth wall by letting the character directly express frustration with the absurdity of what's going on around him which is actually welcome considering how many situations/levels are genuinely shitty and worthy of frustration. Then there's the "Ye Olde" speak of Elminster and various other NPCs, and for that matter seeing him and Drizzt pop-in then exit stage left in the course of a minute felt a lot like costumed characters walking around amusement parks for photo-ops with the kids. Lastly, there's the corny Bhaalspawn plot that takes itself way too seriously coupled with the infantilization of your character via dialogue that forces to you to cling to the skirts of Khalid and Jahiera in order to advance the plot, despite proving your capability in dealing with several assassins up to that point.

It also feels like the towns and other set pieces are all very carefully manicured and tailored and around every corner you expect to see some guy in a plastic horned viking helmet, smoked turkey leg in one hand, camcorder in the other. I do love the idealized medieval aesthetic of the early game, (Friendly Arm to Beregost and a little beyond) but the novelty wears off as soon as you hit the Nashkel Mines. That was the point I'd usually just quit or roll up a new character when I played it as a kid.

 

[Cat Headed Eagle]

Overall, BG1 feels like "my first D&D campaign" to me. The product of a DM who opened the Dungeon Master's Guide for the first time, went with the most generic area of the Forgotten Realms, and is having some goofy fun with his first time players.

I describe BG1 as like the "Disneyland Renaissance Fair" of D&D RPGs. It has everything you'd expect to see (except Dragons ironically), very quirky Python-esque humor with stuff like the Golden Pantaloons and Noober, often breaks the fourth wall by letting the character directly express frustration with the absurdity of what's going on around him which is actually welcome considering how many situations/levels are genuinely shitty and worthy of frustration. Then there's the "Ye Olde" speak of Elminster and various other NPCs, and for that matter seeing him and Drizzt pop-in then exit stage left in the course of a minute felt a lot like costumed characters walking around amusement parks for photo-ops with the kids. Lastly, there's the corny Bhaalspawn plot that takes itself way too seriously coupled with the infantilization of your character via dialogue that forces to you to cling to the skirts of Khalid and Jahiera in order to advance the plot, despite proving your capability in dealing with several assassins up to that point.

It also feels like the towns and other set pieces are all very carefully manicured and tailored and around every corner you expect to see some guy in a plastic horned viking helmet, smoked turkey leg in one hand, camcorder in the other. I do love the idealized medieval aesthetic of the early game, (Friendly Arm to Beregost and a little beyond) but the novelty wears off as soon as you hit the Nashkel Mines. That was the point I'd usually just quit or roll up a new character when I played it as a kid.

I have to admit there's always this fog in my mind as to what happens between the mines and your arrival at Baldur's Gate. The forest is not a bad area by any means but arguably the game could've done without it, and it's mostly there to pad out content. The mines are interesting and you fight Davaeron (sp?) which is an interesting fight which might catch you by surprise if you're not prepared.

The dragon at the end of the expansion is, ironically, not a dragon but a demon of sorts (according to the game's files).

 

[KörangarTheMighty]

I have to admit there's always this fog in my mind as to what happens between the mines and your arrival at Baldur's Gate.

I have a hard time remembering anything after the mines. I didn't mind Cloakwood or the Candlekeep return iirc, but I've only reached that part of the game twice and both times were over a decade ago, both times finishing. All I know is I was extremely bored with the wilderness zones and Baldur's Gate itself by the time I got to it, and the latter is a shame because it's a pretty cool city as far as cities in RPGs go. Completionism is the wrong way to go in BG that's for certain, and I didn't even enjoy Durlag's very much because of how funned-out I was by that point.

 

[NecroLord]

If someone shits on Baldur's Gate while simultaneously praising the second game, major retard alert. I have yet to see anyone make a coherent argument as to why the second is superior to the first. I also haven't really heard a coherent argument outside of "RTwP BAD!" for why the first Baldur's Gate is a bad game either, but that's a second discussion.

Posters like me and JarlFrank have made solid arguments why BG 2 > BG 1 on more than one occasion and I am pretty sure that we are not sole exceptions. Either you are not paying attention or are intentionally obtuse.

Feel free to link the arguments. Could be wrong but I'd be willing to bet they were made in threads that were created before I joined or threads I never posted on.

I don't remember where I posted my opinions about BG1 vs BG2, I probably did so on multiple occasions.
So why not do so again.

I played BG2 first, which set certain expectations that BG1 could not meet when I played it years later (especially since a lot of people claimed BG1 to be even better). So, with that background, it might make my impression of BG1 easier to understand. I expected more of what BG2 gave me but was sorely disappointed.

- BG1 feels extremely mundane and generic. BG2 is wild and exotic. This one comes down to individual preference, but I like my fantasy to be fantastic, not mundane. If I want central European medieval villages, I go for a drive around my area, there's plenty of those here. BG1 has a lot of medieval rural villages, mines and caves, forests, grasslands... it's as generic as fantasy can get. BG2 starts in a Mediterranean-inspired city and leads you to weird places like pocket planes, the Underdark, dungeons carved by mad sorcerers... it's a lot more exotic, so the sense of discovery is stronger.

- In addition to its mundanity, BG1 also has a lot of emptiness and content that never goes anywhere. You walk through forests that are mostly just empty, except for a few generic goblin, skeleton, or bandit encounters. Sometimes you meet a friendly NPC who tells you two or three paragraphs of fluff and leaves. You'll never meet that NPC again. Many of these encounters feel quirky, like the game doesn't take itself seriously. There are some genuinely cool encounters, but they are few and far between. Most of what you can find in the wilderness is generic trash mobs, and trash mobs are never fun to fight.

- BG1's side dungeons are atrocious. Ulcaster is the perfect example. It's made up of labyrinthine hallways that would be appropriate in a blobber, but are a nightmare to navigate in an isometric game with 6 party members, as the hallways aren't wide enough for all your dudes to walk abreast. It's a pathfinding nightmare and not very good design. Some main quest dungeons, like the Candlekeep Catacombs, aren't much better. Mostly just hallways filled with traps Imoen has to disarm. They feel like low effort dungeons, or like dungeons that were made for the wrong game (they'd be ok in a Dungeon Master clone, for example). The exception is Durlag's Tower but that's expansion content.

- There is little personality to anything. The blandness pervades everything. NPCs barely have a personality, even your companions are just stat sheets beyond one or two quirks - at that point you might as well allow us to create our own party from scratch.

- Overall, BG1 feels like "my first D&D campaign" to me. The product of a DM who opened the Dungeon Master's Guide for the first time, went with the most generic area of the Forgotten Realms, and is having some goofy fun with his first time players. BG2 feels like the product of a more mature DM who feels confident enough to step beyond the most generic beginner area and explore some of the setting's more interesting aspects, and who learned how to design good dungeons rather than just relying on random wilderness encounter rolls.

- BG2 has great dungeon design across the board. Gone are BG1's narrow hallways, now there's more spacious interconnected rooms. Gone are hordes of trash mobs, now you usually face groups of tough enemies that complement each other's abilities. Firkraag's dungeon is one of my favorites in the game. And the initial Irenicus dungeon is great, too, especially as an introduction to the more weird elements of the Forgotten Realms. There's little side quests and non-combat encounters sprinkled around, the combat encounters sometimes make use of the environment (first encounter in Firkraag's dungeon, orc archers are behind a wall with arrow slits, so your melee dudes can't reach them; far beyond anything we see in BG1's encounter design). Every side quest dungeon is memorable for its own reasons. The game is just way better designed overall.

- BG2 has just the right level range for D&D. The first game's first half is generic trash mobs where you have to get lucky with your rolls, and can cast three spells before having to rest. In BG2 you're tanky enough to not die to a single critical, but not so tanky that you can rush in blindly. You have a large selection of spells at your disposal - and so does the enemy. You encounter nasty creatures that can level drain, plenty of enemy casters, horrors like the beholders, etc etc. Encounter design is so much more varied compared to BG1's endless slog through generic orc, goblin, bandit mobs. The sheer variety of BG2's encounters is staggering.

- Quests are more interesting and involved in BG2 compared to BG1, companions have more of a personality (even if it's sometimes annoying and cringey, at least it's there), some companions have personal quests for you, some of them even interact with each other regularly (Minsc and Aerie), the first half of the game is incredibly open in its goals (get money! doesn't matter how) and you even get two different choices in how to progress to the next part of the game (side with Shadow Thieves or with Bodhi). The content is just of so much higher quality across the board. The way Athkatla is designed, with only certain (sizeable) districts explorable rather than the entire city, makes it feel bigger than the city of Baldur's Gate while also trimming much of the fat (most of BG's houses contained nothing of interest whatsoever). Not only that, there's more to discover in Athkatla's districts than in the entirety of Baldur's Gate!

- People like to say that BG1 feels like an adventurous journey, but to me it felt like I never left my backyard. You don't really go on a grand journey in BG1: you start in the monastery you grew up in, travel to a nearby town, then to a nearby city, and that's pretty much it. In BG2 you wake up in an unknown place, emerge into a large exotic city, go on a journey by ship, visit an underwater realm, go to a prison island for mad wizards, enter the Underdark... you actually go places and travel widely. BG2 feels much more like a grand adventure than BG1 did.

Every single aspect of BG2 is an improvement upon BG1, it's so massively superior that it's not even close.
BG1 is a bland and boring generic RPG that screams "my first D&D campaign!"
BG2 is a wild journey through the Forgotten Realms' more interesting places, with good encounter design and even some puzzles in its dungeons.

Very nice.
Also, what I really like is the sheer selection of spells available in BG2.
Time Stop. Wish. Summon Planetar. Chain Contingency. Maze. A LOT of spells to try out.
Amn and Athkatla in general are really interesting. Their focus on wealth and status, but also their piousness (really, they worship a lot of deities, even Cyric) and architecture kinda remind me of the Byzantine Empire.

 

[Sykar]

If someone shits on Baldur's Gate while simultaneously praising the second game, major retard alert. I have yet to see anyone make a coherent argument as to why the second is superior to the first. I also haven't really heard a coherent argument outside of "RTwP BAD!" for why the first Baldur's Gate is a bad game either, but that's a second discussion.

Posters like me and JarlFrank have made solid arguments why BG 2 > BG 1 on more than one occasion and I am pretty sure that we are not sole exceptions. Either you are not paying attention or are intentionally obtuse.

Feel free to link the arguments. Could be wrong but I'd be willing to bet they were made in threads that were created before I joined or threads I never posted on.

I don't remember where I posted my opinions about BG1 vs BG2, I probably did so on multiple occasions.
So why not do so again.

I played BG2 first, which set certain expectations that BG1 could not meet when I played it years later (especially since a lot of people claimed BG1 to be even better). So, with that background, it might make my impression of BG1 easier to understand. I expected more of what BG2 gave me but was sorely disappointed.

- BG1 feels extremely mundane and generic. BG2 is wild and exotic. This one comes down to individual preference, but I like my fantasy to be fantastic, not mundane. If I want central European medieval villages, I go for a drive around my area, there's plenty of those here. BG1 has a lot of medieval rural villages, mines and caves, forests, grasslands... it's as generic as fantasy can get. BG2 starts in a Mediterranean-inspired city and leads you to weird places like pocket planes, the Underdark, dungeons carved by mad sorcerers... it's a lot more exotic, so the sense of discovery is stronger.

- In addition to its mundanity, BG1 also has a lot of emptiness and content that never goes anywhere. You walk through forests that are mostly just empty, except for a few generic goblin, skeleton, or bandit encounters. Sometimes you meet a friendly NPC who tells you two or three paragraphs of fluff and leaves. You'll never meet that NPC again. Many of these encounters feel quirky, like the game doesn't take itself seriously. There are some genuinely cool encounters, but they are few and far between. Most of what you can find in the wilderness is generic trash mobs, and trash mobs are never fun to fight.

- BG1's side dungeons are atrocious. Ulcaster is the perfect example. It's made up of labyrinthine hallways that would be appropriate in a blobber, but are a nightmare to navigate in an isometric game with 6 party members, as the hallways aren't wide enough for all your dudes to walk abreast. It's a pathfinding nightmare and not very good design. Some main quest dungeons, like the Candlekeep Catacombs, aren't much better. Mostly just hallways filled with traps Imoen has to disarm. They feel like low effort dungeons, or like dungeons that were made for the wrong game (they'd be ok in a Dungeon Master clone, for example). The exception is Durlag's Tower but that's expansion content.

- There is little personality to anything. The blandness pervades everything. NPCs barely have a personality, even your companions are just stat sheets beyond one or two quirks - at that point you might as well allow us to create our own party from scratch.

- Overall, BG1 feels like "my first D&D campaign" to me. The product of a DM who opened the Dungeon Master's Guide for the first time, went with the most generic area of the Forgotten Realms, and is having some goofy fun with his first time players. BG2 feels like the product of a more mature DM who feels confident enough to step beyond the most generic beginner area and explore some of the setting's more interesting aspects, and who learned how to design good dungeons rather than just relying on random wilderness encounter rolls.

- BG2 has great dungeon design across the board. Gone are BG1's narrow hallways, now there's more spacious interconnected rooms. Gone are hordes of trash mobs, now you usually face groups of tough enemies that complement each other's abilities. Firkraag's dungeon is one of my favorites in the game. And the initial Irenicus dungeon is great, too, especially as an introduction to the more weird elements of the Forgotten Realms. There's little side quests and non-combat encounters sprinkled around, the combat encounters sometimes make use of the environment (first encounter in Firkraag's dungeon, orc archers are behind a wall with arrow slits, so your melee dudes can't reach them; far beyond anything we see in BG1's encounter design). Every side quest dungeon is memorable for its own reasons. The game is just way better designed overall.

- BG2 has just the right level range for D&D. The first game's first half is generic trash mobs where you have to get lucky with your rolls, and can cast three spells before having to rest. In BG2 you're tanky enough to not die to a single critical, but not so tanky that you can rush in blindly. You have a large selection of spells at your disposal - and so does the enemy. You encounter nasty creatures that can level drain, plenty of enemy casters, horrors like the beholders, etc etc. Encounter design is so much more varied compared to BG1's endless slog through generic orc, goblin, bandit mobs. The sheer variety of BG2's encounters is staggering.

- Quests are more interesting and involved in BG2 compared to BG1, companions have more of a personality (even if it's sometimes annoying and cringey, at least it's there), some companions have personal quests for you, some of them even interact with each other regularly (Minsc and Aerie), the first half of the game is incredibly open in its goals (get money! doesn't matter how) and you even get two different choices in how to progress to the next part of the game (side with Shadow Thieves or with Bodhi). The content is just of so much higher quality across the board. The way Athkatla is designed, with only certain (sizeable) districts explorable rather than the entire city, makes it feel bigger than the city of Baldur's Gate while also trimming much of the fat (most of BG's houses contained nothing of interest whatsoever). Not only that, there's more to discover in Athkatla's districts than in the entirety of Baldur's Gate!

- People like to say that BG1 feels like an adventurous journey, but to me it felt like I never left my backyard. You don't really go on a grand journey in BG1: you start in the monastery you grew up in, travel to a nearby town, then to a nearby city, and that's pretty much it. In BG2 you wake up in an unknown place, emerge into a large exotic city, go on a journey by ship, visit an underwater realm, go to a prison island for mad wizards, enter the Underdark... you actually go places and travel widely. BG2 feels much more like a grand adventure than BG1 did.

Every single aspect of BG2 is an improvement upon BG1, it's so massively superior that it's not even close.
BG1 is a bland and boring generic RPG that screams "my first D&D campaign!"
BG2 is a wild journey through the Forgotten Realms' more interesting places, with good encounter design and even some puzzles in its dungeons.

I actually played BG 1 first having bought an US import and a English dictionary at my side, same as I did with Fallout because the German dubs were so horrible for both games back in the day, Saxon elves and Bavarian dwarves by complete amateur voice actors are just peak cringe lordism. BG 2 was overall an improvement across the board to me for the reasons you mentioned.
I can agree on the point BG 1 fans make that BG 1 was more cohesive, same with FO 1 vs FO 2. But that is my problem, so what? Cohesiveness is nice and all but it is ultimately a minor point unless it is utterly grating which is not the case for either BG 2 or FO 2.

 

[ItsChon]

I will preface my post by saying that as much as we love to meme on Lilura, her blog post comparing Baldur's Gate 1 and 2 is actually quite good, and many of the points I make are points that she has made first, and she also makes additional points to the ones I will be making in this post.

I played BG2 first, which set certain expectations that BG1 could not meet when I played it years later

Not surprised at all. Many people that espouse the merits of BG2 played it before they played BG1.

- BG1 feels extremely mundane and generic. BG2 is wild and exotic. This one comes down to individual preference, but I like my fantasy to be fantastic, not mundane. If I want central European medieval villages, I go for a drive around my area, there's plenty of those here. BG1 has a lot of medieval rural villages, mines and caves, forests, grasslands... it's as generic as fantasy can get. BG2 starts in a Mediterranean-inspired city and leads you to weird places like pocket planes, the Underdark, dungeons carved by mad sorcerers... it's a lot more exotic, so the sense of discovery is stronger.

Baldur's Gate 2 is more "wild and exotic" in the literal sense, but your conclusion is honestly shocking (I put wild and exotic in quotations because I think those words have positive connotations that are entirely too generous to attribute to BG2). Just because Baldur's Gate is a "typical" medieval European fantasy, does not mean it is mundane or generic. Although the setting of Forgotten Realms is frankly terrible in my eyes, it is important to distinguish the setting as it has been established outside of the game, and the setting as it is established in the game. Baldur's Gate does a fantastic job of establishing the Sword Coast as a setting. The world building is fantastic, and even though high fantasy settings are usually filled to the brim with shit that doesn't make sense, Baldur's Gate does an amazing job of making sure the setting remains logically consistent and cohesive, while also keeping things fantastical.

The fact that people have the audacity to say the forest/wilderness regions are there to "pad out content" shows that they've completely missed the plot. Baldur's Gate feels like a living, breathing world. The sheer attention to detail to make the world feel alive is insane, and it is one of the things that Infinity Engine does so damn well. Villages feel peaceful and quaint, towns feel active and established, and the big city feels bustling and filled to the brim with opportunity and excitement. A big part of why this all works so well is because of aforementioned forest areas, along with the unmentioned barren wilderness areas, the beaches, the deserts, and so on. You truly feel like you have free reign to explore the entirety of the Sword Coast, and the Sword Coast actually feels like a place in a world versus an area in a video game. One of the key conflicts mentioned early on is how the Iron shortages are heavily effecting all the cities in the Sword Coasts and damaging trade. There are literally trade routes that you can follow between all the settlements in Baldur's Gate, and along those trade routes you have merchants with small caravans, patrolling guardsman, bandits, adventures, and so on. The fact that the game starts us off exploring expanses of wilderness and forests only makes the transition to baldur's Gate that much more impactful and amazing. I cannot describe how awesome it felt exploring Baldur's Gate after spending hours exploring wilderness and forests, braving the depths of the Nashkel Mines, and uncovering the mystery behind the mercenary companies which have been ravaging the Sword Coast.

Now let us contrast this with Baldur's Gate 2. I will full on admit I did not last more than five hours playing this game, and this is coming from someone who has played the first game from start to finish three separate times. The problem with Baldur's Gate 2s is that it is completely lacking in the department of setting cohesion and immersion. We start off in Chateau Irenicus, which is a terrible introductory region that felt extremely jarring after the climatic ending of Baldur's Gate. For the sake of judging Baldur's Gate 2 as a stand alone game versus a sequel, I will forego ranting about how terrible the start of Baldur's Gate 2 is, and will just transition to when you escape from Irenicus's dungeon and are released into the city of Athkatla. Holy fucking shit, I cannot move ten paces without some random NPC throwing themselves at me, spitting out dialogue complete unprompted, and then breaking my immersion completely by unlocking areas on my map that I can now explore, which I would not have been able to visit prior to their interference. The first game of the series was able to make a city that matched up one-to-one with the map, with all the zones seamlessly interconnected, while the sequel took five steps backwards and completely did away with all of this shit to give us isolated zones that make the game feel like an amusement park. In Baldur's Gate, if you wanted to get to a quest that was located at the rear of the city, you had to navigate there yourself, moving through different zones in a logically consistent way with the potential to get side tracked and/or waylaid while you were doing so. Not in Baldur's Gate 2 however. You just click a highlighted portion of the map and are instantly teleported to your destination. All of this negatively impacts Athkatla, and while the idea of a Mediterranean-inspired city sounds great, it never truly feels like a city, which is why Baldur's Gate is far superior despite its comparative "genericness". Also, Baldur's Gate has its own interesting locations that are worth mentioning, and it's disingenuous to pretend otherwise. Even if I was to accept the argument that Baldur's Gate 2 has more interesting locations conceptually, Baldur's Gate does a better job of making its locations feel a part of the game world and their impact is far greater due to the relative "tameness" of the setting.

Going back to the NPCs, within a few hours, my entire quest log was filled with quests, the vast majority of which were picked up against my wishes. I understand the argument that we should not approach RPGs with the intention to 100% them, but that is completely missing the point. Baldur's Gate 2 completely takes away a player's agency with how they throw content at the player. I don't feel like I'm exploring a world, I feel like I'm playing a game where the developers are repeatedly throat fucking me with a massive ladle, ensuring I don't miss a single drop of the content they've made. The writing at the start of the game also felt inferior to Baldur's Gate, and while I am generally a fan of NPC interactivity, the constant interjections by my companions was handled poorly. They felt jarring and forced, though this was likely due to how overwhelming the opening sequence of the game is. I will also assert that starting Baldur's Gate 2 in a city was a mistake, and much like in Baldur's Gate 1, they should have eased us into the central hub versus just thrusting us right into the middle of everything so we can get our bearings. Not to mention, the narrative inconsistency of us dicking around in a city while Imoen is being held captive getting tortured alive for all we know.

These are just a few points haphazardly thrown together about why Baldur Gate as a setting feels great, and Baldur's Gate 2 feels like a jumbled mess.

- In addition to its mundanity, BG1 also has a lot of emptiness and content that never goes anywhere. You walk through forests that are mostly just empty, except for a few generic goblin, skeleton, or bandit encounters. Sometimes you meet a friendly NPC who tells you two or three paragraphs of fluff and leaves. You'll never meet that NPC again. Many of these encounters feel quirky, like the game doesn't take itself seriously. There are some genuinely cool encounters, but they are few and far between. Most of what you can find in the wilderness is generic trash mobs, and trash mobs are never fun to fight.

Shit point. First off, the vast majority of forests and wilderness content is completely optional. As I've stated on another thread, Codex has been championing optional content for years, but then we turn around and complain when a game actually implements it? Look at Underrail and its cave systems? The majority of them are not actually filed with a ton of content, but they are there so the game world feels connected and logically consistent. This is even assuming I agree with your statement that the wilderness areas are barren and not filled with content. Pretty much every single area has at least one interesting encounter that adds to the world building of the game or is genuinely well written and interesting, and that is not even including the little encounters you mention which also add the world building of the game. You're moving across wilderness, do you really expect them to be filled with people and content? That would break immersion, and the game is already massive as is. Finally, there is the fantastic sound design, music, and gorgeous hand drawn backgrounds of the wilderness areas themselves, which makes exploring the regions fun in and of themselves just because how good it feels just playing an Infinity Engine game.

- BG1's side dungeons are atrocious. Ulcaster is the perfect example. It's made up of labyrinthine hallways that would be appropriate in a blobber, but are a nightmare to navigate in an isometric game with 6 party members, as the hallways aren't wide enough for all your dudes to walk abreast. It's a pathfinding nightmare and not very good design. Some main quest dungeons, like the Candlekeep Catacombs, aren't much better. Mostly just hallways filled with traps Imoen has to disarm. They feel like low effort dungeons, or like dungeons that were made for the wrong game (they'd be ok in a Dungeon Master clone, for example). The exception is Durlag's Tower but that's expansion content.

Durlag's Tower is indeed one of the greatest cRPG dungeons of all time, and while it is expansion content, it still counts as a part of Baldur's Gate. Putting that aside however, I would agree that the side sungeons in the first game are not very good, but I will counter by saying that Baldur's Gate isn't really known for its dungeons and instead is praised for areas such as the Cloakwood Forest, the Gnome Stronghold, and the Bandit Camps are great, and Baldur's Gate 2 doens't really have anythign to compare to them. Plus, both the Cloakwood Mines and the Nashkel Mines are great dungeons to explore as a part of the main quest.

- There is little personality to anything. The blandness pervades everything. NPCs barely have a personality, even your companions are just stat sheets beyond one or two quirks - at that point you might as well allow us to create our own party from scratch.

Disagree with this for obvious reasons. Baldur's Gate 2 distinctly lacked in personality because of how gamey and forced everything felt, while Baldur's Gate felt charming, subtle, and grounded.

- BG2 has great dungeon design across the board. Gone are BG1's narrow hallways, now there's more spacious interconnected rooms. Gone are hordes of trash mobs, now you usually face groups of tough enemies that complement each other's abilities. Firkraag's dungeon is one of my favorites in the game. And the initial Irenicus dungeon is great, too, especially as an introduction to the more weird elements of the Forgotten Realms. There's little side quests and non-combat encounters sprinkled around, the combat encounters sometimes make use of the environment (first encounter in Firkraag's dungeon, orc archers are behind a wall with arrow slits, so your melee dudes can't reach them; far beyond anything we see in BG1's encounter design). Every side quest dungeon is memorable for its own reasons. The game is just way better designed overall.

Eh. There are plenty of great encounters in Baldur's Gate (though I'm willing to accept that Baldur's Gate 2 has more) and as I mentioned previously, Durlag's Tower is superior to anything present in Baldur's Gate 2, but that isn't the point. The simple fact of the matter is that the Baldur's Gate series is not meant to be a dungeon crawl. The vast majority of the game is not meant to be spent in dungeons but instead it is meant to be spent exploring and adventuring, and this is something that Baldur's Gate 2 just doesn't do well due to how linear the game is in many of its chapters, and how bloated terrible the nonlinear sections of the game are in comparison to Baldur's Gate.

- BG2 has just the right level range for D&D. The first game's first half is generic trash mobs where you have to get lucky with your rolls, and can cast three spells before having to rest. In BG2 you're tanky enough to not die to a single critical, but not so tanky that you can rush in blindly. You have a large selection of spells at your disposal - and so does the enemy. You encounter nasty creatures that can level drain, plenty of enemy casters, horrors like the beholders, etc etc. Encounter design is so much more varied compared to BG1's endless slog through generic orc, goblin, bandit mobs. The sheer variety of BG2's encounters is staggering.

Baldur's Gate is just fine when it comes to enemy variety, and while Baldur's Gate 2 does have better variety, the Ilithid and Litch spam is honestly sad, and Baldur's Gates encounters even at higher levels are more lethal and difficult to handle on average than the average Baldur's Gate 2 encounter. While this is a pro in favor of Baldur's Gate 2, it isn't enough to overcome all the flaws the game has.

Quests are more interesting and involved in BG2 compared to BG1, companions have more of a personality (even if it's sometimes annoying and cringey, at least it's there), some companions have personal quests for you, some of them even interact with each other regularly (Minsc and Aerie), the first half of the game is incredibly open in its goals (get money! doesn't matter how) and you even get two different choices in how to progress to the next part of the game (side with Shadow Thieves or with Bodhi). The content is just of so much higher quality across the board. The way Athkatla is designed, with only certain (sizeable) districts explorable rather than the entire city, makes it feel bigger than the city of Baldur's Gate while also trimming much of the fat (most of BG's houses contained nothing of interest whatsoever). Not only that, there's more to discover in Athkatla's districts than in the entirety of Baldur's Gate!

I addressed this above but just to recap quickly. More is not always better, and the medium in which you interact with the content in Athkatla is inferior to how you interact with the content in Baldur's Gate. The fact that you claim that Athkatla is better off having districts versus being an entire city is just so strange to me, and I really don't know what I can say to bridge this fundamental difference in consuming content. Navigating around Akathla just feels so artifical and cramped, while exploring Baldur's Gate feels so refreshing and exciting.

On the topic of quests, the simple act of actually having to persue them and go out of your way to pick them up does so much to invest the player in actually resolivng those quests while the Baldur's Gate 2 method of force feeding every single quest down your throat like the player character is the cente rof the universe completely invalidates your argument in my eyes.

Oh and companions running their mouth more doesn't necessarily equate to them having more of a personality. There is a reason characters in the Baldur's Gate series are so memorable and loved, and it's because people were introduced to them in the first game. Obviously it had to do soemthing right for people to continue to want to itneract with them in the second game.

- People like to say that BG1 feels like an adventurous journey, but to me it felt like I never left my backyard. You don't really go on a grand journey in BG1: you start in the monastery you grew up in, travel to a nearby town, then to a nearby city, and that's pretty much it. In BG2 you wake up in an unknown place, emerge into a large exotic city, go on a journey by ship, visit an underwater realm, go to a prison island for mad wizards, enter the Underdark... you actually go places and travel widely. BG2 feels much more like a grand adventure than BG1 did.

Ugh you sound like Smaug. Come on man I thought you were more monocled than this. This is the type of argument a kid or a retard would say when trying to explain why generic high fantasy shit #657 is better than a setting that is more grounded and low fantasy. If Baldur's Gate doesn't make you feel like you've embarked on an adventerous journey, I genuienly feel sorry for you.

BG2 is a wild journey through the Forgotten Realms' more interesting places, with good encounter design and even some puzzles in its dungeons.

Forgotten Realms is a dogshit setting and the fact that Baldur's Gate was able to squeeze water from the stone that is that setting and actually make a game that seems grounded, mature, and interesting while simultaneously having crazy magic and talking monsters is extremely impressive. Baldur's Gate 2 leaned into the worst aspects of the Forgotten Realms setting and focused on all the wrong things.

Whatever level of quality we want to assign to Baldur's Gate 2, the first game is the far superior title. See Lilura's Blog Post for even more details and explanations.

 

[ItsChon]

ds You're on the wrong forum.

https://www.reddit.com/

This is the right forum for you, you insufferable faggot. It's an RPG discussion forum and cretins like you that have post histories like this

Spoiler

should fuck right off. You are a negative value parasite. Neck yourself as soon as possible, fucking cunt.

 

[NecroLord]

Wish we would've had more Greyhawk games.

 

[Butter]

Me and the boys watching the little people argue about which turd tastes better.

 

[NecroLord]

Me and the boys watching the little people argue about which turd tastes better.

Nice bait.

 

[JarlFrank]

This is the type of argument a kid or a retard would say when trying to explain why generic high fantasy shit #657 is better than a setting that is more grounded and low fantasy. If Baldur's Gate doesn't make you feel like you've embarked on an adventerous journey, I genuienly feel sorry for you.

Is it though? Baldur's Gate is among the most generic high fantasy shit #421241253 I've ever seen. It has nothing that makes it stand out. It's banal, shit, boring to the core.

Optional content is good, yes, and I never complained about Underrail's caves because they're genuinely cool places to explore. But BG's forest areas? They're extremely boring. There's nothing there and they don't even look interesting visually. I can leave my house, walk for 10 minutes, and I have better-looking forests with more secrets in them (hunting shelters, shells of decades-old abandoned cars, pottery shards, etc etc... more content density than the BG forests actually). There's nothing about BG's forests that feels interesting to me.

Baldur's Gate's setting just isn't enticing to me in any way. The worldbuilding that is there is okay, I guess, but nowhere near the excellence of Arcanum or Morrowind. It's serviceable, and nothing more.
BG1 feels as boring to me as those generic D&D novels written in the 80s and 90s. It doesn't feel adventurous at all, it feels incredibly mundane, filled with generic fantasy tropes, lacking the spirit of adventure that, say, pulp magazines used to have. Baldur's Gate's world is about as engaging as Oblivion's, it's that bland.

Except... as much as I hate Oblivion for what it did to the Elder Scrolls series and RPGs as a whole, it has better quest design than BG1. That's how terribly bland BG is.

I genuinely feel like I'm having more of an adventure when I take a walk through my neighborhood, than when I play Baldur's Gate 1. The only reason I'd ever replay it is to level up a character to import into BG2, but playing it is so boring I can't even bring myself to do that anymore.

 

[Harthwain]

Just because Baldur's Gate is a "typical" medieval European fantasy, does not mean it is mundane or generic.

Doesn't it? What's so interesting about a village? BG1 is more mundane, because locations you visit are typical to a medievalistic setting. It doesn't have to be a bad thing (I do enjoy medieval aestethics, for one), but I do understand why someone may find it uninteresting (and as a result - not fantastical enough).

The fact that people have the audacity to say the forest/wilderness regions are there to "pad out content" shows that they've completely missed the plot.

Or they meant that a forest (by its very nature) looks very same-y AND is a type of environment that's easy for developers to create by using same assets over and over whereas structures tend to require more individualistic approach to not feel like a copy-paste.

In contrast BG2 features a wide range of unique envrionments, both natural ones and structurally-wise. But this doesn't surprise me, considering BG1 provided everything that was required to make a sequel much bigger and feel much more varied visually.

Holy fucking shit, I cannot move ten paces without some random NPC throwing themselves at me, spitting out dialogue complete unprompted, and then breaking my immersion completely by unlocking areas on my map that I can now explore, which I would not have been able to visit prior to their interference.

I liked that NPCs had actual business and thought you were the right man for the job. It contributed to the feeling of the world being alive, not static and waiting for the player. It also completely made sense for me to having an area on the map unlocked after I've learned about it from someone.

In Baldur's Gate, if you wanted to get to a quest that was located at the rear of the city, you had to navigate there yourself, moving through different zones in a logically consistent way with the potential to get side tracked and/or waylaid while you were doing so. Not in Baldur's Gate 2 however. You just click a highlighted portion of the map and are instantly teleported to your destination. All of this negatively impacts Athkatla, and while the idea of a Mediterranean-inspired city sounds great, it never truly feels like a city, which is why Baldur's Gate is far superior despite its comparative "genericness".

BG2 cut down the fat by moving you directly to the points of interests. As a result these locations were packed with stuff to do. You also could get attacked by moving from district to district and you couldn't use magic or sleep in the streets (as guard was interrupting your "camp"), all of which did create an illusion of being in an actual city, even though you didn't have to "more through different zones" for the sake of "immersion".

while I am generally a fan of NPC interactivity, the constant interjections by my companions was handled poorly. They felt jarring and forced, though this was likely due to how overwhelming the opening sequence of the game is.

I liked the interjections. It gave impression of party members having their own opinions on what was happening (including their own personal quests). It's the kind of agency I'd wish to see more in games in general, not just RPGs. The writing itself I can't comment on, because I was playing a translated version and it was done amazingly well, which may contribute to why the writing (or the voice acting) never felt off to me.

Not to mention, the narrative inconsistency of us dicking around in a city while Imoen is being held captive getting tortured alive for all we know.

I will raise an even better point: what if you - the player - do not care about Imoen whatsoever? The story could've been handled better in many points, I don't think many people will argue that.

You're moving across wilderness, do you really expect them to be filled with people and content?

Weren't you surprised that "people have the audacity to say the forest/wilderness regions are there to >pad out content<"? This is exactly why people felt that way: you had more areas, but with not that much to do in them. Why? To "pad out content". And you could sell it as "exploring the wilderness"!. Interestingly enough, this seems to have worked on some people.

Disagree with this for obvious reasons. Baldur's Gate 2 distinctly lacked in personality because of how gamey and forced everything felt, while Baldur's Gate felt charming, subtle, and grounded.

Eh, opinions and all that, but it's not up to a debate that BG2's NPCs HAD their personalities (regardless of how good or shitty one may think they were). Also, BG2's environments and dungeons WERE quite distinct. So saying that "Baldur's Gate 2 distinctly lacked in personality" is a plain wrong statement.

The simple fact of the matter is that the Baldur's Gate series is not meant to be a dungeon crawl. The vast majority of the game is not meant to be spent in dungeons but instead it is meant to be spent exploring and adventuring, and this is something that Baldur's Gate 2 just doesn't do well due to how linear the game is in many of its chapters, and how bloated terrible the nonlinear sections of the game are in comparison to Baldur's Gate.

Baldur's Gate 2 is not a dungeon crawl though. It has dungeons, but it also has a plenty of open areas (and closed urban areas, which aren't dungeons) and you are exploring various locations and adventuring in general.

Oh and companions running their mouth more doesn't necessarily equate to them having more of a personality.

...as opposed to them having pretty much nothing to say?

There is a reason characters in the Baldur's Gate series are so memorable and loved, and it's because people were introduced to them in the first game. Obviously it had to do soemthing right for people to continue to want to itneract with them in the second game.

The obvious reason for some characters returning as party members is because it was convenient for the developers to extend the number of recruitable NPCs (and give you some starting party members from get-go).

But also new party members were introducted to replace some that were killed or were turned into NPCs. And the reason characters had more things to say in BG2 was because of the "More. Better" philosophy that pervaded the entire sequel.

This is the type of argument a kid or a retard would say when trying to explain why generic high fantasy shit #657 is better than a setting that is more grounded and low fantasy. If Baldur's Gate doesn't make you feel like you've embarked on an adventerous journey, I genuienly feel sorry for you.

But isn't high fantasy obviously more "fantastical" than low fantasy? While BG1 is an adventure, BG2 is an epic adventure, because goes much higher in terms of what you encounter on the way.

Baldur's Gate 2 leaned into the worst aspects of the Forgotten Realms setting and focused on all the wrong things.

I don't think so. If anything I'd argue that BG2 leaned into the stronger points of the setting by going beyond "low and grounded" stuff. At least from the perspective of how majority views fantasy. If you want "grounded and mature" fantasy I'd argue that DnD is not the best setting for that to begin with.

 

[Demo.Graph]

It doesn't feel adventurous at all, it feels incredibly mundane, filled with generic fantasy tropes, lacking the spirit of adventure that, say, pulp magazines used to have.

Do you consider hobbit's journeys in the Hobbit and LotR mundane or interesting?

 

[JarlFrank]

It doesn't feel adventurous at all, it feels incredibly mundane, filled with generic fantasy tropes, lacking the spirit of adventure that, say, pulp magazines used to have.

Do you consider hobbit's journeys in the Hobbit and LotR mundane or interesting?

Interesting because they actually go on an adventure. They cross mountains, face dangerous foes, have close encounters with death several times, get separated from their friends...

In BG1 you travel to a nearby town close to the place you grew up in, then go to a nearby city not much further away. That's the extent of your journey.
Would the hobbits in LotR have an adventure if they never left the Shire?

 

[Vic]

It doesn't feel adventurous at all, it feels incredibly mundane, filled with generic fantasy tropes, lacking the spirit of adventure that, say, pulp magazines used to have.

Do you consider hobbit's journeys in the Hobbit and LotR mundane or interesting?

Interesting because they actually go on an adventure. They cross mountains, face dangerous foes, have close encounters with death several times, get separated from their friends...

In BG1 you travel to a nearby town close to the place you grew up in, then go to a nearby city not much further away. That's the extent of your journey.
Would the hobbits in LotR have an adventure if they never left the Shire?

In the fictional world of Dungeons & Dragons, Nashkel and Candlekeep are both locations in the region of Faerûn on the continent of Faerûn, which is part of the larger world of Toril. The exact distance between the two locations would depend on the specific campaign setting and the DM's interpretation of the geography. However, according to official Forgotten Realms lore, Nashkel is located in the Western Heartlands region, south of the city of Baldur's Gate, while Candlekeep is located on the southern coast of the Sword Coast, several hundred miles to the west of Nashkel. The journey between the two locations would likely take several weeks of travel by foot or horseback.

 

[NecroLord]

If I go to the Brothel of Earthly Delights, do I go on an interesting or mundane adventure?

 

[JarlFrank]

Cool but it doesn't feel like that in the game.

 

[Vic]

Cool but it doesn't feel like that in the game.

It does if you explore all maps. The over world is quite huge.

 

[Melcar]

Not enough AWESOME! in BG 1 for the kids it seems.

 

[Butter]

RPG Codex user kvetching about the lack of wilderness maps, 2023 (colorized)