The Weekly/Yearly LOL Baldur's Gate sucks thread!

[Lhynn]

Retardo thesheeep

 

[Roguey]

Where are all those great CRPGs based on RPG systems superior to AD&D?

Pillars of Eternity, this fall.

See my sig.

P.S. ToEE was 3.5 edition, IWD2 was 3rd more-or-less.

 

[Elwro]

Before i download it, does it have the same DRM problems as pool of radiance? Took me a couple of hours to get it working and i don't intend to do that again

Nope. After the first area you need to input one word from a page in the manual and that's all. http://www.replacementdocs.com/download.php?view.408

 

[deamento]

Before i download it, does it have the same DRM problems as pool of radiance? Took me a couple of hours to get it working and i don't intend to do that again

Nope. After the first area you need to input one word from a page in the manual and that's all. http://www.replacementdocs.com/download.php?view.408

alright, cheers mate

 

[Excidium]

Yeah. It runs perfectly on DosBox. (Download a manual!)

Pefect in quotes because that game is clunky as fuck, it's either too fast or too slow

 

[Elwro]

Weird. My CPU must've been a good match for the game's DosBox requirements, then -- I played it through twice with no problems.

 

[thesheeep]

Your arguments against AD&D are mostly irrelevant, since in practice the best (from a combatfag's POV) CRPGs were based on AD&D: Gold Box games and IE games. And also Dark Sun and Temple of Elemental Evil.

Ah, yes, my favorite pro AD&D argument: Good games were made with it!
It's nonsense of course, but at least someone is trying to bring an argument. Thank you.

As Roguey already said, ToEE is D&D 3.5.
3.5 is good for PC games, and it is okay for PnP. I still do not consider it overall good, but it does not suck as much as anything pre 3.0. And it is not as retardedly generic (rule-wise) as the 4th edition.

I fear what's mostly at work here is nostalgia. While those goldbox games certainly were not bad, I really wouldn't consider them great when compared to games like Fallout (not that there are many games like Fallout...).
First of all, they are all (IIRC) turn-based. As one might imagine, a turn-based system implemented as a... turn-based system works much better than one implemented in RTwP. To get a working real-time system, one has to change the rules quite a bit, which they did not do in BG. So, from a combat perspective, those older games are much better than BG. I do not remember them that much, tbh, so I don't know if they implemented more combat rules (grabbing, etc.).

But besides of that... I mostly remember horrible interfaces. Those games are just too old to compete with stuff like Fallout, ToEE or Arcanum (yes I do consider the rule system in there good, even if it would have needed much tuning, but it is not inherently flawed like AD&D). I'm sorry, but old is not automatically good, just as new is not automatically better. Those games have aged, and not too well.

But nothing of that changes anything about AD&D. You logic there is hopelessly wrong.
The fact that you can create a good game based on a bad system does not prove that the system is good. The only thing it proves is that good games can be created on top of bad rules. What a surprise.
BG could have been much better if they implemented all of the AD&D rules and made it TB. Of course, that would also have required some encounter design changes. I guess I would be able to play it again, in that case. But BG fails at disguising the flawed system on top of it.

If you would have read anything I wrote, you would have noticed that I did not criticize the combat itself, other than the calculations being a mathematical mess. I pretty much criticize everything about AD&D except the combat rules. But in a PC game, that matters much less. You do not have to remember all that unintuitive stuff to play the game. You click and it works.
Again, that does not change any argument I raised.
I never said that AD&D is so broken that it does not work at all. Of course it works. It is not unplayable.
But when compared with an actual good system (and there are many, with my personal favorite being Shadowrun), there is no way not to notice the inferiority.

Where are all those great CRPGs based on RPG systems superior to AD&D?

D&D is the big player in PnP systems, and it was even more back then. Basing a game on D&D instead of a less well-known system will increase sales on its own. That is the simple reason why most have not even tried anything else.
I'm kind of curious about Shadowrun Online. I just hope it won't turn into a Jagged Alliance Online with replaced assets.

Retardo thesheeep

Yes, retardo the only guy in this AD&D-discussion bringing any arguments based on logic instead of nostalgia or denial...
You know, I did like AD&D when I first played it. All the shortcomings started to hammer at my gate of denial, eventually tearing it down and opening my eyes, when I began playing more and better systems.

 

[octavius]

thesheeep, I prefer to discuss actual games and how thing work out in real life, not game theory.
You may me right about the pen&paper versions of AD&D (but those endless nerd ramblings about which version of AD&D is best does not belong in this sub forum anyway), but for computer games AD&D (any version up to 3.5) has proved to be an excellent system. Or is it just a coincidence that so many of the best CRPGs are based on AD&D?

And your comment about nostalgia was misplaced, since I've played all the Gold Box games the past three years (and enjoyed most of them) and still play FRUA modules.

 

[No Great Name]

Ah, yes, my favorite pro AD&D argument: Good games were made with it!
It's nonsense of course, but at least someone is trying to bring an argument. Thank you.
...
I fear what's mostly at work here is nostalgia.

Ah yes, my favorite counter-argument: Nostalgia!
It's nonsense of course, but at least someone is trying to bring a counter-argument. Thank you.

In all seriousness, bringing up nostalgia as an argument is like pissing in the dark.
Save the arguments that are based on personal characteristics for discussions that are done in person.

 

[thesheeep]

thesheeep, I prefer to discuss actual games and how thing work out in real life, not game theory.

Fine for me. I like game theory, and discussing it, but I guess it comes with the job.

Or is it just a coincidence that so many of the best CRPGs are based on AD&D?

As I said, I think the main reason is D&D's market penetration, which is big now, but was even greater back then.
If you would have developed a game based on... Rolemaster or something, people would have said "Huh? What's that? It's probably crap. But hey, there is a D&D game. I know D&D! Bought!".
So, no coincidence, no, but not a proof of a great system either.

And your comment about nostalgia was misplaced, since I've played all the Gold Box games the past three years (and enjoyed most of them) and still play FRUA modules.

You are strange.
But nostalgia is not necessarily about memory of a game from "back then", it also is playing games from back then, precisely because of the experience of games from that era.
That is nothing bad at all, but I don't think this removes you from the nostalgia argument.
Do you really think that those games are better than ToEE for example and could stand an objective (as possible) comparison? And if so, why?

In all seriousness, bringing up nostalgia as an argument is like pissing in the dark.
Save the arguments that are based on personal characteristics for discussions that are done in person.

Uhm... No? Nostalgia is a very important and real part in the perception of games.
It's not some esoteric concept.
And what does this have to do with arguments in person? Sorry, but you confuse me.

 

[octavius]

Do you really think that those games are better than ToEE for example and could stand an objective (as possible) comparison? And if so, why?

Haven't played ToEE, but from what I've read the combat engine is superior, but poor encounter design ruined what could have been a great game. So I doubt if ToEE is better than the best GB games.

I can however compare the GB games to the IE games.
The IE games wins despite being RTwP:
Much more options.
Better (moddable) enemy AI.
Better encounter design.
Better NPC interaction.
General moddability, which turns mediocre BG1 into one of my favourite games.

So even thought I'm a nostalgic fossil and the GB games were my favourite DOS era CRPGs, I still think modern popamole games like BG1+2 and IWD were better.

And another point about nostalgia: I played ancient games like Dark Heart of Uukrul and Magic Candle a few years ago and guess what? I loved them despite never having played them before.

 

[Lhynn]

thesheeep AD&D is a convoluted system with some flaws and a design that is not very intuitive its true, but they are all superficial. The system at its core is solid. It is not dumbed down and simplified for you to understand, but if a 13 year old can navigate around AD&D core books, understand the system and DM an enjoyable campaign with no hiccups, im sure you can manage as well if you just try.

Most of the stuff you have addressed is wrong, comes directly from ignorance and discourages me to engage in an argument about the subject with you.

tl;dr retardo thesheeep

 

[Edward_R_Murrow]

BG1 is an interesting game from a design standpoint.

It's one of the few cRPGs to emulate not only low-level D&D, but a more low-key style of the game (well, as much as marketable D&D can really be). Unlike other titles with similar level caps, or that include the BG1 level range, the player party isn't pitted against everything in the monster manual that happens to fall within the suggest encounter challenge ratings. Enemies are mostly humans or humanoids, and the chief foes, behind everything, are as well. For once, the "big bad" wasn't a dragon/lich/death-knight/demon/beholder/drow leading a horde of beasties against the "civilized races". However, this does make for a bit more "mundane" combat; many encounters in the early game lack interesting special abilities and tactics employed by foes. Compare the early dragonkin a party faces off against in Champions of Krynn, or to the elementals/orc attack/cave encounters in Knights of the Chalice to BG1's bandits/gibberlings/kobolds. BG1's NPC assassins and mercenary bands compare favorably, but many of the generic foes do not in the early game.

The beginning of the game, post Candlekeep, is structured similarly to what a level 1 module or adventure might feel like. Traveling the roads to meet companions, being attacked by a few assassins, making your way to Nashkel, and then conquering your first "dungeon" clearing the mines. Nashkel's mines actually play decently as one of the first destinations for a level one party, almost akin to something out of a first level module.

Spoiler

You have a bunch of kobolds, built up to be something a little more by the dialogues of the miners in the highest level, as well as a smattering of other foes including giant spiders, a ghoul, and some jellies. All of this culminates in a boss battle against an evil priest who summons some skeleton and kobold minions.

It's nothing terribly impressive, but decent enough fare for a starting dungeon. Unfortunately, it doesn't work too well if you show up over-leveled or are practicing the art of powergaming. And BG1 doesn't really dissuade the player from doing either. Leveling goes hand-in-hand with exploration, and most players are loathe to commit to a main quest in any game that grants them sufficient freedoms to wander. And there's very little in the way of disincentives to make some min-maxed mofo whose 18/XX exceptional strength bonus makes every damage roll result in death for one hit-die foes.

The critical path, from Nashkel onwards, is well-paced and interesting enough, but going off the beaten path can result in long stretches of experiencing slogs of relatively uninteresting content with some legitimately good content peppered in. Obviously, sluicing through the rough to find these gems doesn't make for particularly exciting gameplay...a malady most "open world" or "exploration-based" games suffer from. For instance, Morrowind may have some neat locations and treasures, but you'll have to trudge through dozens of cliff racers in the overworld and slog through a generic bandit cave or two for every interesting locale (and many of these are only interesting for lore/atmosphere; not because they provide an egaging gameplay experience).

This sort of content spread makes for a play dynamic that will be highly unappealing to the jaded, cynical, or self-aware gamer...psychographics a bit overrepresented on this here vidya game forum. It's quite annoying to slog through, what amounts to, a static implementation of D&D random encounter tables in wilderness areas to find that needle mad wizard encounter in a haystack.

However, later on the content wheat/chaff ratio greatly improves when veering off the critical path. The city of Baldur's Gate is rich with quests, encounters, and interesting locales. Design of quests is markedly better than what was available before Chapter 5; quests like the search for the "Helm and Cloak" are particularly well done. Overall, there are more choices, more searching, more thieving, and more going on in the city quests as opposed to the fetch-a-palooza in the non-critical path content of chapters 1-4.

The critical path picks up from Chapter 3 onwards as well. Enemy parties confront the player characters more often, and are among the best fights in the game. Chapter 4 tasks the player to journey through what is essentially an "outdoor dungeon" before delving into the main dungeon of the chapter. There's a brisk sense of pace for the most part, with only a part of Chapter 7, towards the end of the game, that really drags on (mazes are none too fun in the Infinity Engine).

Expansion content ranges from mediocre to outstanding. There are essentially three main content areas. One is a small locale with a handful of fun encounters, one is a larger area with interesting fluff but rather mediocre mechanical depth, and the third is an amazing mega-dungeon. The two "extra" dungeons in vanilla BG1 were disappointing, to say the least. Durlag's Tower is quite the redemption though, being one of the best examples of modern dungeon design.

So, yeah, Baldur's Gate does improve later on and is worth a playthrough if you enjoyed Icewind Dale or want some D&D action. I'd advise skipping a lot of the wilderness areas and follow the critical path. Some NPCs and quests might take you out into the wilderness, but with a focused goal, making it a bit less of a fog-of-war clearing chore. The sequel is pretty much better in all respects, as it doesn't try to have an "open-world" design, opting instead for an extremely content-dense city serving as the primary area, with semi-seperate quest areas in and outside of the city. Superb encounter design and the "sweet spot" of D&D character level/power also help to make BG2 a great game.

 

[Telengard]

Branding is important, but brand doesn't guarantee lasting success. Lots of brands have failed on the computer game front, particularly movie brands. AD&D and 2nd Ed had several advantages back when, including but by no means limited to the brand. Out of all the old systems, D&D was the easiest to convert to the Gamemasterless system that is the computer. To touch on just the tip of the iceberg:

• Old D&D's rigid class structure and old-strategy-game style game balance made it easy to plan and make encounters for at all stages of the game.
  
• It had a wealth of heavily playtested content of both monsters and treasure already pre-set for each level.
  
• Its character choices were built into the background of the system, such as the aforementioned difference between the swift-leveling but weak thief and the slow-leveling but hard-hitting fighter, instead of the modern games' offerings of a choice between different power-ups, or making trap choices between a good choice and a worthless one. And that old system is a system that doesn't require any further game balancing effort, even when there is no Gamemaster there fixing things on the fly.

D&D3.0 may have a lot more going on with character creation and combat options, but all of that is worthless if the game can't actually make use of any of it. And that's the trouble with those games - the 3.0 game system is a butt to plan and program for. Every new option leads to an exponential increase in the required amount of programming to make it work for both you and the AI, and most games don't have all that much development time. And that's why you end up with bugbears with 300+ hit points. All of those game options pretty much just led to you being able to rape the AI in an infinite number of ways, and the only defense the AI had against it all was hp bloat. The only defense it could actually use.

Or to put that in Codexia terms, yes, you had a lot of choices, but all of those choices were without consequence and ultimately meaningless. And that feeds inevitably into the poor gameplay that those 3.0 games are so rightfully tagged with.

 

[Lyric Suite]

Ah, yes, my favorite pro AD&D argument: Good games were made with it!

I think the point is that nobody gives a shit whether AD&D sucks or not if the game itself is great, and it is certainly extremely asinine to reproach a D&D game for using 2nd edition D&D when that was what was available at the time.

 

[thesheeep]

AD&D is a convoluted system with some flaws and a design that is not very intuitive its true, but they are all superficial. The system at its core is solid. It is not dumbed down and simplified for you to understand, but if a 13 year old can navigate around AD&D core books, understand the system and DM an enjoyable campaign with no hiccups, im sure you can manage as well if you just try.

What is up with you?
Okay, given I wrote a lot here, so maybe you just did not read that part.
I did play AD&D for a longer time. I do understand the rules. I never found it to be a great system, but it worked for us.
My pain with AD&D does not come from a lack of understanding, it comes from understanding it plus understanding other far superior systems that do everything AD&D does, plus a ton more and all of it in a better way. And with that comparison in mind, I find it hard to say that AD&D does not suck.
Okay, how about I say AD&D was good for its time? I am happy knowing that it sucks today and you can read that as if it doesn't suck today.

Most of the stuff you have addressed is wrong

Yet you fail to address a single one of it to prove your point. You obviously seem to think I am wrong, fine, but I am convinced all of my points for why AD&D sucks stem from logic and are not subjective. I do have many more I did not list, as I do suspect they are subjective (like me loathing the Vancian "magic system").
So.. prove me wrong, or let it rest, but stop calling me wrong without any actual arguments. That is somehow annoying. Or at least do so without summoning or quoting me so I don't have to read that stuff. I made my main points many posts ago, I'm just here defending myself from bullshit attacks.

I think the point is that nobody gives a shit whether AD&D sucks or not if the game itself is great, and it is certainly extremely asinine to reproach a D&D game for using 2nd edition D&D when that was what was available at the time.

I'm not reproaching BG. I'm not saying that it or the Goldbox games suck or something. I obviously had tons of fun with them, look in posts from some years ago and you will certainly find me defending BG like mad. My only important point, if you want, is that AD&D sucks. I'm just saying that I cannot play BG anymore, because I loathe the underlying system so much by now.
That is a highly subjective thing (not playing the PC games based on it), I know, and believe me I don't like that. I want to enjoy BG again. But it is not going to happen.
Whenever I try it (and I try often), I see all that is wrong with the underlying system, become frustrated and turn on ToEE or IWD2 instead, despite their other shortcomings.

I know many people do not care if AD&D sucks or not for a game based on it. I'm not saying you have to. I'm just saying I do and try to explain why (AD&D sucks).
Hell, I encouraged the OP to play BG2. How silly would that be if I claimed the game to suck?

 

[Lhynn]

AD&D is a convoluted system with some flaws and a design that is not very intuitive its true, but they are all superficial. The system at its core is solid. It is not dumbed down and simplified for you to understand, but if a 13 year old can navigate around AD&D core books, understand the system and DM an enjoyable campaign with no hiccups, im sure you can manage as well if you just try.

What is up with you?
Okay, given I wrote a lot here, so maybe you just did not read that part.
I did play AD&D for a longer time. I do understand the rules. I never found it to be a great system, but it worked for us.
My pain with AD&D does not come from a lack of understanding, it comes from understanding it plus understanding other far superior systems that do everything AD&D does, plus a ton more and all of it in a better way. And with that comparison in mind, I find it hard to say that AD&D does not suck.
Okay, how about I say AD&D was good for its time? I am happy knowing that it sucks today and you can read that as if it doesn't suck today.

Most of the stuff you have addressed is wrong

Yet you fail to address a single one of it to prove your point. You obviously seem to think I am wrong, fine, but I am convinced all of my points for why AD&D sucks stem from logic and are not subjective. I do have many more I did not list, as I do suspect they are subjective (like me loathing the Vancian "magic system").
So.. prove me wrong, or let it rest, but stop calling me wrong without any actual arguments. That is somehow annoying. Or at least do so without summoning or quoting me so I don't have to read that stuff. I made my main points many posts ago, I'm just here defending myself from bullshit attacks.

AD&D is still a solid system today, much better than any other D&D edition that has come after it. Much better than any other system i know of when it comes to a fantasy, combat oriented PnP RPG.
Classes having different XP values indicate that it is in fact much easier to learn to move slightly more quietly than learning to alter reality, i love the way it was implemented as it gives each class a unique feel to it, this is undeniable.

Your complain about numbers going up or going down in a confusing way... just invert the stupid number you retard, ive had 9 year olds that understood that point and never paid attention to it again, yet only here do i meet retards that are troubled by a minus sign that changes nothing.

Vancian magic? i fail to see whats wrong with it, especially on PnP.

Low survivability when you are low level? yes, thats how it is suposed to go, at lvl 1 you are already a trained character, and yet a single hit from most things can prove lethal, this leads to low level adventures being slow paced and tense, it makes them enjoyable and unique.

Balance? fuck you, no character can survive on its own in AD&D and every character in the game can shine where others cant, to me this is the most balanced edition of them all while still retaining a huge degree of freedom. Kits and other extra stuff mess with that balance somehow, but if an extra +1 is what it takes to get my players interested in informing themselves on the system and the setting and actually bothering to roleplay their characters i welcome it with open arms.

I dont remember what other points you raised but they do come from the fact that you dont understand the system, and i dont mean the rules, i mean the reason most of the convoluted shit is there. AD&D is a beautiful system that makes my players roleplay instead of worrying about stats, levels, feats and if they get an attack of opportunity. The combat is more fluid, more precise and more solid than a lot of others systems ive played, striking a balance that is hard to find, it also encourages abstraction of the actions and narrative in battle.

 

[thesheeep]

Thank you, finally we have reached the status of discussion!
Oh btw. I hope derailing this yearly BG thread is not too lawful evil...

Classes having different XP values indicate that it is in fact much easier to learn to move slightly more quietly than learning to alter reality, i love the way it was implemented as it gives each class a unique feel to it, this is undeniable.

I know what it is supposed to display, you continue to think I am some kind of idiot. Well, I am not.
The problem with that system is that it should be completely unnecessary. Instead of of increasing the time for a level up, why not just make the level ups equal in XP, but reduce what you gain from them?
Just like it is in 3.5. The result is the same. Plus, that way, nobody needs to be distracted by yet another class-specific table and nobody needs to be annoyed because of how much less he can improve his character than other players.
The underlying and far more important problem of all that is not one specific to AD&D, the problem is that level-based systems just make no sense. You do not kill 100 goblins, and suddenly turn stronger. Getting better is a process and every single level based system fails to display that in a good way. Point-based systems like TDE or SR where the XP-equivalent is a resource to spend will always have the upper hand as they can represent a fluent progress in contrast to an artificially fragmented one. So, yeah, this is more of a general D&D problem, or that of any level-based system.

Your complain about numbers going up or going down in a confusing way... just invert the stupid number you retard, ive had 9 year olds that understood that point and never paid attention to it again, yet only here do i meet retards that are troubled by a minus sign that changes nothing.

I know how to handle that, thank you. Of course it is entirely possible. But it is yet another completely unrequired nuisance. Again one that 3(.5) solved by something much more intuitive.

Vancian magic? i fail to see whats wrong with it, especially on PnP.

It is supposed to display the necessary preparation some magic users need to do to cast their magic. It present wizards more as ritualists than people who can bend reality at will. I don't like that theory of magic, but that is just my preference. The system itself is fine.
The problem is that this is not how it works at all in D&D. It tries, but it fails when you think about it. You need to rest for 8 hours to do... everything. During 8 hours sleep, a warrior heals his wounds. Okay.
During 8 hours sleep, a mage heals his wounds. But wait, he also needs to prepare his spells. So.. what... does he do that in his sleep? Remarkably, but I guess not. Instead, the mage will spend some time with his books and formulas. But then, he will only have 5 hours or so of sleep. How does he manage to heal as fast as the warrior that way? Do mages just need less sleep? That would be fine, if you could split both activities, preparing and sleeping. So any mage should be able to just take 2-3 hours hours to prepare his spells. And should only need 5 hours to heal. But that is not possible in D&D. You can try to find all sorts of excuses for why it is like that, or use house-rules, but they will all be very far-fetched and not able to disguise that D&D pre 4.0 fails to implement a magic system that makes sense in its own world. Which is btw the only thing better in 4.0.

Low survivability when you are low level? yes, thats how it is suposed to go, at lvl 1 you are already a trained character, and yet a single hit from most things can prove lethal, this leads to low level adventures being slow paced and tense, it makes them enjoyable and unique.

A lcharacter with not much constitution has as many HP as three rats. Three. Rats. A human being. Hello-ho? There is abstraction, and there is... this mess.
Again, I know what it is supposed to display. Every HP-based system has serious problems as there is more to one's health status than the taken damage. TDE also has that problem, btw. but makes up for it by having actual illnesses, etc. But this one just takes the crown of nonsense, at least at low levels. I fail to see how anyone can look at early level HP stats in D&D and keep a straight face.
If it does not fall apart for you when you think about it, then I will not be able to ever convince you here, so let's just stop that point.

Balance? fuck you, no character can survive on its own in AD&D and every character in the game can shine where others cant to me this is the most balanced edition of them all while still retaining a huge degree of freedom.

We agree here. That part does work very well in D&D, but any edition up to 3.5 IMO. This is what 4.0 broke utterly by making every class essentially the same.
But the freedom part is just wrong. You have far more possibilities and diversity in character creation and development in 3.5. AD&D gives you fixed abilities at level-up, kits just give more paths with fixed gained abilities. In 3.0+ you can decide what traits, etc. to take. That is a simple numbers game and AD&D just has less character development possibilities than 3.5.

I dont remember what other points you raised but they do come from the fact that you dont understand the system, and i dont mean the rules, i mean the reason most of the convoluted shit is there.

And I can only repeat myself by saying that you are utterly wrong here. I can give you the reasoning behind every design decision in AD&D, and why they did it in that way, it is not hard to understand. I know what they tried to do. But they failed in many ways. And they realized that, hence 3.0 was born, and from it 3.5.
4.0 then came out of completely different reasons, and the result is.. well, you probably know it.

 

[Scroo]

I dont remember what other points you raised but they do come from the fact that you dont understand the system, and i dont mean the rules, i mean the reason most of the convoluted shit is there. AD&D is a beautiful system that makes my players roleplay instead of worrying about stats, levels, feats and if they get an attack of opportunity. The combat is more fluid, more precise and more solid than a lot of others systems ive played, striking a balance that is hard to find, it also encourages abstraction of the actions and narrative in battle.

Best description of AD&D I've read in a long time

 

[Osvir]

I recently tried to play Baldur's Gate, having heard how great the game is, and I came back incredibly disappointed. 10 minutes after leaving the friendly arms inn I quit the game, A week later I tried again and quit after 3 minutes. The combat is incredibly boring to me (I've always disliked RTwP, but I thought that IWD was pretty good, so it can be done right), the writing was pretty bad and the characters i met (which are, imoen, jaheira, khalid, montaron and xzar) were either boring or annoying.
So i wonder, does this game get any better later on or is it just over hyped shit?

And please don't post stuff like: BG2 is better.
Atleast explain why BG 2 is better

This post reflects my experience with the IE games. It took me years (about 5 of them) before I "understood" Baldur's Gate and then finally burnt through it and finished it in like a week. I did enjoy Icewind Dale a lot too, but that was mostly because 4 of my friends made a character each (at that time I thought the "Multiplayer" on the box meant "Play on the same screen" type of thing~ I grew up with a console). That made the characters way more exciting and interesting, I still remember to this day (whilst many of the characters I've made myself on replays I barely even remember). Icewind Dale is the first IE game I finished.

The same thing applied to Baldur's Gate. I started Baldur's Gate over and over and I just couldn't get through it, until me and a friend started a Multiplayer game and we defined our characters (he was part of the IWD experience too).

My problem: I was rolling up characters on a whim, I didn't realize it until I played with my friend. But my characters were uninteresting and not very enjoyable to experience. It wasn't until I sat down and invested some time into the actual character concept and character building that I started to understand and actually wanted to explore Baldur's Gate. So my tip is that you maybe try writing a biography or spend some time on the character concept i.e. the role you want to play.

 

[Abelian]

ITT: LARPing is the secret to enjoying the IE games.

Spoiler

 

[deamento]

That can't really be done in my opinion because the dialogue options you get will usually not coincide with how you wrote your character

 

[Sensuki]

I dont remember what other points you raised but they do come from the fact that you dont understand the system, and i dont mean the rules, i mean the reason most of the convoluted shit is there. AD&D is a beautiful system that makes my players roleplay instead of worrying about stats, levels, feats and if they get an attack of opportunity. The combat is more fluid, more precise and more solid than a lot of others systems ive played, striking a balance that is hard to find, it also encourages abstraction of the actions and narrative in battle.

Best description of AD&D I've read in a long time

This was my experience as well, when I played it. 3E made it so much more gamey, and it just didn't have the same feel.

 

[DraQ]

the writing was pretty bad and the characters i met (which are, imoen, jaheira, khalid, montaron and xzar) were either boring or annoying.

Either? Some were both!

So i wonder, does this game get any better later on or is it just over hyped shit?

It mostly is.

Story starts to pick up somewhat towards the end, narrator can be considered atmospheric if you're playing it in a laid back manner with a beer in hand (RTWP spoils quite a bit of fun here), other than that it's sole genuinely original and worthwhile contribution to cRPG genre consists of followers that can interact with each other and even come to blows if the tensions build up.

Other than that it's basically oblivion of its time - a pointless, undirected slog across boring generic landscapes (but without actual exploration) that almost everyone knows and loves because it was their first cRPG.

 

[Osvir]

That can't really be done in my opinion because the dialogue options you get will usually not coincide with how you wrote your character

True, but this is also true for every single RPG with multiple choices. I don't think I've ever played a roleplaying game where I have at some point not thought "That's not what I would want to say... oh well....".

Another method is to make a Multiplayer game, make 2 characters, the generic main character+your own protaganist character. This gives you lots of more freedom in building your character.