Is Baldur's Gate I Any Good?

[Alinestra Covelia]

I stuck with the game until the mines with the kobolds. There, with no safe place to rest and with TPKs every sodding time I loaded the game, I lost my temper entirely and destroyed first my laptop then the BG1 discs.

Good bloody riddance too.

[VetLegion]

Come on, you didn't really kill your laptop because of that?

[Alinestra Covelia]

Yes, I did. Of course that meant I then had to kill BG1 by association for causing the death of my Toaster.

The Toaster's loss was a sentimental one, not a qualitative one - the laptop cost me nothing and was in fact refurbished.

The BG1 loss was neither a sentimental nor a qualitative one. It wasn't particularly good and I don't particularly miss it.

[Proteus_MST]

Originally posted by Alinestra Covelia
I stuck with the game until the mines with the kobolds. There, with no safe place to rest and with TPKs every sodding time I loaded the game, I lost my temper entirely and destroyed first my laptop then the BG1 discs.

Good bloody riddance too.

Why didn´t you just get out of the mines and rest somewhere else,
like at the camp of the vagabounds or at the nearest town?

If I remember correctly that´s what I often used on this dungeon (but also for other dungeons), i.e. getting out of the dungeon regularly, and go somewhere else to rest and sell loot and the like (and you could get much loot from the kobolds, lots of shortbows and short swords ) and come back later.

May not be very RPG-like, to just leave the dungeon and come back at a later time, but being able to rest undisturbed for several hours in a dungeon full of kobolds and other vermin seems to be a little bit un-RPG as well

[Alinestra Covelia]

Originally posted by Proteus_MST
Why didn´t you just get out of the mines and rest somewhere else,
like at the camp of the vagabounds or at the nearest town?

Every town I go to had some scripted "Kill the party" NPC whom I couldn't beat. Also, the random encounters on the way there would kill me too.

But this is all academic. I'm sure there are ways of bypassing the poor design work and the arbitrary difficulty curve. I lost patience in trying to find them. Pointing out that you managed to find them does not have any bearing on the difficulty I had with the game, nor on my lack of enjoyment.

Note that this is not necessarily indicative of my skill or reasonability as a player. I enjoyed BG2 greatly and finished it and Throne of Bhaal as well...

[Jon Miller]

Only the one destroyed laptop?

JM

[Alinestra Covelia]

Originally posted by Jon Miller
Only the one destroyed laptop?

JM

Yes, in this case.

The laptop was the "Toaster", where a friend of mine ordered a toaster on a website, and they sent him a laptop instead by mistake. He found it was locked and passworded, so he traded it to me for a toaster. I got somebody to crack the laptop and got it working.

[Proteus_MST]

Hm, is it a workaround?

I never considered it to be one. For me it is a normal strategy I use in all D&D Computer RPGs, from "Pool of Radiance" on (and also in BG2).
I think there is rarely a major dungeon where I don´t get out and to the next city at least once and if it is only to sell loot.

But I agree with you, that the monsters in BG1 are partly very hard (although I would rather use the Gnoll Fortress in te south western part of the sword coast as an example for this ) making it really a really good thing in BG1 to first "hunt bunnies" till you are experienced enough to travel frm A to B without constantly having to worry that the next random encounter could be yur last.

[Proteus_MST]

dp

[East Street Trader]

There are a lot of tough fights. I remember the party that you encounter in the basilisk area to be one such and so is the party in the area into which you emerge from the mines.

When brushed aside by a group far too powerful yet to confront I just went back to my last save and then avoided them until I had levelled up enough to take them on. Cheesy, of course, but it didn't much interfere with my enjoyment of the game.

The interplay between the various members of the party is good; Minsc is splendid; the terrain and quests immerse you; and there is enough of a sense of making progress along the main plot line.

BGII is a better game but it builds on what BGI achieved.

[Dinner]

I few years back I bought a gold edition with BG1 & 2 with all the expansion packs. They were great games.

[kittenOFchaos]

Is it good?

If you like Kobolds

[Dinner]

The first one has lots of kobalds but they disappear as the game goes on. They're practically a no show in the expansion packs much less BG2. In D&D at low level kobalds are just about the only monster you can fight in numbers without getting creamed.

[Fake Boris]

I never found BG1 to be all that difficult.

Equip all your NPCs with ranged weapons, that should help a lot. With five or six characters throwing something at an enemy spellcaster, you have a good chance of disrupting the spell before it is cast.

Bear in mind that unlike in BG2, monsters do respawn when you save. Try to stick with autosaves.

Since your characters will be low-level, magic is not as powerful as in BG2. The game will be easier if your main character is a fighter.

Don't dismiss sidequests. Gaining levels early is crucial.

[Dinner]

Yeah, BG1 was pretty easy especially since I kept looking up the answers to each chapter online.

Even without that a decent multiclassed character could pwn the game as long as you take the time to finish the side quests thus assuring you're leveling up at the right times. Hell, with the right NPC for each section you can practically race through the game.