PrimeJunta

@Stun Big surprise there, you've said that about P:E every time we butt heads on it. @Lord Wafflebaum Very likely. If I was starting over -- which I might, just not today -- I'd go with a something-thief multiclass. Make a decent scout at least, and have sufficient moral flexibility not to bellyache about the quests. (Hate hate hate the dual-classing mechanic so won't do that except under extreme duress.)

I was right about my reasons for disliking the game. The 5% was quite enough to demonstrate that. Edit: incidentally, the P:E BB is about 5% of the game as well. Which makes this a pretty fair comparison actually...

Because Sensuki had taught me IE combat with IWD, and I realized I had been doing it wrong. So I figured maybe I was mistaken about BG2 too, and wanted to give it a fresh try. Edit: The writing I was pretty sure about and didn't expect my opinion to change on that. However I thought that my views on the hard counters and save-or-die was due just to me playing it badly. Now I know that that's not the case. Obviously I'm not as good as you guys who have played it through a dozen times or more, but I'm no long floundering, and I am finding solutions to the fights rather than cheesing them. And it still requires metagame knowledge and trial-and-error. Unlike almost all of IWD, I may add. It is, of course, gratifying -- at a certain level -- to find that I was right all along. However, I would have preferred to be wrong, and not have spent a quite a lot of time on something I ultimately did not enjoy.

Quote one. I only have access to my 3.5 rulebooks, and the description there certainly said nothing of the kind.

Why? Says who?

:shrug: Fair enough. I was playing it wrong. Be as it may, I was disappointed that the game did not acknowledge my choice of alignment and class in any way, and the only options offered were "accept quest/don't accept quest."

I certainly permitted paladins in my campaigns to lie, if pursuing Lawful Good goals.

Baldur's Gate (the location) was nothing like Athkatla. There was a lot of stuff there, for sure, but it was not being stuffed down my throat. I had to go look for it. That is way more enjoyable.

Fair enough if you say so. As I mentioned earlier, I tend not to "not accept quests" in computer games. But you're absolutely right, I did not have to do so. I did feel pressured to do so because of the consequences of not accepting companion quests in BG1 though. I took Sensuki's advice and headed for Umar Hills. Finished it. Thought it was kind of meh; definitely not exciting enough to put up with the downsides. Also, very very easy (except probably for the dragon which I didn't even try to fight). Bottom line: despite the promising start (slaver quest, de'Arnise keep) I'm finding BG 2 more frustrating than fun, so I'm ending this Let's Play (and my attempt at it) here. The things that killed it for me are: Athkatla's content density: the way every bystander is pushing a quest on me, sometimes even in my face, including those scripted, timed events, from party members and elsewhere. I don't know what's important and what's not, and feel like I'm being yanked on a leash in different directions. I love it that there's a lot of content, but let me find it, don't push it on me like a bunch of panhandlers. Certain features of IE mechanics, compounded by the limited control I have over party composition. For example, it got really tedious to cast one Cure Light Wounds after another, so after a while I was sliding back to clicking Q-Rest(-L if monsters showed up) just because it was easier. I.e., between tedious and degenerate, I slid to degenerate. Other similarly irritating mechanics were the inventory system, the stealth system, the chance to fail to transcribe a spell, and pathfinding combined with constrained maps. Also: rock-paper-scissors magic. It felt like I had the wrong spells memorized -- or learned -- most of the time. It's as if the game wants me to change my spell loadout for each part of each quest, but at the same time it punishes me for resting (wandering monsters). The quests and writing just aren't all that interesting. All the quests I did were completely linear; the only choice involved was to take it or leave it. Choices in alignment and class were not supported or even acknowledged. In IWD I didn't care because the combat was so much fun and the maps were so well designed, but with much rougher encounters, areas that don't make sense, and cheesy writing... not worth it. A quite a lot of the content was save-die-and-reload. The golem fight in de'Arnise Keep, the beholders/gauth, and that Kangaxx guardian lich. Maybe I was underleveled for some of it. If so, how would I know? And how do I find the content that's suitable for my level? The game doesn't tell me, and I do not find it enjoyable to go partway through a quest, discover it's not fun, and go do something else. When I start on something I want to finish it. And I want the game to communicate to me when I'm going off the beaten path and about to try something stupidly dangerous. BG2 does not do it in any way. I am totes cool with someone else liking that, but I do not. So that's that for BG2 and me. I'll go back to Heart of Winter at some point; it looked promising and if it's set up the same way as IWD I will probably like it a lot more. At this time, BG1 and BG2 are clearly my least favorite IE games. I enjoyed even IWD2 more than this, IWD a LOT more than this, and PS:T is, of course, PS:T. Thanks for following, everyone. I have high hopes that I'll like P:E more than this -- not a very high bar to clear in my case.

It is a cipher ability. If it was ability-gated there would be that red locked line in the dialog.

@Malekith, @Stun and others, re 'swamped with quests' and 'man there's a lot to do,' I love the way the Fallouts (1, 2, and NV) do it. There's something for you to discover like, everywhere, but none of it is forced on you. There's not a single moment when you're railroaded into doing something you don't want to do, and if you're faced with a set of unpleasant alternatives they really have thought of almost everything that might play into it. Even now when I fire up Fallout or Fallout 2, I get this "wow, there's a whole world out there to discover" feeling. (Shame about the combat though.)

There is at least one such occasion, and it makes a totally crucial difference.

I'm an Inquisitor. Ever heard of undercover cops? What if my intention was to investigate both groups in order to find out enough about them to bring them both down?

It was tedious as hey. I summoned a couple of elementals, buffed them with Haste, let them loose, and went to make myself a coffee. Why would I go to a temple when I can just abuse the rest system to memorize some Lesser Restorations and restore the level drain myself? It's just tedious, 'sall. To each their own. I found it frustrating and un-fun, not awesome at all.

Jeebus. I've said several times that my intent was to pretend to Edwin that I'm going along with his request, then go to the wizard, blab about it to him, and have the Cowled Wizards -- who presumably do not take kindly to people hiring assassins to kill them -- take care of the problem. I did not want to associate with Edwin. But the game didn't let me. Let's talk quest design a bit actually, because here the P:E BB is head and shoulders above what I've seen in BG2 so far. Which of the quests I've done to this point have any alternative resolutions? The only possible one I can think of is deciding to keep the Rift Device instead of returning it to the Temple of the Forgotten God. I didn't try that so I don't know what would happen, perhaps there was a genuine choice there. Everything else has been A-B-C linear. The de'Arnise Keep was cool because it had multiple ways of accomplishing those goals and some wack side content (the Flail of Ages and the golems), but the quest itself was as linear as it comes. Consider the BB. Anyway: I understand and to an extent agree about the criticisms towards P:E combat, especially the magic system. However, when it comes to both writing and quest design/reactivity, it appears to be head. and. shoulders above BG2. No contest. Not even close.

Yes, it is a sidequest. A badly-designed, linear sidequest, omitting many easy possibilities for alternative solutions, and offering no options for playing different alignments. What should have been possible? Talk with the wizard. Charm the wizard. Stage the wizard's death. Tell the wizard Mae'varis is after his blood and have him take him out. And so on and so forth. Both original Fallouts and FO:NV had similar setups, and they always took care to cover at least most of the things a player was likely to think of. Bad quest. Again: if the best option is not to take or complete a quest, that is indicative of shoddy design.

"No thanks, I won't complete the quest" is an extremely unsatisfying choice for a game to give to you. It is just a badly-designed quest. Or, to pick another example, have some git show up to arrest Nalia and not give me the option to fight him then and there. Poof, she's gone. I was referring to the vanilla campaign, not HoW. I just finished that a few days ago. Dunno, the tooltip said "Kangaxx." I assumed that was him. Maybe it was just one of the liches guarding his bones. In any case I reloaded to a save before that point. @Sensuki: Yes I am. I haven't even heard about Trademeet yet. We'll see tomorrow.

The Cowled Wizards represent the law in Athkatla. Use of magic is forbidden. Imoen cast spells. They were perfectly within their rights to take them both to Spellhold. I have no quarrel with them at all. /Lawful Good Again: my intention was never to do what Edwin says, but instead negotiate with Gethras or, alternatively, the Shadow Thieves guildmaster to keep the thing going. Not possible. That's a badly-designed quest: on-rails, forcing you to act against type (unless you're actually Evil), with the only option to just leave it hanging. BG2 is at its best when it offers lots of ways to do things, and clearly at its worst when it puts you on rails and forces you to play against type. Playing as a paladin was clearly a mistake, since the game doesn't actually let me play as a paladin. It would be a shame to end this Let's Play on such a sour note, so I'm going to take some deep breaths and get back to this tomorrow. But right now it's looking pretty unlikely that I won't drop this fairly soon. Edit: One more thing, to Sensuki and others suggesting which quests I should do/should have done earlier. How am I supposed to know that? Again, I'm getting a ton of content dumped on me with no indication about the challenge level. I'm just following the various signposts the game gives me. This is completely different from intentionally going off the beaten path, and I find it both un-fun and unfair. Like a juvenile DM with self-esteem issues who gets off on murdering his PC's.

Okay, more derp. Decided to push on a bit, to see if it gets more fun. Picked up Yoshimo, continued with his quest. Snatched the amulet. Got a task to kill a perfectly innocent wizard. I told Edwin I'd do it (being undercover and all), and, resolved to find another way, went to see the wizard. No options allowed: it's either get out or fight him. Thought I'd report to the Shadow Thieves boss to see if he could arrange something: again, no dice. I.e., the game is railroading me into murdering someone. Me, a paladin. It's either that, or drop the quest. More not-fun. If this was a PnP game and I went and murdered the wizard, that would be an automatic fall from grace for Iggy the Inquisitor. Since it isn't, I did so anyway and hope the game doesn't implement that little bit of DnD goodness. If it does, yay, automatic restart, which I won't do after this time investment. Then, somebody abducts Nalia and I get attacked by random vampires. Guess if I had Negative Plane Protection memorized? Level drain is so much fun. Whoopee-doo, I have to stop what I'm doing and go chase after something else again, then rest-spam to get the level drain restored. This is... not fun. The game is pulling me in two opposite directions: on the one hand, it's instilling a sense of urgency with all these timed events, and on the other, it's stopping me from pursuing them by throwing yet more events at me. I don't care if you call it "content density" or something else, this blows. Edit: Annnd, sufficiently pissed off at it at this point to quit. We will see if that fades enough for me to get back to it. Enjoyment level went from A+ to D- really fast.

A'ight, finished with the beholder quest. Summary: The temple of the Forgotten God and the twist with the Rift Device was really cool. I dug that part. I did not dig the beholder part for reasons discussed above. The quest itself was fine, but the manner in which it was handed to me was not. I am pretty sure that if I had been going into this completely cold and had no access to all you good folks or all the solutions on the Internet, I would have quit the game at this point and never looked back. The beholders are, in fact, representative of the kind of DnD combat I do not like. It's pure rock-paper-scissors. Things like positioning, choice of target, or even party composition or character build don't matter. The only thing that matters is that you find "the solution" to beating them. Usually the most obvious solutions are cheesy or tedious: pulling them one by one if possible, firing spells from beyond visual range, or, as I did, using summons. And then there are "secret solutions" like the items that give you complete immunity to them. (With the Shield of Balduran, I'm 100% certain Minsc would've easily soloed the thing. Kit him out with the best armor, glug a potion of speed, and Bob's your uncle.) This quest is the kind of thing that gives BG2 its (in some circles) reputation of "reload 'til you win" or "cheese it 'til you win" or "rock paper scissors." And it goes a long way to explain Josh's stance on hard counters. If this is what they mean, then I'm against them too. None of the fights in IWD were remotely like this. Not even Belhifet who was also kind of dumb. -- What next? I'm still/again unhappy with my party. Raszius is cool but Nalia really blows as a thief. No good at scouting or opening locks at all. So it looks like I'm going to switch back to Yoshimo, or maybe recruit that wacky EE thief from the Copper Coronet. Also I don't really need two paladins. Also: I rest-spammed to get some chests open in the cult lair when Nalia's lockpicking didn't cut it. That means time passed. That means I got another load of things dumped on me; Nalia had a funeral to attend and Aerie wanted to see Quayle. Did both of these. This mechanic -- tying things to passed game time -- is also not working for me, all the more so when I can't avoid taking on timed quests. There should really be a queue for them so they're dropped on you at intervals, or else passage of game time should be transparent and important. As it is, I'm on edge (not in a good way) that some timer is going to finish and I'll miss out on stuff, when IMO the best thing about this type of thing is the possibility to let yourself get completely sidetracked at every opportunity. What's with Aerie's priest spell selection by the way? I'm missing Cure Moderate Wounds at least. Anyway, that quest was more tedious than fun. Not feeling like continuing ATM. We'll see how I feel about it later.

@Stun: I knew full well I was going to face beholders. What I didn't know is how to fight them. I have no objections to being out of my depth if I'm off the beaten path, but I'm not off the beaten path. That Helmite knight yanked me off the street -- literally -- to give me this quest, as I was on my way to do another quest pushed onto me by a party member who's been with me since the Irenicus dungeon. Optional encounters can and should be hard, even outrageously hard (Kangaxx). Encounters which are on the path very very visibly signposted for you should not. (I'm also a little tired of this "If you're not having fun it's YOUR fault" line.) Anyway, turns out there was only one group of beholders there; one by one there was no problem as they only had time to get one attack in before I had a Blindness slapped on them. So I found the rift device thing and nuked the Unseeing Eye. Returning it to the really cool temple of the forgotten god now.

Party is around level 9. See, I have a problem with this. Design-wise I mean. I really liked the de'Arnise keep overall. It was challenging but fair. This, on the other hand, feels unfair: (1) The quest is lobbed at you the first time you visit the Temple District, with an additional "Don't wait too long, this is urgent." (2) Massed gauth and beholders are overwhelming, unless you know exactly what their weaknesses are, and have the right counters. (3) There is no in-game way to find out about these weaknesses and their counters. For example, the blind ex-worshipper who should know all about them doesn't tell you jack. Basically, the game throws you at them and goes "Here, figure it out." No indication that you may be out of your depth here. No indication of what you should do to prepare. I maintain that the only way to learn how to deal with these is either to die repeatedly and try one thing aver another until something bites, or make like I did -- ask someone who already figured it out. The "cheesy" solutions -- Shield of Balduran etc. -- are also incredibly non-obvious. It is IMO unreasonable to expect players to return to a shop to browse its inventory to see if it just so happens that they have just the item to neutralize those critters. I find this frustrating and unfair, not challenging in a fun way. What's more, this would have been so, so easy to address: (1) Put a couple of anti-beholder spells in a cache somewhere nearby. (2) Make it possible to interview the blind ex-cultist about beholder-fighting techniques. (3) Don't push the quest in the player's face when he is certainly at a low level and unprepared for it. -- Anyway, I managed to defeat one group of gauth and a beholder, but I blew all my high-level spells on it: summoned a couple of elementals, cast Haste on them, and had them wipe out the group. It was not so much fun, but I'm pushing on nevertheless. I do not like this quest.

Okay. Beholders. I am finding them just about exactly as frustrating as the last time. I'm trying to lead with a fire elemental, scout with an invisible party member, and drop Cloudkill when I see them, but I always get wiped when they target my caster. Also the fire elemental usually gets really annoyed at being Cloudkilled which does not make things easier. I don't know Glitterdust and buffing doesn't help because one of those rays is Dispel. I have completely forgotten how to fight beholders. I do not want to tiptoe-and-rest-spam this like before. Thinking. I would need to either blind them, or find some way to protect myself from all those rays. I know about the Shield and Cloak of Balduran, but those are so cheesy I won't use them except as a last resort (and I certainly wouldn't know about them if I was playing this cold -- I do not look through every item description in every store). Let's see. No Glitterdust. Jaheira knows Pixie Dust which will make the party invisible and therefore harder to target, but I don't think it'll be enough; the first thing I attempted was buff Iggy, have him take Speed again, and attempt to solo it. No dice, he died in the first group. I don't think Pixie Dust will cut it. What, then? Cheat, of course: Google "how to fight beholders baldur's gate 2." read read read Damnit. It seems Glitterdust is the favored solution. And I don't know it. Do I really have to slog all the way back to the Adventurers' Mart or wherever to get it? Help a bro out here, bros. How do I beat the beholders without those cheesy items, without Glitterdust, and without using an expensive technique like invisibility+web+cloudkill+elemental which would require me to rest every three steps?

Yeh, I don't mind Kangaxx at all. I was repeatedly warned about opening the thing, so I had it coming. I will come back later, although I can beat him already now; with a couple more tries I'm pretty sure I could even beat him without (too many) fatalities. But meta it is: follow the combat log, see what he's doing, look up the counters in the spell descriptions, apply counters, if counters not memorized, rest, reload, try again, repeat until victory. I am, honestly, not a fan of this type of challenge. I understand why someone else would be, though, and I do not mind at all that there's one Kangaxx in a game as big as BG2. With all that stuff in it, there's bound to be something for everybody, and something that's clearly not what you're looking for. Edit: @Luckmann I'm trying to avoid cheesy ways of winning fights, unless I discover the cheese "organically" (like when I backed to the doorway with the iron golem and discovered that he can't actually hit me from there). I know about those, like I know about the Shield of Balduran and the beholders, but I don't want to use them. Might as well use the console. I want to beat these fights with what I've got, more or less.

Okay, got a bit further. Retrieving an artifact for a blind beholder. There was a crypt with a sarcophagus I wasn't supposed to open, so of course I did. Kangaxx. I remember that. For spits and giggles I did a few save-and-reloads on this, and eventually managed to beat him but with half my party dead -- hard to keep those Death Wards up while dispelling his protections -- but it felt really metagamey and not so much fun, because the way I beat him was dying repeatedly, noting what killed me, reshuffling my spells to have the right counter, trying again, rinse, repeat. Also I don't know what the deal is with those golden bones. So, going back to my save, letting Kangaxx rest a while longer, and proceeding with the quest for the rod.