Baldur's Gate 2 > PoE 2 Deadfire

[jones092201]

 

For me, the best experience was BG1.

 

You know what, that's true for me as well. I think I would rate BG2 as a far better game objectively, but I just find BG1 more immersive. I think the low-level gameplay actually makes it feel more realistic to me.

 

I also like BG1 the most.

I think some of that comes from the quest design and the linear nature of the overall narrative structure. There is always a feeling of going forward and discovering stuff. When you have a quest hub (like Cad Nua) you're always worried am I doing all these things in the best order. Also the devs have to be sure you can do the content in any order. So instead of creating a very focused narrative that creates interesting moments and quests along the main quest line (sinking the cloakwood mines, escaping your return to candlkeep) what you end up with is three (sometimes four) episodic longer quests that don't really trigger much response.

 

Deadfire also had this problem. It had some good moments-- excellent art, great voicework, interesting quest locations in the main quest, but these were short and lacked tension because nothing forced me onwards. Maybe that's the price of an open world. If so, I don't mind a bit more linearity in an isometric--particularly in the first game in a series. BG1 was great because you also felt challenged but rarely overwhelmed. that allows you to focus on story and lore and looting. That feeling doesn't really hit with PoE or deadfire. I love both of the games, but they're not on the same level as BG I & II (and fallout I & II)

[Judicator]

The problem with Minsc is that if you ever play a FR Tabletop game where your character happens to be from Rashemen, everyone in the group will make comments that your character is supposed to be a ****ing retard. It gets worse if your character is a druid.

 

The reality being that if Minsc really did come from Rashemen one of the shamans would have had him executed for being weak long before he ran into CharName.

Minsc is only retarded because of his head wound, which he mentions when you meet him. That is reflected in his wis and int stats, which are illegal for a Ranger. He was presumably normal before since he had to have had better stats to become a Ranger in the first place.

[Verde]

The problem with Minsc is that if you ever play a FR Tabletop game where your character happens to be from Rashemen, everyone in the group will make comments that your character is supposed to be a ****ing retard. It gets worse if your character is a druid.

 

The reality being that if Minsc really did come from Rashemen one of the shamans would have had him executed for being weak long before he ran into CharName.

Yes that certainly is a common problem isn't it

[ThacoBell]

The problem with Minsc is that if you ever play a FR Tabletop game where your character happens to be from Rashemen, everyone in the group will make comments that your character is supposed to be a ****ing retard. It gets worse if your character is a druid.

 

The reality being that if Minsc really did come from Rashemen one of the shamans would have had him executed for being weak long before he ran into CharName.

Weak? Are you SURE you are talking about Minsc. Dude could armwrestle Schwarzenaegger back when that would mean comething.

[Wompoo]

I must agree the main story in POE 2 is totally forgetable... I play these games for complex story and game play. The art work and VO are excellent, just a shame the rest of it isn't

Edited July 25, 2018 by Wompoo

[PizzaSHARK]

 

So, I'm missing something then.  If your preferred metric is "does this character evoke a response?", then why are you criticizing characters for being one-dimensional?

Probably cuz I'm thinking through it as I'm talking to people. ~shrug~

 

So where I am now is somewhere around Minsc is a) a one-dimensional character but b) if that was all the writer really needed him to be then he can still be considered a successful character. I can also say that c) successfully crafting a one dimensional character like Minsc probably requires less skill/talent/focus/experience/intent than a lot of Bioware's more recent offerings. This makes me think that d) when people say Minsc is a better character than Sera they're prooobably comparing raw end states, Minsc is pretty straightforward A - B kind of character, he's either funny or he's not. Sera on the other hand is more complex, intended to be a fuller person and this results in a lot of places to get hung up on the character ie she's annoying, she has a bad haircut, she's narrow-minded and responds aggressively to people suggesting she maybe try to broaden her horizons a bit, her accent isn't always easy to parse, she's childish etc. Since readers/gamers are so varied characters can always fail e) Minsc happens to fail for me since I don't find his shtick funny for very long, and while people might get hung up on Sera's characteristics and dislike her as a person and conflate that with being poorly written (this is a different issue I have with people who often consider "I really dislike that character" as being synonymous with a badly written character), she can also absolutely fail as a written character*. What winds up separating BG2 characters from modern Bioware ones f) is an ambitiousness that BG2 characters didn't/couldn't have, they can still fail but there's fundamentally and purposefully more there which I think matters even if more work = more opportunities for failures.

 

* - I see Sera as being created with the intent of or giving the players something to respond to in the shape of the common man's response to world shaping events. You occasionally hear people bemoan the lack of commoners in high medieval fantasy type settings. It's always nobles saving the world or otherwise wealthy, learned people. Well, Sera's as common as it gets. The one thing that makes her special or noteworthy from the really truly unworkably common man is that she has a strong, if basic, sense of right and wrong. So what happens when you introduce existential concerns like gods, mythological figures and whatnot to someone who doesn't have either the education or the mental predisposition to really grapple with these concepts? You get someone who vehemently rejects it and circles the wagons around what she knows. What do you get when you introduce nuance to moral considerations with someone who has a strong, but basic, conception of it? You get someone who murders the noble rather than let you continue teasing out the threads of the situation. Keep things simple. Let the baddies stay bad. This is not, like really not, something commonly explored in fiction. Usually when an ingenue gets exposed to the facts of the world it goes with a gentle sense of blooming horizons and enlightenment. Is Sera blooming? No, Sera is definitely not blooming. Does the character fail because she never develops beyond this mindset, yeah maybe. There's a slightly adjacent discussion to be had there about what a reasonable degree of influence the PC should have on the core of who a NPC is but w/e.

 

I feel like some people are gonna read this and see "Ah, this character I like is better than the character you like because of its inherent depth and such and the fact that you can't see that just means that you, sir, are a dumb-dumb and only truly refined gentlepeople such as myself can get it. So there." I can see how that would be a conclusion but it's genuinely not what I was trying to convey.

 

 

I don't see it as talking to a real person.  Dialogue very much does NOT work like it does in Bioware games, the characters in Bioware games are largely unbelievable as being "real people," and the game design as a whole is so uninspired and formulaic I think it's all a bunch of nonsense.

 

When you have more simplistic characters, and especially ones that aren't even trying to be realistic (such as Minsc, Jan, etc), you don't have those problems.  They aren't trying to be realistic, so it's not a problem that their behavior and your interaction with them is unrealistic.  But when you have Bioware characters that are all basically ****ing formed from the same mold, have the same story beats, have identical romance progression etc and they try to present things as realistic... it just falls flat.  I enjoy Bioware characters but I don't consider them to be inherently better or worse than older characters.  I find most of BG2's cast to be better than Dragon Age Origins', Mass Effect, etc.

[PizzaSHARK]

baldurs gate 2 is better.  it isn't just nostalgia.

 

its a more cohesive and personal story, with characters that have been a part of your story in a more intimate way, set in a world that isn't built around a single gimmick (the soul stuff in pillars). you also fight a greater variety of enemies, and from the perspective of narrative progression, the tension is better. Yeah, the first chapter of BGII  feels off-- like you're doing subquests instead of beelining for imoen, but the entirety of POE 2 feels like subquests instead of confronting the great conflict of the game.

 

I like PoE and PoE II very much, but it just doesn't compete in terms of narrative.

 

BG2's problem was that there was no narrative urgency in Chapter 2.  We're TOLD that we need to get out there and save Imoen, but in gameplay mechanics our time is unlimited.  Gathering lots of gold to buy assistance to rescue her is a perfectly fine narrative hook and it even plays into CHARNAME encountering Firkraag (who offers undeniably the largest bounty for aiding him, whose behavior is quite obviously fishy... but if you're in a real hurry to raise funds to save your little sister, you wouldn't have time to run a fantasy background check on him, even if an adult red would be dumb enough to leave stuff like that in the open.)  It only falls apart if the player drags their feet... and they have plenty of incentive to, with all kinds of fancy items and places to explore on offer and no clear indication that Imoen is going to die if they don't get there in X months.

[Judicator]

 

baldurs gate 2 is better.  it isn't just nostalgia.

 

its a more cohesive and personal story, with characters that have been a part of your story in a more intimate way, set in a world that isn't built around a single gimmick (the soul stuff in pillars). you also fight a greater variety of enemies, and from the perspective of narrative progression, the tension is better. Yeah, the first chapter of BGII  feels off-- like you're doing subquests instead of beelining for imoen, but the entirety of POE 2 feels like subquests instead of confronting the great conflict of the game.

 

I like PoE and PoE II very much, but it just doesn't compete in terms of narrative.

 

BG2's problem was that there was no narrative urgency in Chapter 2.  We're TOLD that we need to get out there and save Imoen, but in gameplay mechanics our time is unlimited.  Gathering lots of gold to buy assistance to rescue her is a perfectly fine narrative hook and it even plays into CHARNAME encountering Firkraag (who offers undeniably the largest bounty for aiding him, whose behavior is quite obviously fishy... but if you're in a real hurry to raise funds to save your little sister, you wouldn't have time to run a fantasy background check on him, even if an adult red would be dumb enough to leave stuff like that in the open.)  It only falls apart if the player drags their feet... and they have plenty of incentive to, with all kinds of fancy items and places to explore on offer and no clear indication that Imoen is going to die if they don't get there in X months.

 

What if you're playing an evil character and you don't give a **** about Imoen?

 

Also, you could justify it by saying you're gathering resources to face the Wizards, I mean they are a pretty big institution in the game. And let's be honest, you could do most of the quests within a couple of weeks in-game time if you know what you're doing. A month tops if you're doing everything. That's not an unrealistic amount of time to mount a rescue like that.

[algroth]

 

baldurs gate 2 is better.  it isn't just nostalgia.

 

its a more cohesive and personal story, with characters that have been a part of your story in a more intimate way, set in a world that isn't built around a single gimmick (the soul stuff in pillars). you also fight a greater variety of enemies, and from the perspective of narrative progression, the tension is better. Yeah, the first chapter of BGII  feels off-- like you're doing subquests instead of beelining for imoen, but the entirety of POE 2 feels like subquests instead of confronting the great conflict of the game.

 

I like PoE and PoE II very much, but it just doesn't compete in terms of narrative.

 

BG2's problem was that there was no narrative urgency in Chapter 2.  We're TOLD that we need to get out there and save Imoen, but in gameplay mechanics our time is unlimited.  Gathering lots of gold to buy assistance to rescue her is a perfectly fine narrative hook and it even plays into CHARNAME encountering Firkraag (who offers undeniably the largest bounty for aiding him, whose behavior is quite obviously fishy... but if you're in a real hurry to raise funds to save your little sister, you wouldn't have time to run a fantasy background check on him, even if an adult red would be dumb enough to leave stuff like that in the open.)  It only falls apart if the player drags their feet... and they have plenty of incentive to, with all kinds of fancy items and places to explore on offer and no clear indication that Imoen is going to die if they don't get there in X months.

 

 

The game makes no assumption about you caring for Imoen at that stage though. The Shadow Thieves use both Imoen and Irenicus as bait to encourage you to help them out with their feud (assuming you care about getting even with Irenicus instead as another possible motivation), but to the best of my memory, to either of these motivations you can express indifference and go about your own way, at which point either faction will drop their prices once if you wait long enough, and *again* a second time if you continue to ignore them. I'd say they are pretty deliberately offering you this option because this is the point at which the game introduces its massive semi-open world to you and exploring it may well respond to the motivation of a character that is indifferent to Imoen/Irencus' fate. Otherwise, the bag of money you need to collect also offers a major incentive for the character to go out and get dragged into the many massive quests out to do in Amn if they *do* show concern about the plot. It does perhaps fall apart a little more if what you do instead is to leave all the exploration for chapter 6, and embark at that point into most of the side-content and so on, considering how urgent the soul-theft business is made to be.

Edited July 25, 2018 by algroth

[jones092201]

 

 

baldurs gate 2 is better.  it isn't just nostalgia.

 

its a more cohesive and personal story, with characters that have been a part of your story in a more intimate way, set in a world that isn't built around a single gimmick (the soul stuff in pillars). you also fight a greater variety of enemies, and from the perspective of narrative progression, the tension is better. Yeah, the first chapter of BGII  feels off-- like you're doing subquests instead of beelining for imoen, but the entirety of POE 2 feels like subquests instead of confronting the great conflict of the game.

 

I like PoE and PoE II very much, but it just doesn't compete in terms of narrative.

 

BG2's problem was that there was no narrative urgency in Chapter 2.  We're TOLD that we need to get out there and save Imoen, but in gameplay mechanics our time is unlimited.  Gathering lots of gold to buy assistance to rescue her is a perfectly fine narrative hook and it even plays into CHARNAME encountering Firkraag (who offers undeniably the largest bounty for aiding him, whose behavior is quite obviously fishy... but if you're in a real hurry to raise funds to save your little sister, you wouldn't have time to run a fantasy background check on him, even if an adult red would be dumb enough to leave stuff like that in the open.)  It only falls apart if the player drags their feet... and they have plenty of incentive to, with all kinds of fancy items and places to explore on offer and no clear indication that Imoen is going to die if they don't get there in X months.

 

 

The game makes no assumption about you caring for Imoen at that stage though. The Shadow Thieves use both Imoen and Irenicus as bait to encourage you to help them out with their feud (assuming you care about getting even with Irenicus instead as another possible motivation), but to the best of my memory, to either of these motivations you can express indifference and go about your own way, at which point either faction will drop their prices once if you wait long enough, and *again* a second time if you continue to ignore them. I'd say they are pretty deliberately offering you this option because this is the point at which the game introduces its massive semi-open world to you and exploring it may well respond to the motivation of a character that is indifferent to Imoen/Irencus' fate. Otherwise, the bag of money you need to collect also offers a major incentive for the character to go out and get dragged into the many massive quests out to do in Amn if they *do* show concern about the plot. It does perhaps fall apart a little more if what you do instead is to leave all the exploration for chapter 6, and embark at that point into most of the side-content and so on, considering how urgent the soul-theft business is made to be.

 

BG2 does have it's problems in terms narrative and urgency, and that fine balance between the two. But keep in mind that once you go to spellhold, your funneled  back to fairly linear plot where the major focus is on the main narrative. There is some awesome stuff that happens in the underdark that is side-questy, but it occurs within the context of the main plot. So aside from the first chapter of BGII, you never feel antsy about taking a quick detour.  

 

PoE and Deadfire's problem is that the whole game feels like it lacks this urgency. There are some really interesting quests in both, both they are almost always tangential to the plot.  If there was one criticism I would level against OBS since they've rebooted the isometric genre, its that the plots of these new games-- critical path-- is far shorter and less engaging than the older generation of games.

 

Some of this is down to us as backers, I think. we keep screaming for open world and freedom and that almost necessitates a reduced emphasis on the critical path narrative.

[Verde]

^ really well said

[morgothm]

Unfortunately, I only managed to skim the forum entries, so I'm not sure if anyone as already posted this, but there is a podcast called "Mages and Murderdads", where the hosts played through the Baldur's Gate series recently, and can be an interesting listen for some of you (I know it was for me). It is geared towards the discussion of the story and the gameplay mechanics an the way they complement  or detract from the experience. Link will be below.

 

https://www.youtube.com/playlist?playnext=1&list=PLVcfOocLDkUzbmK5SuMdQ5drxIX7BMteN&index=1

 

On a personal note, having played through it for the first time recently, I do not particularly enjoy the combat (this level of complexity has to be turn-based, my dudes), being more interested in the story and, although there are some very interesting side-quests and moments throughout the series, I don't think it stood away from DnD tropes enough to be perfect. PST did this much better for me, and letting me dodge most of the combat.

 

So far, I haven't finished PoE2, but have been enjoying it so far, appreciating the options it provides to solving quests and the moral dilemmas they pose. 

[Vitalis]

Unfortunately, I only managed to skim the forum entries, so I'm not sure if anyone as already posted this, but there is a podcast called "Mages and Murderdads", where the hosts played through the Baldur's Gate series recently, and can be an interesting listen for some of you (I know it was for me). It is geared towards the discussion of the story and the gameplay mechanics an the way they complement or detract from the experience. Link will be below.

 

https://www.youtube.com/playlist?playnext=1&list=PLVcfOocLDkUzbmK5SuMdQ5drxIX7BMteN&index=1

 

On a personal note, having played through it for the first time recently, I do not particularly enjoy the combat (this level of complexity has to be turn-based, my dudes), being more interested in the story and, although there are some very interesting side-quests and moments throughout the series, I don't think it stood away from DnD tropes enough to be perfect. PST did this much better for me, and letting me dodge most of the combat.

 

So far, I haven't finished PoE2, but have been enjoying it so far, appreciating the options it provides to solving quests and the moral dilemmas they pose.

Well that's really the problem with most RPG video game adaptions of D&D, the combat is rarely turn based. In all iterations of the tabletop, the combat is turn based with each side rolling turn initiative for turn order at the start of the fight.

[Judicator]

RTWP > Turn-based.

[Manveru123]

RTWP > Turn-based.

100% agree. Turn-based games tend to drag the fights way too much.

[morgothm]

 

RTWP > Turn-based.

100% agree. Turn-based games tend to drag the fights way too much.

 

 

I agree that it drags the fights more, but you can compensate that by having less "trashmobs" and tighter encounters, making each fight worth that "dragging". When dealing with RTWP, I always sensed it demanded a level of control of what was going on that is at odds with the diluted notion of "turn" it has.

 

I recommend the episode of Three Moves Ahead that goes through this better than I could, also featuring Cameron Kunzelman:

 

https://www.idlethumbs.net/3ma/episodes/to-infinity-engine-and-beyond-1

[ThacoBell]

Turning on all auto pause options in BG = Turn based.

[morgothm]

Turning on all auto pause options in BG = Turn based.

 

Sorry if I'm expressing myself poorly, but English isn't my first language. I know it would be a form of turn-based combat, but what I'm talking about would require a systems, encounter and level design overhaul, as turning those options in the game in it's current form, does transform it into to much of a slog. It would require, at least the removal of the most pointless encounters, and wouldn't be something as simple as tweaking the options (although, in some areas, that helps).

 

Anyway, I'm not detracting anything from the Baldur's Gate games, and I still enjoy them for what they do well in the narrative and roll-play potential. For me, (emphasis on "for me") the combat isn't the most well realized aspect, as it lacks the clearness and user-friendliness its complexity requires. "Fixing" that, would unbalance the rhythm of play in a major way.

 

In the end of the day, to each his own. As for me, when I find myself revisiting Baldur's Gate, my CTRL an Y keys might see some unusual usage. 

[Palas]

Hello guys. I am frustrated that I am waiting 20 years for RPG game simmilar to Baldur's Gate 2 and no one can make it.

Pillars of eternity 1/2 are great games but there is easy to see different of quality comparing to Baldur's Gate 2

I dont know what od the reson.

Why Baldur's Gate after so many years os still the best RPG?

Its deepht od the forgotten realms world?

Its many and great characters?

Its great story, rewarding quests, dungeons and fights?

Maybe its becouse world is changing and so comptuter games are changing and even obsidian enterteiment need to make their games to sell it for more people so they making PoE easy and flat.

Can samoene explains me what's going on?

20 years after BG 2 and no one can make gamę simmilar or EVEN GREATER! than BG 2?

And dont tell me about nostalgia becouse its not the case.

It is mostly childhood memory and the charm of the new. So yeah, its mostly nostalgia, even if you deny it. Nothing can beat the memory, as for most people the first kiss is unforgettable.

 

Back then, there were no western rpg with that unique companions, party-banter and romances.

 

But only a few companions had a complex personalty, Minsk, Mazzy and the Ranger hadn't much more personality than thesidekicks in poe2.

 

Combat was only soso, fighters get only auto attack, and for me real time battles, wich can (and must) paused, wasn't the best solution.

 

quests and story were quite good, even today, but quite standart fantasy stuff.

 

i played BG recently again. And while it is still a good game, i wonder why i coulnd stop playing it in the past.

 

I think backdays there were no games, that were in story, lore, game mechanics or companion notable better than BG2.

 

today there is everytime a game, that is in on or another aspect better.

 

Like poe2: factionsystem and romances are not bad by them self, but we know games, that are far better than poe2 in that aspect.

 

We old BG2 Fans just want this first feeling ofan akmost perfect game back, but this is impossible. So we should not have these expectations. Then we could enjoy the moderb rpg's more.

 

i love poe2 for its fesh setting and pirate feeling, the thrill of explore the islands and nice combat mechanics.

 

By the way, iam 40 now ^^

[illathid]

My best friend just played BG2 for the first time this spring. He had played Dragon Age, Mass Effect, Fallout 3, and other newer RPGs, but not any of the IE games. According to him, while there are parts of the game that feel very dated and unfun, it easily the best RPG he ever played.

 

So I don't think it's nostalgia alone that cement's BG2's place in gaming history, rather we should praise it for the things it did well and seek learn from the mistakes that it made. In this respect I think Deadfire did a good job, although it likely could do better.

[PizzaSHARK]

RTWP > Turn-based.

 

RTWP is just a very pretentious form of turn-based.  Since that's a pretty loaded statement, I'll explain my reasoning:

 

- Most (all?) RTWP systems are either directly based on turn-based rules (Infinity Engine games are based on 2E D&D rules and, later, 3E for example) or are heavily inspired by them (Pillars.)  They share many of the same design conventions.  Action speed isn't much different from the free/swift/move/standard/full round action setup used in 3.5E or action points in other systems.  Recovery time is analogous to initiative order or JRPG-style ATB bars.  So there are a lot of obvious, intentional similarities.

 

- At any difficulty level appropriately challenging to the player (whether the player feels challenged by normal, veteran, PotD, whatever), the game is designed for the player to pause the game to examine the playing field, take enemy actions into consideration, and issue orders to their units to be carried out after unpausing.  RTWP games also typically include a multitude of auto-pause options.  Assuming the player is playing at a difficulty appropriate to their level of skill (assuming "appropriate" means "challenging"), they will be pausing frequently.  Many people on these forums, for example, talk about how they don't even really use the AI routines because they don't want the AI wasting actions or resources.  If you are pausing frequently to issue commands and read the state of the battle, you are effectively playing a very pretentious kind of turn-based game.  The enemy wizard gets a Fireball off, it hits, you pause the game to examine the status of all your dudes, the enemy dudes, what that enemy wizard will be doing next, and then begin to issue orders in response to this change.

 

- Authentic turn-based games are rightfully known for playing slower than RTWP games.  This is often due to most turn-based games not natively giving the player options to speed up/skip animations, often adding in a pause between turns, etc.  XCOM 2, for example, has the animations for characters moving around, aiming, and then has a weird little pause between ending one character's turn and beginning another's... and many mods remove or reduce these things and the game plays much faster as a result.  Some games, like Age of Decadence, don't have delays or pauses at all and so the game cycles through AI turns very rapidly meaning there's very little delay between each of your turns even on a crowded battlefield.  But strictly speaking, a difficult battle in a turn-based game will be pretty similar in length to a difficult battle in a RTWP game, because the player is pausing frequently in RTWP anyhow.

 

So we can see that the gameplay systems are often very similar, and gameplay length is also often pretty similar - assuming the player is playing challenging content.  So the only thing that RTWP has an advantage in is the sort of trash mob fights where you can just let the AI play the game for you.  But such encounters are not generally very interesting (see: complaints about random encounter systems in JRPGs), so in many cases... the game may be better off with them removed entirely!

 

So I call RTWP a pretentious form of turn-based because the style has pretensions to being different from turn-based when, again assuming appropriately challenging content, it is effectively the same.

[Verde]

Unlike BG2, there's simply not a lot of care put into PoEs characters.

 

Examples -

 

Pallegina is kicked out of the VTC. But somehow she is still blindly devoted, not questioning anything? Oh and if you follow a diplomatic path in a conflict she is invested in...she says nothing? No acknowledgement what so ever?

 

Serafan is if one thing, anti slavery. But when you confront a certain person bout it with him in the party...HE SAYS NOTHING, WTF?!

 

And then if you perform a heinous act against one of your companion's factions (no spoilers) with a cert char in the party, they again say NOTHING. Nothing.

 

It's lazy and insulting. Deadfire characters are faction/combat bots with maybe 1 or 2 exceptions. Whereas BG2 assessed things at a decision/alignment level, Deadfire is all about some lame point system which has always been seriously bugged making the experience even more vapid.

Edited July 27, 2018 by Verde

[jones092201]

we (the community) need to stop using the nostalgia argument. It's too dismissive of reasonable criticisms, like yelling 'fake news' to derail someone's argument in totality. If the point of criticism is to help devs create increasingly better games for everyone, you have to acknowledge everyone's ideas. You don't have to accept them, nor do you have to hide that fact,  but you do need to account for what they say.

 

That said, nostalgia is a part of it. That point I happily concede.

 

Still, there are ways to, with reasonable objectivity, make the claim that BG 2 is the superior crpg. Not only in terms narrative and narrative structure, but also in terms of gameplay qnd characters. Really by any metric outside of the dialogue-- Pillars has better dialogue-- and the clunky UI that is improved in the EE editions but still doesn't compete, I would argue BG2 is stronger. 

 

the specific quests are longer, more involved and more interesting

there is a larger bestiary to fight

there is are far, far better villains and more of them who you interact with enough to form an opinion of before you run them through. (Deadfire does some of this, admittedly. Not Pillars 1)

and while a lot of the combat is auto-attack, I think a lot of the fights in BG2 are more interesting. Tell me one battle in Deadfire that comapares with the big fight just before the Demogorgon in Watcher's keep?

 

Lastly, and most importantly, BG2 (and the trilogy as a whole) presents an intensely personal quest narrative woven through a larger series of events that takes the PC from humble origins to the threshold of apotheosis. Very rarely in the series does the urgency falter, and the characters you meet throughout remain useful and interesting. Certainly you don't have to like everyone of them, but someone out there does, which is really the thing of it. And of course, in the end you get to choose to be,  literally the embodiment of chaotic evil as the Lord of Murder, or choose the good path.  

 

taken together, to me BG2 is stronger.

[Loren Tyr]

Still, there are ways to, with reasonable objectivity, make the claim that BG 2 is the superior crpg. Not only in terms narrative and narrative structure, but also in terms of gameplay qnd characters. Really by any metric outside of the dialogue-- Pillars has better dialogue-- and the clunky UI that is improved in the EE editions but still doesn't compete, I would argue BG2 is stronger. 

 

While you are certainly entitled to your opinion, and I think it is always of interest to read other people's reasoned opinions: why undermine that by claiming to some kind of objectivity? Because by and large, when it comes to this sort of thing there is none to be had (and I would argue, it isn't particularly needed). Which in a way is also illustrated by the reasons you proceed to give, which read very much like reasons why you specifically prefer BG2 (and the series in general); both in the kinds of reason given, and in the way you phrase them. As you say, those are what *to you* makes BG2 stronger.

 

Not meant as an attack on your preference of course, just curious where in your view that reasonable objectivity is in all that. Taking for example the last point, of the trilogy being an intensely personal quest, going from nothing to an almost godlike status: this is certainly something that plenty of people like, but how does that translate to an objective marker of quality?

[knownastherat]

"Reasonable objectivity" is an interesting concept While I have some ideas what is meant by it in the given context, let me just say the obvious that objectivity is a property independent of perception.