Baldur's Gate

[taks]

NTotSC seems to be just as bad as DSotSC in absolutely horrible writing. I mean, a bard called Will Scarlet O'Hara? The pernicious lack of periods to mark the end of sentences? A run-on sentence every two lines? It's like everybody on the team forgot to go to middle school. But thankfully, it's not breaking immersion yet.

part of the reason i never played through dtotsc. i kept reading rave reviews about how great it was and they couldn't even get grade-school level grammar correct. not my cup 'o tea, quite frankly. i've found it to be a mixed bag with other mods, including modules for NWN. there was one NWN module that used single digit numbers all the time (which you are supposed to spell out), which did not seem an issue at first. however, as i played it became more and more annoying. it just felt... wrong.

 

taks

[Tigranes]

DSotSC had always been quantity over quality, in any case - which is really why it was one of the first big BG mods to be released. I ended up playing it in a really rushed munchkin way and I guess I was hoping I'd be wrong. We'll see - I can just choose not to follow up on it. The BG1 UB and misc. quests additions are good enough.

 

NTotSC was made by people who aren't native English speaking people. For the longest time it was in their langauge. I think Polish.

 

In that case, fair enough. I suppose they translated it themselves or something.

[Setzer]

Ok, I'm in the hidden city, at the entrance of the final battle with Sarevok. Should I go back and do the Tales of the Sword Coast expansion stuff first before killing Sarevok? Or does it let me go into the expansion after I defeat him?

[CoM_Solaufein]

I would do the TotSC stuff first. Every little bit of experience counts before you confront him.

[Tigranes]

It does'nt let you go back, no, so you should do the Tales stuff.

[Tigranes]

Well, wow.

 

I really liked SCSII's improvements to tactics, but as its system of scripts was lacking the game something fierce, I had a look around and decided to try Improved Anvil. It had a very no-nonsense, built for BG veterans look that kinda scared me (I played it lots but I'm pretty bad)... and well, it's great, but it's torturing me worse than the Chinese on a bad day.

 

It introduces a lot of new spells and items, some powerful, but it increases the price of some vanilla items, and uses Item Randomiser to spread a lot of powerful existing items over the planes - all this done fairly sensibly (e.g. the AC3 bracers from Adventurer's Mart is now 48k, so it's actually a big investment). But no matter all the powerups offered - the tactical challenges are decidedly punishing. They can pull all the tricks you can pull (and more), exits are often blocked for 'boss' confrontations and most of your cheeses are disallowed as well. It's kind of scary when you go to the Umar Hills temple and the jailor for Massy's cell brings up Shield of the Archons and Blade Barrier in a Chain Contingency.

 

I get trounced a lot on Easy difficulty and I'm fine with that, but I am starting to get really fed up with the very few cheesy things the mod does include. I really don't mind reloading 30 times and spending 2 hours on one battle if there is a reasonable way to win, but let's see. All bosses have some sort of Repel Paladin ability that makes Keldorn go panic and run around in circles - no saves, no protections, not one-time but periodic automatic fire. Is that even authentic D&D? Not to mention the insane regeneration rate some people seem to like (I'd prefer big chunky HP, thank you), Windspear Hills Guardian genies with unlimited stoneskin/shadow door, etc.

 

But it does have some ingenious challenges that make the game very new. The addition of new golem types, for example.

 

Yeah, this was a bump.