Replaying Baldur's Gate after Pillars of Eternity

[Althernai]

Given the discussion in the PoE forums comparing it to the BG games, I wanted to replay the latter so as to have a comparison of two recent sets of memories rather than one recent memory and nostalgia from over a decade ago. Last time I tried replaying BG, I ran into a show-stopping bug so this time I'm going to use the Enhanced Edition (which hopefully plays nicer with modern operating systems). It's more or less equivalent to playing with mod that implements BG2 rules in both games, fixes a bunch of bugs and introduces a few extra companions as well as a few extra character kits. I'm currently near level 5 and just got to Chapter 3 of BG so this is mostly about the early experience so far.

 

Pre-Game: Documentation and Character Creation

 

BG comes with a fairly comprehensive manual (the Enhanced Edition divides into two PDFs, one that's 144 pages and another with 79 pages) which, while not perfectly accurate, does a pretty good job of conveying the rules. It also has humorous comments by Elminster and Volothamp Geddarm. When I first played these games, I used to read the manuals simply as one would a book. I'll admit that when I backed PoE at the level of the physical box, I was kind of hoping for a manual like that... but of course it turns out that first, the physical box doesn't actually include a paper manual and second, the PoE manual is much smaller and extremely vague. On the other hand, PoE does do a slightly better job at having in-game descriptions of abilities at the relevant points (e.g. the character creation screen). However, even with those, the PoE documentation is missing some pretty fundamental info (good luck figuring out what "Average" or "Fast" actually mean in terms of attack and spell casting times without learning by doing).

 

The main difference in character generation is that BG lets you roll (and reroll and reroll and reroll...) your stats whereas in PoE and practically all other modern games, you get a fixed number of points to distribute. Given the availability of BG2 classes, I decided to go with a Sorcerer. This is probably my favorite class in any game and it's pretty unique in that it is almost completely independent of stats for offensive abilities. 3rd edition Sorcerers depend on Charisma, but the BG2 variety does not. I didn't spend too much time re-rolling and wound up with 12 / 10 / 16 / 17 / 17 / 17 for STR / DEX / CON / INT / WIS / CHA.

 

It's hard to compare across the different rule systems, but my impression is that stats in BG mean more than they do in PoE. This is certainly the case for Constitution which, when maxed out (non-warrior classes derive no benefits from CON > 16) gives my Sorcerer 50% extra Hit Points per level (6 rather than 4). If I was playing on a difficulty higher than the default (which I'm not going to do because I simply don't have time for that degree of masochism anymore), it would actually be more than that: Sorcerers get 1d4 HP which averages to 2.5 per level so the +2 from 16 CON is actually an increase of 80%. In PoE, 18 CON gets you +24% Endurance and Health and +16 Fortitude which is not comparable. PoE is based on a d100 roll whereas BG uses a d20 so the translation between effects depending on such rolls is a factor of 5 and that +16 in PoE is slightly more than +3 to a saving throw in BG.

 

First Impressions: Graphics, Sound and Interface

 

When I started playing PoE, I thought that the style looked a lot like BG. Playing BG makes it rather clear that this was mostly due to nostalgia. The Enhanced Edition made it possible to play it at 1920x1080, but the graphics very clearly show their age: PoE looks much, much better. I don't mean to say that BG is terrible -- unlike many 3D games, it has aged well and still looks decent -- but it's rather obvious that PoE was released 17 years later. The same fact is obvious from the loading times: BG saves, loads and area transitions are practically instantaneous (less than 1 second) whereas in PoE, saves take ~5 seconds while loads and area transitions take around 15 seconds.

 

On the other hand, the music, sounds and voice acting of BG is not dated at all and is very good. PoE is also quite good, but I think I would give BG a slight edge here. The interface is OK -- the PoE one is better, but given that there are not many possible actions in BG until higher levels, it doesn't really matter early on. The path finding is pretty lousy in BG and not significantly better in PoE. One thing that is bizarrely missing from PoE is the ability to add user-made markers to the map (BG has it).

 

First Impressions: Characters, Story and Tone

 

The original characters in BG are mere sketches -- they have very little dialog and no personal quests. However, they are well-drawn sketches: the game manages to convey a considerable amount of personality with just the introductory dialog and the on-click and on-command responses. The PoE characters are much deeper, but it takes a while to fully understand their personalities whereas the BG characters are pretty up-front about it. For this play-through, I'm sticking with Imoen, Jaheira and Khalid.

 

The Enhanced Edition adds Neera (a Wild Mage), Rasaad (a Sun-Soul Monk; one of the new kits) and Dorn (a Blackguard which is another of the new kits and basically an evil Paladin). I took the first two of these; Dorn sounded interesting, but he's too evil for this party. These characters are BG2-style: they each have a personal quest and will occasionally talk to you. I don't think there is a significant difference in quality between them and the PoE ones, the again, the BG characters are more up-front about their personalities.

 

BG does a better job pulling the player into the story early on and its principle antagonist comes off as much more impressive the first time you encounter him. It's tough to discuss this without spoilers, but both games run into a situation where your motivation for progressing is not exactly obvious (i.e. the journal says what to do, but it's only vaguely related to the main story).

 

The tone of BG is completely different and I like it a lot better than PoE. Both games are about some rather dark subject matter, but PoE takes itself very, very seriously whereas BG has a great deal more humor. I'm not saying that PoE has no humor at all -- it has quite a bit -- but it is relatively rare and subtle whereas in BG, the humor is deeply embedded in the overall tone. The on-click and on-command party member responses, dialog of both named and unnamed NPCs, options in what you can say as well as many side quests all have significant comic elements (sometimes breaking the fourth wall, sometimes not).

 

First Impressions: Combat and Loot

 

There's no nice way to say this: 2nd Edition AD&D combat is awful at low levels. At level 1, there are very few options available to the player -- unless you want to be resting constantly, most of your time will be spent auto-attacking with all characters. Your probability of hitting is not particularly great so if you're up against something armored, several rounds of missing will ensue. Furthermore, since base HP ranges from 1d4 (for Mages and Sorcerers) to 1d12 (for Barbarians), chances are that even with the difficulty setting resulting in max HP and the CON bonus, most characters can be killed by around 2 hits. The result of all this is that luck is much more important than any strategy and the outcome of many fights can range from game over to a flawless victory with identical player input. The only real "strategy" (if you can call it that) is to save and load frequently (thank goodness for the short loading times). This gets better at around level 3 which is why practically all subsequent D&D games get you to that level with an introductory sequence and/or non-violent quests. BG has some of the latter, but not nearly enough. PoE's introductory combat is much better -- they clearly addressed the two main concerns (too much auto-attack and low HP resulting in randomness of outcomes).

 

The other main difference is that the combat in BG is built around what on the PoE boards is called "hard counters". That is, there are some really nasty abilities, but you can make yourself immune to them. If you haven't done that and you fail your save, you might as well reload. On the other hand, if you can make yourself immune, some enemies which are worth a lot of XP can be defeated with relative ease. For example, there's a map with a bunch of Basilisks who Petrify with their gaze. Unlike in PoE, BG petrification is an insta-kill ability as far as the protagonist is concerned and nearly the same for most other characters... but there's a level 1 spell that makes you immune for 1 hour (BG buffs are both more powerful and longer lasting than their PoE counterparts). I milked those critters for at least a level and a half this time around (you never stop gaining combat XP in BG).

 

The other notable difference is the loot. PoE has very few items worth noting (and most of the ones that were have been nerfed in the latest patch). BG is very different: you get some very nice stuff even at low levels. For example, the two best ones I've found so far are Ring of Wizardry: Evermemory (found under a tree when the protagonist was still at level 1) and Gauntlets of Dexterity: The Brawling Hands (taken from some Gnolls guarding a bridge when at level 2). The ring literally doubles the number of level 1 spells so my at level 4, my Sorcerer now has 12 of them. The gauntlets set Dexterity to 18 which, for a character with average DEX (I gave them to Jaheira), mean -4 to Armor Class and +2 to Ranged Attack. In PoE, this would correspond to a permanent +20 to Deflection and +10 to Ranged Accuracy both of which would stack with any other bonuses to these quantities. These wouldn't even be endgame items in PoE -- they would simply never have been allowed in the game in the first place.

 

More later once I get further into the game...

[PK htiw klaw eriF]

Why would you play the enhanced editions?

[Darkpriest]

Why would you play the enhanced editions?

i believe he wrote it... bugs in old versions.

[PK htiw klaw eriF]

 

Why would you play the enhanced editions?

i believe he wrote it... bugs in old versions.

 

BG2 fixpack takes care of that.

[Althernai]

Why would you play the enhanced editions?

The version that I had (on disks) did not get along with Windows 7 a few years ago and I'm not sure what I did with those disks in any case. Thus, I needed to either buy a new version from GOG and install a bunch of mods or buy the Enhanced Edition. I chose the latter mostly because it was faster and partly because I wanted to see what they did with the game (not much -- it's basically the same, although the new companions are nice).

[Bartimaeus]

If you don't have much desire to mod, the Enhanced Editions more or less serve your purpose, I think. And I say that as somebody who dislikes the EEs.

 

Hoping to hear more on your impressions. Particularly interested in a combat comparison to BG1's higher levels.

Edited May 18, 2015 by Bartimaeus

[Rosbjerg]

Or if you play on mobile devices..

 

Also like your comparison so far and agree with some of your points. But I will say that I think PoE is the better game, simply because it explores some of the prevalent cultural themes of it's contemporary time better imo.

 

Will be interesting to see if it ages as well as BG however.

[trulez]

Will be interesting to see if it ages as well as BG however.

I don't see how that's possible considering it's a modern game pretending to be 17 year old game, it sort of came out pre-aged if you know what I mean.

[CoM_Solaufein]

Why wouldn't you play the EE editions? Best thing to happen to those old dinosaurs.