Some of you who are huge RPG fans and have had a computer and been gaming for more than ten years might remember Baldur's Gate, possibly my all time favourite game that has ever hit the shelves despite the number of problems it has.
While I was a sprite no taller than a rat's knee (some time ago, seven to nine years or in that region) I was introduced to Baldur's Gate one Christmas by my Uncle who was enthralled with the game. I borrowed the stonking five discs and tried it out, and half an hour later I left my computer thoroughly bored. At the age of thirteen I reinstalled the game because I needed to get away from Diablo II, Freelancer, Starlancer and Half-Life, and after half an hour I was trapped in the wilderness with my "sister" in toe.
For everything that Baldur's Gate does right, it also does something wrong. What's right is that it feels like a pen and paper RPG, a lot more so than other RPGs, especially more modern ones. Sure there's only so many phrases a guard or a commoner can say, but there's hundreds of named characters dotted throughout the world, as well as named items and numerous things to pickpocket, sneak around, hidden items to find and places galore to explore.
A few of the major things that I hate about Baldur's Gate are the monsters; monsters will drop munnies. This is expected as anything with an IQ lower than 50 will pick up shinies, but the monsters kind of horde munnies. When I go through a pack of oversized rabid hamsters with razor sharp claws and teeth that can tear through platemail armour I expect perhaps a few bob. Instead I'm rewarded with an average of around 60 gold for every five of these monsters. It may not seem like much, but it adds up.
I also found that items cost a ridiculous amount of money, so grinding could be an abundance for you. You want that Shadow Armour? It's around 10,000, give or take some Reputation bonuses or penalties. That's a lot of giant rabid hamsters you'll have to mow your way through.
Bandits are also another thing that I felt got in the way. A lot. Whenever I tried to sleep anywhere in a forest, there'd be a number of the bastards firing arrows at you when they wake you up. They also target party members in the order of Casters, Theives Fighters, because the most hardy guys are harder to kill... and Mages have armour that makes your crumpled up newspaper look tough. At least these guys drop loot that's worth some money. Long swords and shortbows sell for a pretty penny, and then the scalps bring in a bit more cash... because every adventurer is also a bounty hunter...
I mentioned sleeping? Yeah. Unless you go back to an inn, then the time it will take you to finally get the full 8 hours the game demands you have (for any casters to regain all their spells and a lousy 1 hit point), it's probably best to go to sleep while you're still pretty full on health and have half of your spells left, because if you wait until you're empty, chances are a bunch of Bandits, a band of Ogres or a a flock of water-nymphy things (Sirines, I believe) will wake you up and tear your faces off, and chances are you'll have to carry dead bodies all the way to the nearest church... and by the way, there's about four churches in the entire game. There's also only four inns in the entire game as well, at the same places...
Go figure.
There's also a lot of spiders in Baldur's Gate. There's four giant spiders in someone's house in a city... there's two forests full of spiders... there's also a few other spiders dotted around the place, so if I didn't know any better, I'd actually say the game was an MMORPG, since if you want the lovely Shadow Armour you need to grind a few hundred bandits.
Despite these gripes I have about it, however, I do love Baldur's Gate. The combat system feels real time while being turn based, the sprites are nice, the characters all have their own charms, and it has Drizzt Do'Urden and Elminster within it... not to mention one of the coolest villains I've ever seen, Sarevok.
Seriously, half an hour in, you leave your home town and you run into this guy dressed in armour who takes a small tsuname of Magic Missiles and comes out on top. If I ever had to chose villain of a life time, I'd probably chose Sarevok because he has ambition, he has massive plans in motion, he's controlling his own organisation and has the ear o-(Many spoilers contained) and finally, you kill him like any Hero does.
I also feel compelled to play good aligned characters for Baldur's Gate. It's not that being a bad person isn't fun; it's nice to play evil, but good gets discounts at shops, but playing a hero rather than an anti-hero in an RPG was something that I've found most other RPGs seem to find something lacking. Being the reactionary force rather than the movement behind the action feels good. "Oh, Damsel in Distress you say? Of course I'll help." "Wait, what's happened now and I've got to do WHAT?" "Well, I guess I've got to sort out those bad guys now since I'm the hero!" Also each time I run through it, I see little bits of the game I haven't yet seen or forgotten, and I've never felt, other than the main story line, that I've been rerunning the same game again and again.
For one thing, there's a stupid amount of character combinations to try out. Dwarves, Elves, Half-Elves, Humans, Gnomes and Halflings make up a good number of playable race, each with their own unique features (very noticable of Thieves), and a large selection of classes such as the Ranger, Paladin, Fighter, Theif, Wizard, Specialist Wizard (Gets extra Spells, but loses out on one of the eight(?) schools of Magic), Bard, Thief, Cleric and Druid, as well as multi-classing and dual-classing characters, as well as a large range of weaponry and equipment to customise your entire party.
Also, while you can tweak the stats, since they're done by dice roll, a character with more mediocre stats is by far a lot more fun and interesting to play than a regular superman, and having a high Intelligence or Wisdom on a Fighter for "fluff" reasons can always be interesting to play.
Baldur's Gate isn't anywhere near the best game ever, but it's certainly my favourite game because while its problems are obvious, so is it's charm, and I doubt anyone new to an RPG will be able to grasp everything right away, and anyone used to modern RPGs might like a look back to the good old days of RPGs, where heroes were real heroes, and damsels in distress were real damsels in distress, and sharp-toothed, gribbly-eyed shrieking monsters and real sharp-toothed, gribbly-eyed shrieking monsters,
While I was a sprite no taller than a rat's knee (some time ago, seven to nine years or in that region) I was introduced to Baldur's Gate one Christmas by my Uncle who was enthralled with the game. I borrowed the stonking five discs and tried it out, and half an hour later I left my computer thoroughly bored. At the age of thirteen I reinstalled the game because I needed to get away from Diablo II, Freelancer, Starlancer and Half-Life, and after half an hour I was trapped in the wilderness with my "sister" in toe.
For everything that Baldur's Gate does right, it also does something wrong. What's right is that it feels like a pen and paper RPG, a lot more so than other RPGs, especially more modern ones. Sure there's only so many phrases a guard or a commoner can say, but there's hundreds of named characters dotted throughout the world, as well as named items and numerous things to pickpocket, sneak around, hidden items to find and places galore to explore.
A few of the major things that I hate about Baldur's Gate are the monsters; monsters will drop munnies. This is expected as anything with an IQ lower than 50 will pick up shinies, but the monsters kind of horde munnies. When I go through a pack of oversized rabid hamsters with razor sharp claws and teeth that can tear through platemail armour I expect perhaps a few bob. Instead I'm rewarded with an average of around 60 gold for every five of these monsters. It may not seem like much, but it adds up.
I also found that items cost a ridiculous amount of money, so grinding could be an abundance for you. You want that Shadow Armour? It's around 10,000, give or take some Reputation bonuses or penalties. That's a lot of giant rabid hamsters you'll have to mow your way through.
Bandits are also another thing that I felt got in the way. A lot. Whenever I tried to sleep anywhere in a forest, there'd be a number of the bastards firing arrows at you when they wake you up. They also target party members in the order of Casters, Theives Fighters, because the most hardy guys are harder to kill... and Mages have armour that makes your crumpled up newspaper look tough. At least these guys drop loot that's worth some money. Long swords and shortbows sell for a pretty penny, and then the scalps bring in a bit more cash... because every adventurer is also a bounty hunter...
I mentioned sleeping? Yeah. Unless you go back to an inn, then the time it will take you to finally get the full 8 hours the game demands you have (for any casters to regain all their spells and a lousy 1 hit point), it's probably best to go to sleep while you're still pretty full on health and have half of your spells left, because if you wait until you're empty, chances are a bunch of Bandits, a band of Ogres or a a flock of water-nymphy things (Sirines, I believe) will wake you up and tear your faces off, and chances are you'll have to carry dead bodies all the way to the nearest church... and by the way, there's about four churches in the entire game. There's also only four inns in the entire game as well, at the same places...
Go figure.
There's also a lot of spiders in Baldur's Gate. There's four giant spiders in someone's house in a city... there's two forests full of spiders... there's also a few other spiders dotted around the place, so if I didn't know any better, I'd actually say the game was an MMORPG, since if you want the lovely Shadow Armour you need to grind a few hundred bandits.
Despite these gripes I have about it, however, I do love Baldur's Gate. The combat system feels real time while being turn based, the sprites are nice, the characters all have their own charms, and it has Drizzt Do'Urden and Elminster within it... not to mention one of the coolest villains I've ever seen, Sarevok.
Seriously, half an hour in, you leave your home town and you run into this guy dressed in armour who takes a small tsuname of Magic Missiles and comes out on top. If I ever had to chose villain of a life time, I'd probably chose Sarevok because he has ambition, he has massive plans in motion, he's controlling his own organisation and has the ear o-(Many spoilers contained) and finally, you kill him like any Hero does.
I also feel compelled to play good aligned characters for Baldur's Gate. It's not that being a bad person isn't fun; it's nice to play evil, but good gets discounts at shops, but playing a hero rather than an anti-hero in an RPG was something that I've found most other RPGs seem to find something lacking. Being the reactionary force rather than the movement behind the action feels good. "Oh, Damsel in Distress you say? Of course I'll help." "Wait, what's happened now and I've got to do WHAT?" "Well, I guess I've got to sort out those bad guys now since I'm the hero!" Also each time I run through it, I see little bits of the game I haven't yet seen or forgotten, and I've never felt, other than the main story line, that I've been rerunning the same game again and again.
For one thing, there's a stupid amount of character combinations to try out. Dwarves, Elves, Half-Elves, Humans, Gnomes and Halflings make up a good number of playable race, each with their own unique features (very noticable of Thieves), and a large selection of classes such as the Ranger, Paladin, Fighter, Theif, Wizard, Specialist Wizard (Gets extra Spells, but loses out on one of the eight(?) schools of Magic), Bard, Thief, Cleric and Druid, as well as multi-classing and dual-classing characters, as well as a large range of weaponry and equipment to customise your entire party.
Also, while you can tweak the stats, since they're done by dice roll, a character with more mediocre stats is by far a lot more fun and interesting to play than a regular superman, and having a high Intelligence or Wisdom on a Fighter for "fluff" reasons can always be interesting to play.
Baldur's Gate isn't anywhere near the best game ever, but it's certainly my favourite game because while its problems are obvious, so is it's charm, and I doubt anyone new to an RPG will be able to grasp everything right away, and anyone used to modern RPGs might like a look back to the good old days of RPGs, where heroes were real heroes, and damsels in distress were real damsels in distress, and sharp-toothed, gribbly-eyed shrieking monsters and real sharp-toothed, gribbly-eyed shrieking monsters,
