I kind of missed out on the whole RPG genre because I always focused on the other games and decided to get into them...

Exactly how far did you get because to most people it seems to pick up quite a lot upon hitting the titular city.
Not trying to be a cunt but i'm not sure if you really get the point of games like this, it's your story, it may sound like an excuse but a good deal of the enjoyment of a story like this has to come from you, the begining can't have too much more than it does when it is completely up to you to develop a deal of your backstory, character type, and motivations. The story is soley their to drive along the plot (at the start at least, later is is interesting) and present you with opportunities to do stuff. This isn't some bioware "rpg" where you're character and story are nigh similar regardless of what you pick but one that actually allows a great deal of freedom.
Much more than virtually every other game I've played, to be fair there is a lot more in BG2 though. Party member banter is dynamic reacting to events, morality, and other members while plenty of npc's change or can be killed for the hell of it to mess up shit even more.
In terms of actual choices fair enough there's really only 3 branches every time (still more than most games though) but you need to go beyond the choices, killing characters is one such way. Again the roleplaying does have to be somewhat dependant on you to take it further personally, add-libbing in your head or something. BG isn't a VN and especially for when it was made it would be impossible for something of this scale to have widely branching paths. To give you an idea some of the fights in BG had to be scaled back because computers simply couldn't handle all the effects on screen at once, yeah. And while it shouldn't be used as an excuse the game had already gone way over budget what they where doing already stretched the limit of what was possible and what could be afforded, we can say we want more now but back then (and coming from a cunt who played this on release) this was sheer insanity in terms of scale, choice, and freedom (barring perhaps a few MUD's)
Crank the difficulty up and you'll be too bloody scared to move anywhere to fast, otherwise i'm pretty sure you can cheat the speed or mod it. Never felt the characters where slow myself but rather fast so honestly dunno.
DO you mean some of the wilderness? The towns have more concentrated levels of stuff that almost anything else i've seen, barring a few random bar patrons and a literal few npc's almost everyone and everything is relevant and dynamic with quests or info, houses that can be broken into, npc's with various connections allegiances, I can't even properly describe the level of stuff because it'd take too long. And that before we even hit the main city. In regards to the wilderness there's bloody loads, sure there's some blank spots but if there wasn't you'd never have any breathing space. Name me a wilderness that doesn't have at least 3+ quests connected to it, likely multiple npcs and a variety of encounters. Not to assume but you've the difficulty set down low don't you, encounters are meant to be a big thing, not some lets go a hunting like modern rpg's. You are meant to be highly prepared and go out searching and shit scared of encounters hence making them much more important. Equally there's plenty of dungeons that actually have care put into them.

I'd very much agree with cheat, at least in some capacity. Maybe you don't want to spawn items or such but revealing the map or teleporting around it (a good work around if you don't like the speed and don't want to spawn boots is just to teleport instead of backtracking since you aren't gaining anything but extra time)

Also OP you sound like you'd have much more fun with BG2, you don't explore wilderness as much and it's more story oriented.

Don't listen to The combat by the end of BG2 has the potential to become pretty much one of the most complex and customisable in existence and if you get the extra bosses that where meant to be in the games originally then fucking prepare yourself even on lower difficulties

It might sound like i'm shilling here but if OP wan't to see just how much can be added to the game with personal roleplaying elements go check out mynameisnotlilly on YT is you haven't seen them before, probably by far the best example of how all encompassing BG can become and what you personally can add to it, if that isn't your thing then fair enough but just if you want to try it out. Also this is probably an incoherent mess since I just woke up and am hungover, if anything doesn't make sense do ask.

I just want to ask has there been any good mods for BG games recently? With Beamdog trying to revive the games and all, perhaps people started modding them again?

I get that, I never actually consider my character to be an extension of myself and think up a personality for the character that I play in any game and try to roleplay it. The problem is that I feel like this drags for a little bit too long and that the game itself is limited in roleplaying options in comparison to other RPG's I tried playing like Arcanum.

Most other games of the same genre gives you ability to talk with NPCs, not only that but they don't really say that much outside of a few occasional voice clips. Not that I don't understand that it was mostly down to hardware limitations, but the whole thing is that I'm trying to decide if I should play it further I probably will or just move to more recent rpgs like Arcanum, Planetscape Torment or BG2.

That a lot, but I would appreciate at least some other dialogue options that don't actually change the outcome too much but show the personality of your character. I feel like the only options of answering I have for a Chaotic Good character are "Normal" and "Sassy dickhead".

I tried doing that by stealing or not stealing people's shit Chaotic vs Lawful and making my own journal.

As I said, I completely get that, I'm just wondering if the game is worth playing till the very end and for now I still feel like I want to play it further

I got used to it for a while so it's not that big of a problem.

Although you are right to an extent, the problem with the stuff that you can find in those locations really seemed to be just very small stuff that didn't really grab me that much. It's only after I started to explore the wilderness a lot more than I did is when I started finding interesting shit.

I didn't change the difficulty, so I assume that I've played with the "normal difficulty" I never play on low difficulties, I play RPG's on medium and other games on High because fucking up in a RPG might actually make you play the game from the beginning again if you really screw up and in most other games the problems that arise when you make mistakes may just be fixed by gitting gut Lost all the ammo in DOOM? Well balls, if you train enough you will eventually get through with just your fucking fists. That and the fact that in RPG's, more things are down to the RNG factor not saying that RPG's don't have strategy, just that if you get really unlucky with the dice rolls, you might get completely fucked.

Still as I said, I liked the game it might be just that I'm not as satisfied with as everyone was saying I would be when I actually play it.

Fair enough all around, people here probably have overhyped it but to be fair if you know all of the lore and have played a few campaigns irl and know the spells, mobs, items etc it does add a hell of a lot to the game that can't really otherwise exist in any capacity. Also there's the nostalgia, game is bloody 18 years old after all.

In regards to the difficulty I get you're point, you will eventually get fucked over with bad rng, I'd say firstly don't feel bad at abusing saves and secondly it's much better in BG2 since there's a vastly greater range of spells/abilities/attacks hence combat feels less rng which is a bit i didn't really like about BG1 but there isn't really any other way to do it while using DND rules

Regardless hope you have fun ang get through it quick because yet again you do sound like you'll enjoy BG2 much more

Also dem trips

I still think it's a solid game, just that it's more of a basis on which other games built upon which makes it slightly barebones in comparison to the later stuff. Also I don't have any nostalgia connected to the game unfortunately.

Still, it's far better than most of the modern games out there and I think that I'll try to get through the game anyways, even if it will take me a while.

Don't worry about game length. Play it at your own pace but remember to play it. As previously stated, I have finished multiple play-throughs of this game and if I started today, and dropped about 6 hours every day on it, I'd still probably need 2-3 weeks to finish everything starting from BG1 to the finale of BG2.

BG1 is definitely worth the effort. It catches up dramatically in tone and depth by the time you get to Baldur's Gate. You're gonna start the game as a nobody, pick up a bunch of sidequests, and then suddenly you're gonna see those sidequests mean something and converge into one thing: Baldur's Gate and the game's final act.

It's like a real ass game of Advanced Dungeons and Dragons 2.0. You begin by having some shitty character, get a few levels, do some sidequest stuff, lots of party banter and hard fights that almost get you killed, and then suddenly the DM decides to connect all the plotlines and hit you with the "Main Quest" to defeat the baddies who want to take over the world.

And it's all up to Dufus McFarmboy, Level 8 Fighter to kick evil's ass. With the help of best character, Minsc.

Sidenote: What they did to Minsc in Dragonspear makes me want to die. Pic related.

Just another shallow piece of shit click-to-move made when the PC RPG genre fell in the gutter. When developers started moving to isometric perspective they threw all pretense of making good games out the window to focus exclusively on telling a story or aping D&D's shitty dice roll mechanics that were never intended for a single-player experience.

It's half baked, has ugly as sin color palette and an engine that causes all kinds of problems, the combat is kinda shit. You have skills and weapons that are absolutely game breaking, and the story has a ton of loose ends.
9/10 all in all

No, I'd say you're looking at it just right.

It's one of the few games I had to use a walkthrough for. There's just too many useless NPCs that say nothing and it makes any type of town exploration incredibly dull.

The combat is fun enough once you get used to it. The Swordcoast Stratagems mod ramps up the difficulty to the max and makes the game way, way more fun. Warning: don't use SCS on your first playthrough, you'll get murderized.

Exploration aspect is kinda lame since all the areas are mostly empty rectangles with random mobs strewn about. Most of the "encounters" are kinda lame except for the few really good fights like the ones against assassins or other organized groups of humanoids.

BG2 is better in every aspect and while it's a bit overrated, it's still a great game and worth at least a 8/10.

The fuck are you talking about? The whole meme about BG1 being good are the "random" encounters. And no, not the five gnolls and a gibberling spawn, but the there's a half naked devil wench calling for to remove paladin save her from the bandits, kind.

And for what it's worth I preferred the low magic setting of BG1. Shields were actually a good idea, a magic weapon was a rare and build defining treasure and even a humble fireball was a fight deciding spell.

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Best isometric RPG ever made, if only because it lets the player role play in ways none of the others do. Like 10 different races and 40 different backstories to choose from, all of which affect the game to a pretty significant degree. Also, it's theme(technology vs. magic) is used and explored more fully than any other them I can think of in vidya. It's at the center of almost everything in the game.

But user, mods fixed itkind of.

Siege of Dragonspear is awful in its entirety, and those fucks should never have been given the rights to make it.

Tried to get into Arcanum multiple times, but there's something repulsive about it for me. I like BG1/2, IWD1/2 were decent, I fucking love me some PS:T but I just can't stomach Arcanum. Last time I tried it, I quit the game because some sheriff turned the whole town against me when I called him a coward and refused to handle his bandit problem.

As opposed to BG2 in which either of those items is barely worth bothering?

Drog mvp

It's probably the combat. The only way it can be kind of fun is if you install the hard arcanum and equilibrium rebalance mods(which you can get here terra-arcanum.com/downloads/), set the combat to turn based, set the difficulty to it's highest setting.

user, the game takes place in The Victorian period. If you want to things to go smoothly, you have to get your point across like a right proper gentleman. You can't just screech at people like a bloody Irishman. Also why didn't you just join the bandits and lay siege to the town?

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Well, no user. Part of getting gud is not having to use glitches, cheats or exploits. More so for a game as easy to "legally" break as one using the DnD system.

BG is sleep inducing.

Web is more or less just as good but works on more enemies.