Is this game as good as they say it is?

Is this game as good as they say it is?

It's memeshit clone of morrowing

It's pretty good. Really enjoyed all the quests in the first city and seeing returning characters from BG1. I didn't like ToB as much.

yes.

The UI and combat system are shit, but it has a great sense of adventure. It's Bioware when it was a bunch of nerds playing tabletop RPG and cRPG.

Nah. But it's pretty good anyway so you should play it.

Combat is fun though.

Enemies have a good design, or at least they have some peculiarity. Controls and management wasn't good.

I cannot think of any 2000-2003 multi party rpgs in third person with better control or interface, just a bit more polish at best.

Sometimes I wonder how BG would be in a HoMM/Eye of the Beholder style presentation

If they say 'Damn good rpg of early 2000', they are right.
And you should play it.
A bit of a chore to get used to ruleset and interface, but it's worth it

hey bhaalspawn... nice waifu you got there.

Too bad it never actually works out even if I give you the sloppy seconds, you fucking beta bard

Would have been better as turn-based.

But still good.

>The UI and combat system are shit

This is true if you're not familiar with D&D rules or are too stupid to figure them out. Once you do, it becomes an inordinate amount of fun.

For example: Almost every spell in the game has a counter. While someone who doesn't grasp the rules will probably just sit there and irritably tank the spell, or try to outrun its radius, an intelligent player can get involved in a game of counters.

They cast Cloudkill, you cast Zone of Sweet Air. They cast Stoneskin, you cast Breach. They cast Magic Missile, you cast Shield. They cast Shadow Door, you cast Detect Invisibility. Et cetera.

There's very little in this game that doesn't have a counter.

Please die. And take your family with you.

Thank you.

How do you counter this motherfucker?

It's pretty great. I think it's up there on the Top 3 cRPGs ever.
Pretty much every RPG made by an oldschool tabletop player is great.

I've always loved it, but I was 13 or so when it came out so I don't know how it'd be received by the younger crowd. It's got a great sense of adventure, wizard shit if you like getting deep in a spell book and breaking a game, and I personally love the look of the pre-rendered backgrounds. If you like isometric games besides Diablo give it a go, there's much worse ways to spend an afternoon.

With Balduran's shield. Beholders aren't shit.

It's actually pretty cool how RTwP was a complete accident and so many people came to love it.

No.

cheese them with the shield of baldurdan

Yes. It has pretty much everything in it.
Edgy fags, serious stuff, silly content, good quests, good items, good villain.
I enjoyed finding a talking sword.

1. BG2
2. PoE
3. BG

No. It's not even in the same league as Planescape Torment or Deus Ex and people try to put it there sometimes. Not even Fallout 2 league. Maybe same league as Fallout 1, but lower on the scale.

Pros:
+Memorable Characters
+Intriguing Plot
+Challenging but Rewarding Combat (CRPG)
+RPG Elements are Well Executed
+Best Voice Acting You're Gonna Find in Games

Cons:
-Lots of Reading

That's all I can think of.

>+Best Voice Acting You're Gonna Find in Games

God this guy was such a faggot

Anomen was also a massive faggot but not as bad as him which is really saying something

It's just RTS gameplay in an RPG. Turn-based faggots are almost as bad as "dark souls combat" fags not everything needs to play the same.

Planescape torment is the biggest meme game in existence. The story and setting is really interesting but the gameplay is crap with terrible encounter design.

The second best DnD based game, right behind NWN1.

fug, I played baldurs gate several times and had no idea about the spell cancelling, I was a retarded teen at the time though

on a semi-related note, what did counter-casting button thing do in NWN?

Shallow as it might sound... I was blown away by baldurs gate 1 as a kid when I first played it due to something relatively simple:

I'd played the shit out of diablo 1 and loved it. Then I was passed BG and I installed it and booted it up and OH MY GOD ALL THOSE EQUIPMENT SLOTS.

The wow factor was real.

The only thing I dislike is ADND (which is essentially the meatgrinder edition) but that's only because 3.0 wouldn't be around for a bit longer.

If you're looking into the oldschool DnD cRPGs though, user, here's the overview so you can pick.

Baldur's Gate - 50/50 Story/Gameplay
Icewind Dale - 10/90 Story/Gameplay
Planescape Torment 90/10 Story/Gameplay

If you don't mind giving different systems a whirl, pirate the first two Fallouts if you can find them and Arcanum (pic related) should be on GoG.

Have fun, user.

They give you the Cloak of Mirroring aka the Cloak of Beholder Immunity immediately before entering the Underdark.

As others have said, the Shield of Balduran will also let you cheese through the encounters.

If you're a high enough level, my personal favorite is to cast Spell Turning. They kill themselves with their own eye rays.

Other than that, just match immunity to status effect. He has a Slow ray, you use Free Action. He has a Disintegrate ray, you cast Death Ward. And so forth.

Oh, one thing I forgot, OP. Get the Baldur's Gate Trilogy mod if you can. It ports BG1 to BG2's infinitely superior engine and basically plays the entire series as one giant game.

Ascension for Throne of Bhaal's a fantastic mod that was made back before Gaider became a jackass, but I'll leave it to you as it jacks up the difficulty.

Avoid the (strangely popular) Saerileth mod. Just trust me on that.

The cloak of mirroring aka cloak of beholder immunity aka cloak of annoying giant orb graphic was patched decades ago and no longer works on beholders. That's why the shield comes in.

In fairness, David Warner has one of the best villain voices in the world, particularly now that Tony Jaa has passed. And Jim Cummings, Kath Soucie, Jeff Bennett and several other voice actors are some of the largest names in the industry.

>BGT
no unless you want snow bear encounters in nashkel

You dare to attack me here?

Do you even know whom you face?

YOU WILL SUFFER! YOU WILL ALL.... SUFFER!

big names having performed on it has nothing to do with its voice acting quality
pretty much the only quality voice acting in the game is Irenicus, done excellently by David Warner.
Everyone else ranges from okay to good.

>patched decades ago

No it wasn't. The last official patch still has it working, you either need to mod the game yourself or play one of the shitty EE versions.

And one fantastic performance along with several good is pretty top-tier for voice acting. What games, outside the Legacy of Kain series have better voice acting?

>Avoid the (strangely popular) Saerileth mod. Just trust me on that.
There is no middle ground on her. I've seen just as many people say she's amazing while just as many say she's awful. Legitimate question; why do you advise against her?

Not an argument

>I've seen just as many people say she's amazing
They were memeing you, friend.

Am I the only person that liked Haer' Dalis? He was charismatic and just didn't give a fuck, plus his quest was fun.

GTA V
Half-Life 2 and its Episodes
Portal 2

I can probably think of more but these are just 3 off the top of my head. Even PoE's voice acting (emphasis on acting) is on BG's level.

Oh, you were just trolling.

UI was as good and intuitive as it gets. You can figure everything out by simply clicking on it. Even a complete computer retard like me in 1998 was able to cope with it in less than 10 minutes.

holy lol i forgot about this mod. How old was she supposed to be again, like 14?

If I had to guess why she's so popular, probably because she hits a lot of kinks. She's an Asian Paladin of Tyr who, IIRC, has a vow of chastity and she has an elf version for the elf fuckers. She's also like 14 so you've got that going too.

That being said, there are a lot of problems with the writing, not just with but in general. She's incredibly inconsistent and can (and likely will unless you savescum) go from slobbering all over your dick to ragequitting the party (and when she quits you can't get her back, she's gone for good) in the span of about 30 seconds.

Her entire plot is a love triangle with some guy, she's extremely chatty (she will interject on literally every single conversation) but again, the writing is terrible.

Let's take the Underdark for example and you fuck a drow. She dies of a broken heart when she finds out.

No, that is not an exaggeration. She literally drops dead (and can't be revived to boot) because of a broken heart.

Worst of all is that she'll ragequit the party (and take all the gear with her) if you refuse to hand over the Ring of Gaxx AKA the best motherfucking item in the game.

He's a difficult character to find a spot on your roster for. He's pure melee, but his HP are abysmal, he doesn't have an 18 in either Strength or Dexterity, and the game is already flush with spellbook competition for your scrolls.

That said, I like him a lot too.

can't even begin to think how delusional someone has to be to seriously believe this
but whatever dude.

It's a cringe compilation with dialogues which would make a typical fanfic writer blush, see Most character mods are really crap though. The only good one I've found was German-only.

What was the budget for BG2?
I wonder how much Obsidian would need today to pump that much insane content into a PoE2

>She literally drops dead (and can't be revived to boot) because of a broken heart.

Holy shit, that's hilariously bad.

Not him, but you lost me at Portal 2. I didn't agree with your other picks, but I could see them as contenders. But P2? There's what, three voice actors in the entire game? It's mostly just you listening to two people squabbling, one of whom is synthed into a permanent deadpan.

When I think of voice acting from BG2, it's not just Irenicus's awesome speeches, it's also Kevin Michael Richardson's Sarevok. Or whoever the hell played Korgan, that Dwarf was a paragon of excellent voice acting. And sure, Aerie might've had an annoying character, but her voice actress really nailed Ellesime. And honestly, despite the hate she gets, Imoen had fantastic voice acting.

Eh. I must be the only person who didn't care for PoE 1. The story sort of rambled and reinvented itself every chapter with the events of the preceding chapters never mattering again, and the constant barrage of XPless fights and pages of worthless gear (as a hoarder, this was particularly difficult) just battered me down. I got halfway through Chapter 3, did the expansions and quit without ever seeing the end.

It was stated that she's 15 if I remember correctly.

its too hard for me

i wanted to make a manly man and punch stuff with a sword but a bear ate me. no matter where i went i just felt outclassed ;_;

There's a companion mod for a lesbian kensai with 25 (TWENTY FIVE) dexterity, i forget her name but every line she had was utter drivel. Awful bg2 mods are my guilty pleasure.

BG1 is inherently harder than BG2 purely because of the level disparity. D&D is always harder at low levels where any errant attack has a chance of one-shotting you, regardless of how great of stats you rolled.

Were you playing BG1? Yeah, that happens when you stray from the streets. You're a weak faggot until late in the game. I actually liked, made a good change.

BG2 is much easier since you characters won't die from one hit.

Beginner's tip for you, OP; good aligned party members are more general and can do multiple things but not too well. Evil party members are specialized. Be mindful of any interactions between party members because some just plain don't get along and will eventually kill each other.

I really don't get these complaints.
I thoroughly enjoyed the story, even if I can see that it is hard to pick up for a lot of people because there is no emotional device used to make the player care, but I never went in expecting that in an Obsidian game so I didn't even notice it. What exactly do you mean by "story reinvented itself every chapter"?

>constant barrage of XPless fights
I agree it kind of hurt it a little bit, but to be fair they did rework all the trash mobs (actually removed them) in Act 3 and reworked Caed Nua. I enjoy RTwP combat so I didn't really need to get EXP for every kill, I thought the "fill your bestiary" system was fine enough. Although I'm not entirely sure on this one desu. I don't think it was even needed to remove monsters giving exp forever, but whatever.

>pages of worthless gear
BG and BG2 shit worthless gear down your throat. It's even worse there for you (as a hoarder) since you don't have a "send to stash" button.

Shame you didn't complete the expansions. I thought White March 2 was outstanding. New background story for the Gods with new events between them being shown (not just told in a story) with moons falling out of the sky, and it also develops the Engwithan's backgrounds a fair bit.

actually thinking on it it was 1 and not 2.

i had some mod or something that combined them both a guy irl insisted i needed to use

having my only other dnd experience be NeverWinter Nights as a monk/druid/shifter (ie nothing stands a remote chance ever and resources are more or less infinite since you can just rest whenever) I just wasn't prepared at all for a game with actual difficulty where I can't just roll ''whatever'' and be fine

>Sarevok - Dire Charmed
>Sarevok - Attack Roll 18 + 10 = 28 : Hit
>Sarevok did 24 Damage to Charname
>Sarevok did 200 Damage to Charname
>Charname - Death
>Charname - Deathbringer Assault

The fucker.

I think they implied they were going for less content but more polish for PoE2.

>I must be the only person who didn't care for PoE 1
Go to any thread about the game and most people will shit on it

Play Tortured Souls if you like really bad mods. It's pretty big and mostly resolves around Yoshimo and various Kara Tur shenanigans, including new an shitty party members. The writing (both, in literary and grammatical sense) is abysmal. The cringe factor is boosted to the max if you have any weeb inclinations since you'll probably spend most of the time facepalming about the complete ignorance of the modder about any aspect of Japanese culture despite trying really hard to convince you otherwise.

Well it wasn't confirmed. It was Eric Fenstermaker (Narrative Designer) who said he'd rather have a shorter but more polished game for PoE2.
But they can't do that, and I 99% doubt Sawyer will allow that. PoE absolutely MUST ride on the Baldur's Gate nostalgia. PoE2 being shorter than PoE1 will be absolutely laughable.
However, they can still make the game the same length but have way more polish than PoE1, because 90% of the tools are already built and they are "re-trained" in making 2D art backgrounds, so it's much quicker to pump them out. IIRC in PoE1 they ran into insane issues like it taking 40 hours to render a simple background.

Lots of people dislike it for various reasons.
For me most of the faults with the game lead back to the KS, they hamstrung themselves with poorly thought out stretch goals and backer rewards.

>PoE2 being shorter than PoE1 will be absolutely laughable.

Yeah that's a fair point.

>What exactly do you mean by "story reinvented itself every chapter"?
Chapter 1 was about overthrowing the despotic Lord hanging people from a tree. He was never mentioned again. Chapter 2 was the whole political angle in Defiance Bay between the Crucible Knights, Dozens and House Doel-whatever. Never mentioned again, never really impacts again. And so on.

>I enjoy RTwP combat so I didn't really need to get EXP for every kill
Except combat requires constant oversight in PoE. In Baldur's Gate, your party behaves competently and half the time you can just let the AI script handle fights. In PoE every single fight requires constant positioning tweaks, ability cooldown management for every single character and with the next XPless fight five steps into the shroud to follow, it gets draining as hell.

It's odd that they'd take what amounts to the same combat system, make it more involved and complicated (and fun, honestly) and make careful oversight a requirement for every engagement... then choose to take away the rewards for winning said fights.

>Shame you didn't complete the expansions.
I said I did complete the expansions. I didn't beat the main storyline. After completing the expansions, I went back and finally killed that snow dragon in the cave, went and completed Caed Nua's dungeons (disappointing end, by the way) and then... just didn't have the motivation to try and finish the main storyline.

>Chapter 1 was about overthrowing the despotic Lord hanging people from a tree
Chapter 1 was about a side quest?
If you kill him he come back as an undead in chapter 3

>Chapter 1 was about overthrowing the despotic Lord hanging people from a tree. He was never mentioned again. Chapter 2 was the whole political angle in Defiance Bay between the Crucible Knights, Dozens and House Doel-whatever. Never mentioned again, never really impacts again. And so on.
I think you're confusing a Chapter's story with the side quests within that Chapter.
Chapter 1 is about finding Maerwald, the lunatic in Caed Nua. The Raedric's Hold Lord quest is completely optional. Also if you kill him he does come back later and murders everyone in the castle (including his brother) and you can go back and fight his undead (and much stronger) form.
>In Baldur's Gate, your party behaves competently and half the time you can just let the AI script handle fights.
this is simply not true, unless you play on standard difficulty. The AI is stupid as fuck both in PoE and BG2. Also PoE has no cooldowns, what the fuck are you talking about.

personally I'd say no, but I think some of that is because I spent so much time playing things like NWN before I ever got around to this. I was kind of burnt out on the setting
I had a hell of a lot of fun with the early game and a lot of the optional stuff, but the hordes and hordes of enemies you fight again and again (although it isn't as bad as BG1 or NWN in this regard, admittedly) wore my patience down. when I thought I'd got through a section like that and could move into a more interesting exploration/lore/town setting, and then discovered I was in the underdark and in for more of the same, I dropped it
if you've been playing a lot of D&D-influenced RPGs in the last 10 years you might have a similar experience. if not, you'll probably really enjoy it.

Gotta go fast. A strong fighter with good saving throws an Improved Haste gets the job done.

Literally Chapter 1 was about walking to an abandoned castle. But since the meat of Chapter 1 is spent in Gilded Vale and helping them with their problems, and since Lord Raedric is the final and most difficult fight of those objectives, it's not an inconceivable stretch to call it the main focus of the chapter.

fucking hit enter accidentally
>Chapter 2 was the whole political angle in Defiance Bay between the Crucible Knights, Dozens and House Doel-whatever. Never mentioned again, never really impacts again. And so on.
All those things are optional, with the exception of one faction that you must join so that you can get access to the Duke's audience. The chapter itself is about finding more about your illness and the machines.

I will concede the part about them not having any impact. However I will also say that they will obviously impact Pillars of Eternity 2, since it's already confirmed that choice carry-over is happening.

Is it just me or are spells like Spider Web and Cloudkill fucking useless?
I never use them in D&D cRPGs or PoE because of the friendly fire shit. Especially not in BG since you can't even tell the radius of a spell.

>cloudkill
>useless

>Cloudkill fucking useless
>cute little user doesn't know

w-what

difficulty levels in baldurs gate aren't that much different to be honest, it just adjusts the enemies damage, doesnt affect to-hit rolls or anything else

You can cheese a few of the hardest fights with cloudkill. Firkraag is an instakill.

cloudkill is a really good spell until just about the end of BG2, throw it into a room where the enemies can't see you and let the bodies hit the floor

i was shit at bg2 then i read every single spell description, and i became a god

>I think you're confusing a Chapter's story with the side quests within that Chapter.
See: The Maerwald fight was cartoonishly easy compared to the Raedric one. And while the Raedric one was long and involved, from helping enough people to get Kolsc's attention and plea to aide in the rebellion. The actual sieging of Raedric's Hold was a lot grander than stepping into the first floor basement of Caed Nua and opening the first door on your right.

And either way, the point stands. Maerwald was never significant to the main plot again, and frankly Caed Nua wasn't either.

>this is simply not true, unless you play on standard difficulty.
Doing a runthrough of BG right now on maximum difficult and the AI script is breezing through encounters. You don't need much more than Khalid and Minsc set to Fighter Aggressive, Jaheira at Cleric Defensive, Imoen and Charname at Thief Ranged to clear all but a handful of fights.

>Also PoE has no cooldowns, what the fuck are you talking about.
Per Encounter cooldowns. You can't really just have your team auto-attack unless you're looking for a fast loss. And it's excruciating to have to pause, and go toggle up Knock Down, Wounding Shot, Flames of Devotion, Arcane Assault, etc. etc. for everyone, unpause, wait for them to land, pause, fiddle around with the animal companion who keeps pathing back and forth and not attacking anything, toggle up another half dozen per encounter cooldowns, etc etc.

And then take five steps and do it again for the next XPless trash mobs.

Can you just jump in to the second game before playing the first?

>constantly try to mod BG/Arcanum for the best experience
>can't find a torrent that works with mods.

yes
the second game is way better than the first, which has a very barebones story and character interaction, you barely miss anything

>Tortured Souls

Fitting name.

That's what I did, you can pretty much get everything that happened in BG1 from context.

is this hamlet?

Cloudkill, as people have pointed out, is a favorite tactic for scrubs to cheese fights with. It's also not a terrible spell to throw down if you're going to be fighting a difficult Mage. Sure, the constant tick of damage is going to stop your spellcasting too, but chances are, it'll ruin his day worse.

And Web is a fantastic spell if you have its companion buff "Freedom of Movement" with you. You can get it from rings, potions, spells, etc. But the gist is, you have the buff on your best warrior. Your Mage webs an area where bad guys are coming through. They get locked down defenseless and your warrior, immune to Web, mows through with auto-hits on everything.

Sweet. Any recommended mods to install for a first playthrough, or should I just play it as it is?

the only mods you would need are compatibilty mods to make it work on modern systems
most other mods are terrible romance and companion mods

Baldur's Gate 2 is already as perfect a game as you can make a CRPG. I'd play through on vanilla, and then only start adding mods as you get hungry for more content and can't bring yourself to quit playing.

That said, the game does have some decentish replayability, since most classes have their own short unique storylines and class holds; and NPCs react in a pretty wild gamut with one another.

It's a story about ebin revenge and family feuds. Except that the revenge doesn't really matter and the girl who comes to kill Yoshimo joins the party despite her immense hate for him. After a while they start to fuck.

Its been so long since i played vanilla.
Fix pack i guess? I dont know if that's included in enhanced edition, or if EE is even good.

>Doing a runthrough of BG right now on maximum difficult and the AI script is breezing through encounters.
I don't know then. I'm playing through BG2 right now and the AI is fucking inept.

EE is pretty good now that it's patched. Just avoid the added companions, they're so fucking terrible and out of place that it hurts.

What scripts are you using? The BG2 ones are even more advanced than the BG1 ones.

>EE is pretty good now that it's patched.

It's really not that bad if you ignore the shoehorned extra content. If you want to mod, you should stay with the original though.

Ascension if you don't mind a harder endgame.

Also, DO get BG1 if you plan to mod it so you can get Baldur's Gate Trilogy. The biggest reason against BG1 is that it plays like ass, but BGT ports it over to BG2's engine so it becomes a lot smoother.

Awesome, thanks. Guess I'll try vanilla BG2 for now.

>can I just skip it lol?
Every fucking time for every series. Why would you skip the build up and good content? Are you retarded?

Currently I'm not using any as the AI kept overriding my actions.
Are there any scripts that are outright terrible and should be avoided? Maybe I picked those

> Korgan: Ye know, Mazzy, I'm a poet of fair renown back home. Here's a mere trifle:

>"Hold fast to dreams, for if dreams die, life be >a broken bird that cannae fly."
>Mazzy: That's delightful, Korgan. Not lengthy, but effective.
>Korgan: Aye. Wrote it after a liquor-induced dervish o' temper, whereby a tavern was flattened and me helmet dented.
Mazzy: Any other masterpieces of prose hiding anywhere?
Korgan: Aye... carved this one on the wall of the lav at the Red Sheaf Inn, reckon it still causes an uproar each time a bowler uncoils his business. "I were here; alas I'm gone; left me name, to arouse thee on, They who know me, know me well; those who don't can ride me stinking dump, straight to hell" Haha! Masterstroke!
>Mazzy: I'm sure your mead-bellied kin would appreciate that lowbrow nonsense, but I don't. And here I thought you might have some values or sense.

Based Korgan has to be in every party.

>first game
>good content
>build up
ehhhhhhhhhh
first game is pretty fucking boring m8 unless you're a forgotten realms autist

>Baldur's Gate 2 is already as perfect a game as you can make a CRPG
>EE is pretty good now that it's patched

And then they changed the UI and everything. People should just mod the orignal, so it looks better.

Saerileth is cute and perfect waifu material.

Much better than that viconia edgy romance.

>Josh Sawyer got paid backer dollars to rename this character "Paladin Vagina"

Evil party members are so annoying though unless you mod them not to leave when your rep gets high.

what UI changes does EE have?
I'm on Patch 1.3 and I really don't notice any UI changes.
I pirated it, so I don't know if there's a more recent patch that introduces health bars or other gay shit.

I miss unnerfed Balduran shield

...

It doesn't make sense in the first place. Why would they leave because you have a good reputation? It means more money and opportunities to abuse it.

I just put all mine on standard attack otherwise the wizards will cast cone of cold at your entire party over nad over again

just use slayer transformation or steal/kill a peasant whenever it gets too high

Really it's hard to lose evil party members, whereas good party members disappear the instant you kill a civilian, and some of your neutral party members drop even faster

I never was able to turn into slayer form without dying afterwards. Is there some step I missed?

They changed it
They don't want to attract attention or something
You can't stay in Slayer form too long

I dont know I just go slayer then back human immediately, I've only ever used it to keep edwin in the party

It's not. The first game was better.

Guess that is the SoD one.

what the fuck
did they at least implement any quality of life improvements like explanations of what shit does when you hover over their icons?

But they already had that in the original games. Or did they remove it in EE?

Not that i noticed, the biggest improvement is being able to equip a shield/off hand weapon with a two hander

I was meaning stuff like when you hover your mouse on a spell icon, it shows you what the spell does, instead of just the name of the spell.

right click the spell
tooltips wouldnt work seeing every spell has half a page of mechanics

Much more freedom, more companions, the only thing wrong with BG1 is some of the arbitrary time constraints they place on some of the quests

yes I know about that.
I've always wondered though, what's the criteria for this small gap between some spells here?
How are they organized? I initially thought it was by spell level, but that can't be because some of those spells aren't the same spell level.

there's no criteria at all it's just wierd UI design

It really depends on the characters you're using and how you're using them. Take Keldorn, for instance, there's almost never a time you wouldn't want him defaulted to Paladin Melee. He'll attack as normal, but will also Lay on Hands and Cure Wounds of any injured nearby frontliners.

For ranged characters, particularly archers and the like, I favor Spellcaster Attack. They'll always open up a volley immediately on any spellcasters like Wizards and Clerics, trying to interrupt their casting, and then when those are dead, work their way down through the rest of the enemies.

Druid Offensive / Defensive is probably your best healer script, even if they're not a Druid. Just stock them up with Cure spells, and they'll fight as usual, only stopping to heal anyone hurt before returning to fight.

I'd stay away from the Thief scripts though, especially the ones that have them passively Hiding in Shadows. They stop moving when they do that, so if you had your group traveling from one side of the map to the other, the Thief got left behind because you didn't actively reclick him every time he stealths.

Oh! And Wizard Berserk is great for Fighter/Mages, Blades and the like. Haer'Dalis in particular opens up with some staggering spell damage then rushes into melee where he's most useful.

Also, don't do this: That's just dumb.

Now, when you have trouble with the AI overriding you because you want something specific done, just click the lantern on the bottom right. It'll toggle all the scripts off, so you can move them around independently and do whatever you want done.

Human brains are programmed to identify quantities below 5 without counting, so grouping in 4s makes sense

But the problem is that this is inherently mage-centric. Everything interesting is based around spellcasting, with every other class being way more straightforward.

One of the few things I liked about Icewind Dale 2 was how easy it was to switch between different weapon slots. Has EE something like that?

Spell Immunity: Necromancy.

I find leaving your rank and file members on autopilot with a decent script handles about 85% of fights in BG2. That includes going Spellcaster Aggressive with your Mages and just letting them fire off Magic Missiles, Acid Arrows, Fire Arrows, etc.

For the times when you're in an actual fight that requires careful spell selection and NPC oversight, just toggle the AI off and micromanage. But not every fight needs or even can be a dueling battle of mage wits with counters and the like.

You got a few quick slots, so it´s pretty easy.

Icewind dale 2 has one of the best ui in rpgs.

you will spend most of your time in combat micro-managing your mages. fighters are still equally as important even if they just hit things. It's a party based game. I prefer this approach to the one Pillars of Eternity took where every character has a full retinue of WoW-style cooldowns you have to click every encounter

Disintegrate, Slow and Flesh to Stone are Alteration. Hold Person is Enchantment. Lightning Bolt is Evocation.

Honestly, I don't think they have a Necromancy ray outside of Cause Serious Wounds, do they?

beholders spam cause serious wounds over and over again it's why they're such a bitch to fight

Non-casters in PoE barely have skills either. They're also very heavily the meta, in contrast to BG where Mages rule the battlefield

are you really going to get meta on a single player game full of cheesy AI exploits?

I disagree. The disintegrate and flesh to stone are why they're a bitch. Any group will outpace a Beholder's Cause Wounds spam for damage pretty quickly. Hell, Korgan alone probably does, and tanks it better than the Beholder does his axes.

But suddenly having a character reduced to dust past resurrection? That's a real pain in the ass.

Also, Gauth spam Lightning more than Cause Wounds and they tend to show up in packs far more often than Beholders do.

>He'll attack as normal, but will also Lay on Hands and Cure Wounds of any injured nearby frontliners.

Inquisitors can't do that user

The story isn't as good as planescape torment. But few games are.

Yet there are few game series which can give you as good a sense of progress and "how far you've come" as the full baldurs gate journey.

Going from a level 1 scrub to a god through bg1->throne of baal is pretty god damn fun. I bet you didn't even keep the golden pantaloons.

>you will spend most of your time in combat micro-managing your mages
Maybe with difficulty mods, i use my mages mostly to prebuff and breach

when I first encountered the baby beholders on the unseeing eye quest they just spammed cause wounds constantly, over and over again killing everyone before I could do anything
past that I got the shield of balduran so they become the easiest enemy in the game, never saw them cast lightning once

Sorry, I tend to main Cavaliers and at the last second replaced that with Keldorn without really thinking about the differences in kits.

class in bg have between 2 and 4 quickslot to swap weapon

>i use my mages mostly to prebuff and breach
thats more micromanagment than 'click attack and kill enemy' with your fighters

iirc fire elemental works well, maybe skeleton warriors too

The cause wounds is a gaze attack that happens over time without them needing to cast it and it can't be canceled like regular spells can.
Basically nothing else they do is difficult to deal with anyway it's just the massive damage spam that's a leading cause in eyeball related deaths.

>they just spammed cause wounds constantly

Hell, maybe I remembered wrong. I thought I recall them spamming lightning, but I guess it could've easily been Cause Wounds. Maybe it's the sound that ray makes when it hits?

yeah it looks and sounds like lightning

Casting breach doesn't take most of the battle though and if you have a weapon with elemental damage you don't even have to bother

Yeah, but IWD2 lets you switch between various weapon sets (say, bow in one slot, dual welding in another and weapon+shield in the third slot) without taking the hassle to manage everything manually.

you probably need to remove spell protections before you breach aswell

They really should've made Keldorn a Cavalier. He being an Inquisitor doesn't make much sense.

With the last patch you can switch from bow to s&b/dual wield bu not make advanced combination
Maybe, I think Breach bypass most of them though

it doesn't, if you cast breach on 90% of the mages in bg2 it's not gonna do anything unless you remove their spell protection first

is stealing from shops useful in bg2 at all?
always seems to fail

That's not what I remember and the few place i checked seem to agree with me

PoE Mages are beyond useless, and BG Fighters are beyond boring

Drink a few potion of master thievery. They're cumulative.

Usually you can't steal from shops with good items anyway (except for the one trader in Trademeet) but you can cheese the game to death by stealing stuff from the Shadow Thieves and selling it right back to them.