Improved Irenicus in HELL (Tactics, SCSII) Video! Commentary.

Stworca · Post by **Stworca** » Sat Oct 15, 2011 6:03 pm

Hello there, unwashed one!

This fight was requested time and again, and finally our lovely party has reached it. Improved Irenicus.. In HELL. With all the possible "ball-breaking" additions, such as Insanity, additional monster spawning (including liches), and a ban on mage level 9, priest level 7 and HLA spells and abilities.

The fight is 37 minutes long, but the actual combat begins at 5 minute mark.

[url="http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ZBe8EV_MCgM&hd=1"]Without further ado : Here it is![/url]

ToB, here we come!

All comments, as well as rotten tomatoes, are welcome.
Ahoy!

Curry · Post by **Curry** » Fri Oct 21, 2011 5:01 am

What's the point? You have a custom party and custom enemies and a ****load of mods. Sure, it's probably challenging but that's hardly BG2 anymore.

Misused · Post by **Misused** » Fri Oct 21, 2011 12:08 pm

Curry wrote:What's the point? You have a custom party and custom enemies and a ****load of mods. Sure, it's probably challenging but that's hardly BG2 anymore.

Ofcourse it's still BG2. The gameplay experience might be slightly different, but at it's core, it is still BG2. You might compare it to someone being used to playing the game on Easy difficulty, having to learn to play and deal with the game on Insane. Already there, it is quite a different game, as all of a sudden you have to be a lot more careful, use strategy and use the resources at your disposal in an entirely different way. (Say, Fire resistance potions/scrolls that was never used on Easy, might very well be essential on Insane)

SCSII, Tactics and Ascension (among others) are all just taking this to the next "level", with even smarter/tougher enemies etc.

Stworca · Post by **Stworca** » Sat Oct 22, 2011 7:07 am

Curry wrote:What's the point? You have a custom party and custom enemies and a ****load of mods. Sure, it's probably challenging but that's hardly BG2 anymore.

Your statement can be true only for Roleplay value of the game, and even then one could argue.
Not to mention, that Aerie will not talk about her horrible past in the circus, when Jon is blasting the party with spells in hell, thus roleplay value of Bioware NPC's over custom ones is non-existing in this case.

Doing it with Minsc and others, would basically be the very same. These are - for the most part - the same classes (and as mention before, Their personalities do not matter at all, when fighting).
Which leads us to enemies. Is Jon different? No. Jon is still the tormented, exiled elf, who wants your soul for himself. What is different then? The monsters that fight alongside him. But do you really care that much for the four demons that fight for Jon in vanilla, or are we just having a pointless scene here?

That leaves fight mechanics and AI. Are you aware, that all abilities used by foes in this fight, are also present in vanilla game? They were just piled together, to strengthen the enemies in this encounter. So that taking your soul back no longer takes 10 seconds. Making the fight for your very soul - in the depths of hell and after an epic journey - grander, seems to me like a step TOWARDS a worthy BG2 experience. It's the opposite : Using protection from magic scrolls, abusing invisibility powers of staff of magi and so on, that makes it "No longer BG2".

It's not a walk in the park, or killing kobolds in Neshkel mine. You fight for your soul, with the most tragic, and very powerful villain. In saga with scale and stakes as epic as in Baldur's Gate it's easy fights that kill the atmosphere.

The point of the video however, is that many people use these difficulty-affecting mods (Are you aware that almost nothing else than abilities / scripting / adds is changed? Did you know that i use four mods? Is four "****loads"?)

If you wrote, that you hated the video / me / the game / my voice / my commentary / my tactics, i wouldn't mind at all. If you claimed to have beaten it much faster, I'd probably agree that it's possible, as i failed time and again.
Hell, You could even waltz in here with "Hi, I'm Curry and i ****** hate you, die", and i would answer it with a smile.
Instead, You've written a post that begs to start an argument. Your sole reason, was to either troll the hell out of this thread or derail it back to stone age. Well done.

In short : Thank You for Your comment. Kind responses such as yours are always welcome.
I apologize if any part of my post offended You.

Misused · Post by **Misused** » Sun Oct 23, 2011 8:14 am

@Stworca: Regardless, don't mind him. I've enjoyed your videos and commentary immensly (I also posted on YouTube). And thanks to discovering these mods, BG2 has become so much more enjoyable for me.

It took some getting used to, but I was missing some challenge when playing. I'm by no means a BG2 expert - Far from it, there are many tricks and strategies I don't know, and have yet to finish ToB. This is also where your vids and strategy guide come in. Your sorcerer spell picks, for example, are gold and have made me discover an entirely new way to playing the class. Especially when playing with a party (I used to be a solo-player).

And SCSII (and later, when I get to ToB, also Ascension) is making it a lot more enjoyable experience. The satisfaction from beating some hard encounter is immense!
I'm still only playing on Core difficulty, but have refrained from installing a lot of the "makes things easier"-components I used to use. I'm playing WITH xp-caps this time around for example.

And while I do use a whole lot more than 4 mods, I still feel like I'm playing BG2 - Just "better" and "harder"

Edar Macilrille · Post by **Edar Macilrille** » Tue Nov 15, 2011 4:39 am

Silly Polish tactical refiner; why do you care for such silliness?

Without Mods many of us old hands would no longer enjoy BG and would have stopped playing.

Without your tactical advice (and now Vids I see), many people would probably not beat those really challenging encounters, but instead give up.

And yea, seems I am back: Winter coming, so time for another one or two runthroughs.