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I have never played the original BG until yesterday. I think it sucks big time. The graphics are crude, the story is too loose, the pace is too slow. Compared to SOA, the original sucked big time. Don't konw if anybody feels the same way. Flames and opinions are welcome.

BG1 is great, bg2 is great.

I have to disagree; I think that BG is considerably superior to BG II. I hold the original game's storyline to be in fact superior, while Sarevok is a far more fearsome and charismatic foe then Irenicus. The sequel lacked the original games sense of mystery and atmosphere of oppressive evil.
BG also gave you far more options in terms of party selection, giving you more of an incentive to replay it (with a different party).

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I thoroughly enjoyed BG1. That said however, I appreciated the fact that BG2 didn't have you spending huge amounts of time travelling all over the map just to complete the most minor quests. I have found BG2 to be incredibly addictive; there have been very few times where I felt I needed to take a break. In BG1 I remember hitting a mid-game wall and taking a significant amount of time off before finally completing that one.
I still feel that they are BOTH among the five best games I have ever played...
ElvenKing

IMO BG1 is better than BG2. BG1 was much much larger world to explore with all those forest areas... In BG1 you had to reload if you ran unprepared to a bunch of gnolls! they'd slice you to pieces in no time... in BG2 you can kill dragons/demons/adamantium golems easily. in BG1 you'd drool to find a +2 long sword... in BG2-> hmm? a +3 longsword, eh? well it looks cool *throws it in the backpack and sells it later*

Irin has it in a nut shell, BG1 has the long(scinic) routes not much inter action(ie info screen thingy) and ton of pcs, buit bg2 has the high lvls the power and better graphics ansd stuff Bg 2 had a tipped balance on gaming aspects so did bg 2,the difference?the different way they are tipped!!!

In the long run I'd have to pick BG2, but then again I can't recall a gaming experience that matched my first time though BG1 for outright joy and addiction.

I understand why humanflyz doesn't like it. I think it would be difficult to enjoy once you're used to BG2. But for those of us who did it before, the weaknesses didn't seem so annoying.

All I can say is BGI and SOTSC got me where I am now - completely addicted. BGII does exceed in many ways as does any decent software sequel with hindsight, but in my opinion - as for originality and gameplay - BGI is the best prequel ever released!

Hmm...I would have to say BG2. I just love this game, the world has been made so immersive that I can almost smell the air of Athkatla or Windspear Hills...Everything is improved in BG2. Although I enjoyed BG1 very much and it is one of the best games I've ever played, it just can't match BG2 IMO. And that's because BG2 is the BEST game I've ever played so I think there's really nothing more to say

Hey, some of us liked wandering around the woods, stumbling into random adventures. I miss that from BG2-

Also miss being low level- defeating the hobgobs for the flamedance ring, the ogre for his girdle and the spiders for gold- being able to buy your first set of decent armor and taking on that evil priest west of Bereghost- that was stil the most fund I've had since clearing the slums in Pools of Radience.

Then again, BG1, only had a few "quest areas"- i.e. gnoll stronghold, kobold fire arrow place, etc. - BG2 has a ton.

Char interaction makes the sequal much more fun tho.

kobold fire arrow place

Yeah, that pretty much sums it up for the Firewine Ruins

I liked all the exploring and stuff. BG2 makes me feel a bit claustrofobic sometimes, although it IS an improvement (it better be, being a sequel).

I'm generally with you on this, @Humanfly. The graphics aren't that different, IMO, but the game is nothing more than a sequence of "go kill that" quests. The pathing AI is terrible, the party NPC comments are boring and flat, the plot is dull, and the lack of map captioning is a drawback. BG was extremely popular, but I personally don't care for it (as you might have guessed).

In BG there’s a feeling of participating in a larger, breathing world that isn’t present in BG2. Uber-magic items aren’t dropped by every kobold or gibberling you face and the non-player characters seem to have an existence beyond simply aiding or hindering the main character. Also, the original’s music was better (IMHO) and the game gave you a better feel for the sheer mass of Faerun. Just having a long sword +1 was an accomplishment in BG; in the sequel every Podunk sewer dweller is packing at least some sort of magic artifact. The original Baldur’s Gate is far from perfect but it holds a place in my heart that Shadows of Amn fails to touch. There’s a inexplicable magic to the game that doesn’t follow through to the sequel.

I've made my point far more eloquently in an earlier topic similar to this one. You can find it [url="http://www.gamebanshee.com/cgi-bin/ubb/ultimatebb.cgi?ubb=get_topic&f=2&t=002339"]here[/url].

BG1 and BG2 are both great! Drizzt was really powerful (lv16) in BG1. If I could only make BG1 interface, maps & journals look like that of BG2

BGI was good, but I played it only once and won't be playing it again. I like outdoor quests but, gosh, after a while it became a boring routine: land in the corner of a new map, begin a methodical sweep of the area to find the baddies, kill them, sell loot, leave for a new map, repeat ad infinitum. I eventually felt like a platoon leader in Vietnam faced with endless search and destroy missions.

BGII I am playing twice, not once, so it must be twice as good Then back to Daggerfall.....

I agree with the sentiment shared by some that BG1 was BORING! I know some of you guys like the big worlds full of exploring to do but unless there's some kind of pacing or at least different kinds of activities you can do it gets OLD real quick. I had to stop BG about halfway through because I was tired of it.

And whoever's harping about how common magic weapons are in BG2... I think that makes it so much more fun. While you glow on about your Long Sword +2 from BG... I'm drooling over the Crom Fayer and Holy Avenger. Which would you take? And that's the tip of the iceberg! The item descriptions are real fun to read and all of it seems more atmospheric because of them.

A combination of things made BG2 great for me. I *almost* didn't buy it because I had such a bad experience with BG1, but near Christmas-time this past year I decided to go ahead and do it and from the first bit of Irenicus' dungeon I was hooked. BG2 was, to me, everything that BG wasn't. The pacing from the get-go was excellent. The story was great. The sub-quests are incredibly fun (some more fun than the story quests!). There is an incredible amount to do and I think the city of Athkalta was SO much more fun to explore than 500 of the same looking forest areas. The higher levels mean more fun too, IMO. Is it more fun to square off against kobolds firing a few magic missles and inflicting 7 points of damage, or is it more fun fighting a room full of Drow throwing Prismatic Sprays, Cloudkills, and what not dealing 20 points of damage? The dragons were great too.

After playing thorugh Bg1 and Bg2 several times, I'll still say that I like BG1 better due to gameplay, it just feels more like an CRPG to me.
And I'll still say, I love to explore and espeically Baldurs Gate City. That city was massive - just walk into a house and see what happens.

I prefere BG2 over BG1 in case of graphics and NPC interaction, but I miss the way you could explore in BG1 and the storyline.

Hopefully with ToB will get a little of both

I played BG2 before playing Bg1, I'd say both are great. I love the bounty hunter thing in BG1, though the complete lack of location markers is really annoying...It'd be even better if I haven't know that I am child of Bhaal before I play.

For BG2, many things have been improved, esp. path finding feature(still not good enough though). The worst thing in BG2 is the 'random' encounters, after a few special ones, oh it's the standard bandit party again...

Originally posted by Gaidal:
<STRONG>I agree with the sentiment shared by some that BG1 was BORING! I know some of you guys like the big worlds full of exploring to do but unless there's some kind of pacing or at least different kinds of activities you can do it gets OLD real quick. I had to stop BG about halfway through because I was tired of it.

And whoever's harping about how common magic weapons are in BG2... I think that makes it so much more fun. While you glow on about your Long Sword +2 from BG... I'm drooling over the Crom Fayer and Holy Avenger. Which would you take? And that's the tip of the iceberg! The item descriptions are real fun to read and all of it seems more atmospheric because of them.</STRONG>

I think the people who like the first Baldur’s Gate better tend to be PnP old schoolers who remember when a fifth level fighter was formidable and a +2 long sword was something to cherish. Shadows of Amn (and ToB) favors excess: insane level gains, awesome magic items, and near invincible foes. The sequel’s philosophy is bigger is better while the original is more of a less is more mindset. Power gamers will love the abilities given to them in ToB, but some of us will miss the days when dire wolves were a real threat and we had to go looking for adventures rather then just sit around waiting for them to come to us. I like Shadows of Amn a lot, but the first Baldur’s Gate hews closer to the spirit of D&D and role-playing in general (BG2’s best feature was the improved NPCs).

Are modern gamers so impatient that they must be bombarded with constant attacks by monsters to be entertained? Baldur’s Gate never bored me. The walking speed could have been faster and if the maps were automatically exposed it would have saved a lot of time, but overall the game is great just the way it is. Most old school role-players were happy just to have a little local recognition and the promise of fresh adventures. Today’s gamers want to become the new god of murder and think they should be able to kill Elminster, the Simbul, and half the Forgotten Realms’ pantheon. Personally I find the little acts (like rescuing a little girl’s drowned cat in BG1) to be more heroic then killing dragons and demons.

@Kayless: Umm...this is completely off-topic, but is it really possible to save the cat, because it was already dead when I found it and I was feeling really bad

In BG, I think it was very irritating when monsters appeared from nowhere(generated) in some places. I think the best part was the little towns and Baldur's Gate itself. Baldur's Gate somehow reminded me of London...being much more medieval of course, but still. The environment and atmosphere in BG were totally different from SoA. It was like England or France, while Amn is much like Spain. And I think the music in SoA was MUCH better than the music in BG. Personally, I feel much like being in the world while playing SoA than BG, I just think SoA is more immersive. I played SoA first, by the way, that might be why I consider it better than the original. BG2 was just so great an experience to me...