GameBanshee Forums

Just curious. The games have been out quite a while, now, but have developed a massive following and a dedicated modding community. We keep getting new players here, and many old ones who prefer to argue gameplay details whenever they're not actually playing.

So what was your initial experience of BG 1 or 2 like for you? What were your expectations? What did you get, in turn? How did you react?

My own first experience wasn't actually a playing one. I'd been sent to by one of the magazines I worked for to do previews of titles under development by Virgin America. They had a moderate-sized building in a small corporate park in the Los Angeles suburbs, and I saw several titles. The one that stuck in my mind was a tiny piece of imagery showing Minsc walking down a street, and into a tavern. That was it. No tavern interior, just the brief bit--save for the now-familiar Minsc voice, repeating "Butt-kicking! For goodness!" every two seconds. My PR agent, a young, classy lady, chuckled with embarassment and said 'That's an error. It's not supposed to keep doing that. I'm sure it won't repeat like that in the final release." This was clearly pre-alpha, and from what I discovered, the game had already been worked on for several years.

Virgin America was closed by its international bosses a few months later, and the rights to BG were purchased by Interplay. I remember giving a generally positive review to BG1, and a laudatory review to BG2. But the image that has stayed with me all these years is of a large, benevolent, bald-headed guy running into a tavern enthusiastically declaiming, "Butt-kicking! For goodness!"

Over to you.

From BG1 - causing my Paladin to fall, changing his portrait to Pinhead from Hellraiser, then creating a voice set using Lou Tenant from Fallout 1 that I applied to my character, and it all worked perfectly.

From BG2 - so much... but using Shadow Keeper to recreate my Planescape Torment party was great.

My first time through BG2, I was mostly new to the Infinity Engine (having only played Icewind Dale briefly before) and to D&D itself. I played for a solid two months, logging in over a hundred hours, doing all the quests I could find...until I arrived at the beginning of Chapter Six, Dermin attacked my party near the Elves, which pretty much started attacking me. I hightailed it out of there, did Chapter Six, returned...only to find that they were still hostile. With no prior save and not realizing until then that I'd broken the game, I had to restart.

However, in trying to fix that first game, I came upon Gamebanshee for aid, and have been here (mostly/sorta) ever since.

My second time through, as a Sorcerer this time, I played through again now with ToB, official patches, and Kevin Dorner's Baldurdash fixes and made it all the way to end, doing every quest I could besides some of the NPC quests. To this day, the only playthrough that compares to this experience in any game is the first time I went through Planescape: Torment.

Don't have any particular memories of BG1, as I only played it for the first time a year or two ago.

I've actually only played BG 1/2 a few years after the initial release. I've heard a lot of good things about it and decided to give it a whirl, since I've found favor in the Icewind 1/2 titles.

BG 1 was initially, disappointing. Perhaps I have been spoilt by the later releases, which I've gained comments on, but I couldn't quite bring myself to actually go too far in. Journeying to a popular inn and then to the mines, I quite stopped short after meeting a certain good aligned mage.

It was tempting, it was also that I could bring forth my character "as is" without the BG 1-2 update as it should have been. And since I've gotten all 3 BG titles... I failed my save vs Tutu and installed it.

Completed the series back to back with one character after that and... it was great. I love some of the characters and had actually some feeling of hate towards some of them. Plenty of fond memories and a good number of shocking plot twists, a good over-arching plot and side quests, and a good number of kicks to all evil butts everywhere.

The relatively zero bug encountered (either by luck or by late first time through meaning more patches) can only make it better.

I remember it very clearly. I was shown it by one of my friends and tried it out a little while. Rolled a Paladin without knowing, or caring, about what the stats was and got killed by a goblin. Bought the game and rolled the same character, once again not caring about the stats, and I still don't know what I had.

I learnt the game the hard way, dieing thousands of times over, trying new things, abusing the run-out-and-rest or run-out-to-let-their-defenses-wear-off exploits to the limit, but hey, I never did any sidequests and was around level 3-4 when I came to chapter 7. BG1 is still the hands down hardest game I ever played, mostly due to my own playstyle, I suppose. Trial and Error and lowlevel all the way. I guess the main quest line was too awesome to break away from, for me.

BG2 was an obvious choice due to how much fun I had with BG1. I still remember when I had bought it, we were playing Lazerdome and I remember sitting and waiting and just oogling the awesome cover and backside through. ^^

I played it the same way I played BG1, And didn't even know Carsomyr, Ring of Gaxx, Crom Faeyr or such things existed for the first few years of playing it. Heck, I never visited anything outside Athkatla when not forced to. When I decided to play a game doing all the "boring" side-quests, man, it was like a whole other game.

Not to mention ridiculously easy because I actually was of normal level.

I remember my first run through BG/ToSC clearly, I was playing an Elf F/T, picked up Imoen, but couldn't make it to The Friendly Arms Inn, the assassin kept nailing me. So I never met Jaheira and Khalid, i did pick up Kivan, Garrick and Minsc. Mins then went bananas and killed Imoen (didn't have the funds to raise her), so we then killed him naturally, and I've hated the evil assassin ever since. Eventually filled out the party with Branwen, Ajantis and Xan. I completed the side quests, even Durlag's tower, which at the time was a real trial, a lot of saved game loading. Won the final encounter, Eventually!!!

SoA/ToB initially was a major disappointment, in fact I was so annoyed that I almost dumped the game, but just shelved and eventually went back to it and came to love it, despite it's gross design flaws, see first para to understand why I hold that view!

Eventuall I played through both with a male FMT with Jaheira, Xan and Branwen (CLUAConsole:CreateCreaturethen Ctrl+Q in Soa) with added help from Jan, Mazzy. Had bug problems, but managed to get round them with the console, but the one in Brynnlaw after exiting Spellhold almost killed the game for me, took ages to suss out a fix (CLUAConsole:MoveToArea) for that one.

Never had any problems in ToB, found it and WTK pretty much a breeze, even the final encounter strangely, although it's given me stack of grief subsequently.

The lesson from BG2 for me was 'never give up on a game', just because it sucks the first time you try it, stash it, and try again another day, it may be worthwhile despite it's immediate flaws.

My brother pre-ordered BG1 for me because, for some reason, he was convinced that I would love it, even though I wasn't much of a gamer. I had never heard of it before he told me about it (I never read any gaming news, and I wasn't a member of any message boards), and even after he told me about it, I had trouble imagining what it would be like. I had played a few action-oriented games such as Wolfenstein 3D (the first computer game I really got into), Doom I/II, Warcraft 2, and Age of Empires, but I don't know why my brother thought I would enjoy a D&D game. We had tried to play D&D together a few times when we were teenagers, but it took so long to do anything by rolling dice, I quickly got tired of it every time. I think my brother thought that Baldur's Gate would let us play multiplayer games together, which would give us the chance to play D&D together again. So I received BG1 for Christmas that year, and I started playing it about six months later. When I asked my brother whether he had been playing it, he said he didn't like it. So much for multiplayer D&D.

I liked BG1 almost instantly because it let my imagination run wild. I couldn't wait to see what was next. I couldn't decide whether I should run through it as fast as I could the first time I played it to see how the main story went, or whether I should savor it and try to do every single quest and peek behind every single door and under every single rock. It took me several tries to get all the way through the game, and I was thrilled every time I came across a new surprise.

I didn't use cheats, editors, resource viewers, or walkthroughs. I was worried about whether every single thing I said or did would have future consequences. I eventually learned that the answer was no; every incident was isolated. Only things like Reputation maintained any sort of continuity, which was sort of disappointing.

After I finished the game, I played it again so I could do some experimenting. For example, I wanted to assemble every possible party combination so I could see every bit of inter-party dialogue. I eventually gave up on that project because it took too much time and it became apparent that there wasn't much dialogue. I did manage to assemble all of the NPCs in front of the Friendly Arm Inn, though. There were some annoying bugs that caused some of them to disappear and reappear, which is another reason why I gave up on that project.

My next project was to assemble theme parties. An all-female party was an obvious choice. Normally, I wouldn't think it was any big deal, but the game has an annoying tendency to assume that everything is male-oriented, which made creating an all-female party sort of like an act of defiance. That's not really my thing, but whatever. The "Grudge Match" party (consisting of NPCs who held grudges such as Jaheira and Khalid, Kivan, Branwen, and Yeslick) was very disappointing because they didn't say a word when I killed the people who had injured them. I played a "Little People" party for a while, but it seemed silly and pointless, and I didn't like the avatar for my own character, so I didn't play with that party for very long.

I didn't like Durlag's Tower because it seemed like an endless, annoying dungeon crawl. I didn't know about cheese at the time, so I cheated when the battles were too difficult for me (such as the Warders). My combat tactics were less than optimal because I had a bad habit of "saving" potions "for later", and it took me a long time to learn spellcraft because I just didn't feel like studying all of the spells. Reading the manual reminded me too much of trying to learn all of the pointless details of D&D. My preference was more along the lines of, "Where's the rocket launcher or the BFG9000?"

I never went to Werewolf Island until several years later, because I never found a way to get there. Otherwise, I had done pretty much everything else and I had found nearly all of the hidden items. Replaying the game was like acting out a play, and I tried to make each "performance" perfect. I made a flow chart for the initial quests in Candlekeep to figure out how to get all of them done with the fewest footsteps. (That's not an easy thing to do.) When I came to my senses and realized what I was doing, I decided it was time to do something else with my time.

A few months before BG2 came out, I installed The Dark Side of the Sword Coast (my first mod). I enjoyed seeing new things in the game, but that particular mod is a bit ridiculous. (I also had to turn off my speakers because the sound files were so abrasive.) When I finished a particular quest and found that I had to go through over 30 maps to get back to town, I quit. I figured I could wait for BG2 if I really wanted something new.

One thing that I didn't realize how much I appreciated until later was the music. I'm not musically inclined, so I'm not very aware of music; I take it for granted and it mainly exists in the background for me. If you had asked me to hum a few bars, I would have had trouble remembering any of it. But the music and the sound effects helped to create a special atmosphere. I especially liked the feeling I got when I was way out in the wilderness in a place like the Cloud Peak Mountains area and there wasn't any sound except the wind blowing, and then I heard some thunder and it started to rain or snow. I don't get that feeling when I play BG2, so I think it's one of the things that makes BG1 special.

I started playing BG2 the first week it came out. Again, I wanted to see everything in the game as fast as I could. I was less concerned about perfecting my combat style until about the third time I played the game. I didn't use walkthroughs, so I missed a lot of stuff, including the most notorious encounters such Kangaxx and the Twisted Rune.

The first time I played, I was under the mistaken impression that I was supposed to complete the main quest as fast I could. I was afraid that something bad might happen if I didn't retrieve my character's soul or retrieve the Rhynn Lanthorn. As a result, I didn't finish all of the sidequests before I finished the game. The next time I played, I had to figure out a strategy for completing all of the sidequests on my own since they were unconnected to the main storyline. That was annoying, because it made me aware of the fact that I was playing a GAME, which made it more difficult to immerse myself in the game instead of meta-gaming.

Other first impressions: Irenicus's dungeon freaked me out, and I was very afraid of Irenicus at first. But after a while, I agreed with Minsc when he said, "This mage is like a bad penny." The plot didn't make sense to me back then, and it still doesn't make sense to me today. But that never really bothered me because I was having so much fun. The cutscene in which Irenicus takes over Spellhold is one of the coolest things I've ever seen in a game. "Know this as you die, ever pathetic, ever fools!"

(I'd like to mention that the first appearance of the Transcendent One in PS:T is even more memorable to me because it was so bizarre. I had no idea what was going on, but it was cool. "Fortune abandoned you the moment I found you. Has your life prepared you for what is to come?" I was also mesmerized by that voice.)

My experience playing BG2 became closely connected to my involvement on message boards. I joined BGDungeon Tavern (my first gamng message board) and it was very active 24 hours a day. I enjoyed hearing what other people had to say and answering other people's questions. I loved talking about the game. When I was actually playing the game, I avoided the message board, but when I wasn't playing the game, I was discussing it. At present, I don't play the game very much (it's just too familiar to me), but I still enjoy talking about it. One of these days when my memories of playing have faded sufficiently, I will immerse myself in a serious game from start to finish. I want it to be fresh again. I have even considered playing Shadows of Amn without Throne of Bhaal or any mods just so I can recapture the some of the feeling I had the first time I played BG2. It's nice not to worry about what I should do when I get to TOB or which mods I should install or what other sorts of meta-gaming decisions I should make. Times were simpler back then.

It was 2001, and we were discarding old, torn mags at work....when I noticed a illustrated walkthrough for BG II, took it home and leafed through it and decided to give it a try.
Found a copy at a local computer store and took it home, loaded up and played for about 3 days running, still could not figure out why my armored mages couldn't use magic...:laugh:....after about a week, to figure out all the tweaks, I was hooked, probably reloaded and played too many times to count, I remember at one point in my life, carrying around my laptop to work, to the store, airlines, anywhere I thought I would have time to play. ..around 2003, finally tracked down a new copy of BG I, then I discovered Gamebanshee and the walkthroughs, and all the modding sites....took a break from playing for awhile, until my son-in-law moved in with me and one night discoverd his passion for the game also...between us there is a ongoing game on at least one of the 5 computers we have going here.....guess I'm just a game junkie..

Ah, the first run! To this day I regret getting SoA before BG1.
I restarted the game about twelve times, just to try out new kits and classes against those mephits.
My first PC was half-orc barbarian. I remember using the barbarian rage ability for the first time and I was very disappointed when the rage ability didn't turn my pc into an invincible Hulk like character.
I was very interested in romancing one of the NPC's. It was until near the end of the game that I found out that both Aerie and Jaheira wouldn't romance half-orcs
Man, some of the battles were hard back then. I didn't know the first thing about THAC0 and what spell did what. It meant every step around every corner could be my last - and it often was.
Even more intriguing were some of the moral choices you had to make. There were some dilemma's, like with Sir Sarles, the choices in Hell, getting the dragon eggs by double crossing, which really gave me pause.
Delivering Yoshimo's heart to the temple actually moved me.
I also remember getting my first stronghold, the keep. I made a separate saved game for that, I was so happy with it. Which might have something to do with the state of the nearly-condemned house I was living in at the time

it was 1998 and I was 9 years old, when my dad came bragging to me about how he'd bought this game Baldur's Gate, and showed me how it had 5 discs and everything, and I wasn't really impressed. He didn't have a computer so he couldn't even show me what it was about nor play it himself!
Then in around 2001, he got a laptop from work and installed it and I was with him the first night he played it. His laptop was awful and it had awful frames whenever you went inside a tavern! (hilarious by modern standards). He let me play for a while and I think I got drunk and killed a lot of people in Beregost before I got hunted down by the guards. I asked to borrow it and never gave it back, after waiting 2½ years to play it himself I was pretty hooked, however...
I'd read Lord of the Rings before and I think the first film came out around the time I started playing Baldur's Gate and I really liked the game, but I constantly wished it was set in the LotR universe (because I really wanted to see that come into being, although with LotRO's decent attempt, I suppose that's satisfied). Furthermore, I had (and still have unfortunately) a chronic rerolling problem. I'd get to a certain point in the game and then I'd make a new character, not wanting to miss out on anything, and lots of RP ideas in my head (well it felt like I did. Usually I'd roll an Elven Ranger, then delete and make an Elven Fighter, then delete and make an Elven Fighter/thief. Same appearance, same proficiencies, always CG. Pretty ridiculous).
The Nashkel mines used to be a scary, tough place that I always put off because of the dark atmosphere and getting killed often. With my rerolling, I actually didn't even reach Cloakwood or the city of Baldur's Gate until I'd been playing the game for some 2 years already, I'd guess in late 2003. The first time reaching Wyrm's crossing and hearing the Baldur's Gate city music was pretty special and I'll remember that for quite a while. I'd never had any interest in D&D or PC games until I played this game, but Baldur's Gate blew me away, I loved the depth of the story, the exploration, the music, the artwork, pretty much everything.
I believe I picked up BG2 in 2004/2005 and with it the IWD games but to this day, I still have not completed ToB and have only completed SoA twice! (solo elf F/M/T, solo dwarf Beserker). My initial impression was "the graphics look way better" and "there's no wilderness areas??? WHAT WERE THEY THINKING". One of the things I loved from BG1 was how rewarded you were for exploring, like finding an NPC in the complete middle of nowhere, or a quest. I greatly missed that in BG2 but it is somewhat made up for by sweet areas like Ust'Natha and Suldanesselar.
I'm now 19 and have a passion for playing CN avengers (shadow druid!). I'm going to attempt to get through all three games with one character but with my history, it's not promising

My first time through was an appalling piece of work, I basically used any weapon I though seemed cool on any character I felt like. I also used whatever spells did damage without understanding saves, magic resistance or undestanding how spell protections worked. Most of my characters were had empty spell slots because I didn't know the difference between mage and priest spells and how they increased when going up levels.

I often found battles I would send all my characters, mages, bards and units a like to simply rush and bash on monsters until dead and never unstood why I couldn't do damage to someone or why I would get characters saying "My weapon has no effect?"

I did very few of the quests and never managed to defeat any of the dragons. I did manage to finish the game my first time through (Monk) and thought it was pretty dissapointing.

~

I left the game sitting on my shelf for ages until one day I decided to give it another try.

My subsequent times through I paid more attention to dialogue, spell descriptions and game rules and I began to understand and appreciate the complex game rules. Once I started to understand how certain monsters needed certain protections removed and needed certain attacks to hurt, I really appreciated the depth it had over my previous games like Diablo or even Fallout

To this day I still love playing the game and my aim tends to be maximum efficientcy, my aim is to get through as many situations using as little spells, restings, potions and wands as possible.

it was 1998 when i first was introduced to BG. the boyfriend i moved in with had bought this game and liked playing but then got into first person flyer games... so i decided to try it out on nights he worked late to pass the time. I WAS HOOKED! i would play the game everyday for hours... then i bought ToSC to further my gaming enjoyment. then we ended up breaking up and i moved and couldn't play anymore as i had no computer.

then in 2001 i made a move across the state and where i was.. i was able to save up to buy my own (rinky-dink underpowered just barely supported anything) computer. First thing i did after buying the computer... i went out and bought baldurs gate!!! one of the last few copies that got sold in stores. i lucked out. then a few years after that i bought BGII and that became my new obsession, lol.

I don't know what it is about the BG saga, but you first pick it up... or pick it up after a LONG break... it just grips you and keeps glued to your seat. I know it let me escape reality a few hours a night... and there were nights that it was what i need to keep my sanity when i escaped into the game.

I could not imagine the gaming community without this game. I have become part of an AWESOME game site and met some terrific friends due to this game. and how could you not like... the almighty Anoweenie :laugh:

My first time through BG1 wasn't playing BG1. I was watching my husband play. A friend of his gave him a copy in 1998. While I couldn't care less for Diablo, BG1 with it's bright world and cool characters got me really interested, and we had a lot of fun together. It taught me D&D concepts of which I had no idea prior to that run, and I almost immediately became deeply engrossed in caring about Kivan. We actually had arguments with my husband about healing or not healing him. I have to say that he was the only other character left standing during the last battle with Sarevok.

BG2... I don't think I've ever gotten over the dissappointment of Kivan not being there or my high expectations of the romance being crashed by Anomen being a jerk, and that stupid twist with Imoen, who went from one of the characters I wanted to have in the party in BG1 to one I wanted to throttle in BG2. All and all, I liked BG2, but I LOVED BG1, and the only other game I felt as strongly about since then was JE.

Never completed 1/2 but i love them

I've played the first part of baldurs gate 1 6 times untill the first mines with kobolds in them. The 4th cd was damaged so I couldn't play any further. I was 9/10/11 years old so I didn't mind and just played the first part everytime with a fighter (most of them dwarfs).

I'm playing Baldurs gate 2 now for the 3th time but I never completed BG2 too. When I reinstalled windows I forgot to back-up my savegames twice.

When I played BG2 for the first time I was quite afraid of Irenicus. That man was just so evil...:speech: