Good game with many problems

User Rating: 5 | Baldur's Gate: The Original Saga PC

Baldur's Gate has been very high on my list of "games I need to play" for a very long time, and I've tried very hard to get into it. I read about 13 of R.A. Salvatore's books (which are great) in order to get more immersed in Forgotten Realms. I finally finished the game, and I'm slightly disappointed. There's great fun to be had, but it's bogged down by a lot of frustration.

The good:

- Graphics: Everything looks pretty great. I like the isometric perspective. The cities and forests have a very comfy feel, making it a lot of fun to get lost in the game.

- Sound: Great atmospheric music, although not enough tracks. Voice acting is also very fun; NPCs and your characters have a distinct style with lots of memorable quotes - much in the vain of Starcraft/Warcraft.

- World/Exploration: There's a certain charm in exploring The Realms without too clear a goal. The game is a good blend of "clear objective" and "let's explore randomly". A lot of memorable locations and NPCs. Dialogue is well-written, and I liked the variety of responses you can give.

- Party system: Having a party of 6 people is great. Being able to pause at any time and move your characters strategically works very well. I liked to have one character with strong armor fight up close, with 3 mages and 2 archers picking off enemies from afar. While there's a lot of saving and loading in between fights, it's very satisfying when managed to beat an enemy the *right way*.

- Characters: The characters you recruit are very diverse in class and personality. I like how they interact with each other, based on their alignment. Evil characters will fight good characters, so I had to choose my team carefully. It's cool how each character has their own sidequests, backstory, unique skills, and voice acting. There's a lot of fun characters and I can't wait to see them in Baldur's Gate 2.

- Replayability: I didn't even like the game too much, but I actually want to play it again just to see what else I can find. My character was lawful good, my party was Minsc, Dynaheir, Goran, Branwen, and Quayle. Next I want to play an evil team and see how different everything is. Because the game had such a high learning curve, I imagine a second play-through might go much smoother than the first.

The bad:- Combat: The first thing I noticed when fighting is how pitifully low my accuracy was. My main character was a conjuror, and I died against the first wolves because only 1/20 of my hits landed, and I hadn't yet learned any magic. I suppose to veteran D&D players, it must have been amazing to play Baldur's Gate in 1998 and see how accurately they implemented the rules they knew and loved - but to me, coming from other RPGs, it seems like a completely backwards mess.

Be prepared to reload every major fight. An enemy web or fireball is instant game over if you're not prepared.
Be prepared to reload every major fight. An enemy web or fireball is instant game over if you're not prepared.

Early in the game, you send your characters to attack, and you wait a few minutes as they roll attacks against each other, hoping that the random numbers land in your favor. I can't imagine any other game doing this: why would it be fun to have a 5% hit chance? Why would anyone want to have to die and load the game so often, just because of random numbers?

Luckily this becomes much less of a problem once you have a full party of 6 people, with dedicated magic users and archers.

- Inventory: Second biggest problem is the inventory. Characters can carry about 20 items in their bag, and 50-200 pounds, depending on their strength. Again, I expect veteran D&D players to disagree with me, but I don't think it's very fun to constantly manage this inventory. You have to prioritize light, valuable items (rings, gems) over heavy, cheap items (weapons, armor). I can understand the appeal of limited inventory in more survival-oriented games like Resident Evil or Diablo, but Baldur's Gate has so many items that it feels awful having to throw almost all of them away.

Also, it has some of the most boring weapons and gear I've ever seen in a game. Most shopkeepers and smiths are useless, only selling base weapons and armor which you can find littered on corpses all over the world. Instead, you get "rare" gear from killing stronger enemies: mostly main-quest bosses. When I say rare, I mean replacing your "sword" with "sword+1", or "helmet" with "helmet with infravison". In short, none of the gear actually feels like an upgrade. Seeing the +1 doesn't make me feel any stronger or accomplished.

Oh, and having arrows/bullets only stack to 20 is stupid.

- Magic: Instead of having Mana or MP, your casters have a limited number of spells memorized - which they recharge after sleeping. This makes dungeon-crawling entirely different from most RPGs. Instead of a dungeon being a test of endurance (how far can you get until your health and mana run out?), you can just sleep at any time and be fully charged. Instead, it becomes a test of "can you defeat every individual encounter" - which isn't nearly as fun, considering how much luck factors in to every fight.

- Random encounters while sleeping: What's the point? There's nothing stopping me from just reloading the game until I get a successful sleep.

- Random encounters while traveling: Again, what's the point?

- Journal: It's good that it exists, but it's a nightmare to navigate. Main/side quests aren't clearly marked - instead they are all lumped into a giant page, along with rumors. Even if I manage to find the entry for a quest, there's no clear indication of whether I finished the quest or not.

Conclusion:

Wow, I wrote more than expected.

I tried really hard to like this game. For the most part I enjoyed it, and I expect the 2nd one is much better.

It's not for everyone: it's slow, and it takes a lot of getting used to. However, once you get used to it, it becomes a pretty immersive game that's fun to play all night.

Other times it made me frustrated and quit after 30 minutes.

If you're used to tabletop RPGs, or older games like Ultima, Wizardry, or Might & Magic, then you might love Baldur's Gate.

If you're used to console RPGs like Final Fantasy, be prepared for worse gameplay as a trade-off for better setting and story.

It was hard to play this game and not constantly compare it to Summoner (2000, PS2/PC). It's like the developers played Baldur's Gate, and decided to get rid of its problems. Play Summoner instead.