Game: Baldur's Gate
Released: 1998
Played: 2008?
Personal rating: It's not you, it's me.
Released: 1998
Played: 2008?
Personal rating: It's not you, it's me.
Baldur's Gate is a Western RPG, based in the "Forgotten Realms" setting. The gameplay is a fairly faithful rendition of the Advanced Dungeons and Dragons rules. In the grand tradition of these things, you start off as a raw apprentice and go on to save the world during the course of the game. Or possibly conquer it. Sadly, I don't know as I never finished.
Back in the mid-late noughties (ugh - but there is no better word) I had bought a "netbook" (a small, cheap, underpowered laptop) to use while travelling, both on holiday and on my daily commute. Something small enough to easily fit in a backpack or genuinely on a lap, that I could use for basic Internet access (someone's got to read those webcomics) and some simpler - or older - games. Sadly, Alpha Centauri was too much for the graphics chip, so I looked around for cheap but good games to play on it that didn't need serious performance. I ended up trying Master of Orion and Battle for Wesnoth, both of which I ended up playing quite a lot - still do. I also got Baldur's Gate (I may even have the sequel lying around somewhere). I'm into fantasy, was loving the JRPGs on the Playstation, and it is widely agreed to be a classic, so why not?
My usual plan with RPGs is to do one quick, dirty playthough - at "low" difficulty if available - to inhale the story at pace. Then, settle down with a walkthrough on hand to really get to grips with the mechanics and do a completist run. This has worked well for me, but comes unstuck in two cases. First, if the story is no damn good. We may come to that later. Second, if the game is hard enough to actually require attention.
I didn't really get involved with AD&D when I was young. Warhammer Fantasy Roleplay was our main thing at school, with some fun dips into Shadowrun and Paranoia. It turns out that these are fast-moving, streamlined members of the RPG family. AD&D ... not so much (although there are worse - Rolemaster anybody?). I have a sneaking suspicion that most groups of teenage schoolboys who played it quietly decided, as a group, to ignore some of the rules to make it easier (I wouldn't know about serious, adult players). As a computer game, you can't do that. You will have to worry about encumbrance, you will have to go around picking up your (hopefully) unbroken arrows from the corpses of your slain enemies. Add in the scale of the world, the number of characters and the range of choices available and it was just too much effort for me at the time. I did restart from the beginning with the aid of a walkthrough, but didn't get much further.
The game deserved a lot better than to be tried in half-hour bursts, with even those interupted by boarding and switching trains. I rather liked the story - as far as I got - and enjoyed the setting. Even with my dips into the game some of the characters were memorable ("Go for the eyes, Boo!"). Yet somehow I've never felt the urge to give it another go, or try the remake. I do think, however, that there have been games that I've loved that owe a lot to Baldur's Gate and its success.
Back in the mid-late noughties (ugh - but there is no better word) I had bought a "netbook" (a small, cheap, underpowered laptop) to use while travelling, both on holiday and on my daily commute. Something small enough to easily fit in a backpack or genuinely on a lap, that I could use for basic Internet access (someone's got to read those webcomics) and some simpler - or older - games. Sadly, Alpha Centauri was too much for the graphics chip, so I looked around for cheap but good games to play on it that didn't need serious performance. I ended up trying Master of Orion and Battle for Wesnoth, both of which I ended up playing quite a lot - still do. I also got Baldur's Gate (I may even have the sequel lying around somewhere). I'm into fantasy, was loving the JRPGs on the Playstation, and it is widely agreed to be a classic, so why not?
My usual plan with RPGs is to do one quick, dirty playthough - at "low" difficulty if available - to inhale the story at pace. Then, settle down with a walkthrough on hand to really get to grips with the mechanics and do a completist run. This has worked well for me, but comes unstuck in two cases. First, if the story is no damn good. We may come to that later. Second, if the game is hard enough to actually require attention.
I didn't really get involved with AD&D when I was young. Warhammer Fantasy Roleplay was our main thing at school, with some fun dips into Shadowrun and Paranoia. It turns out that these are fast-moving, streamlined members of the RPG family. AD&D ... not so much (although there are worse - Rolemaster anybody?). I have a sneaking suspicion that most groups of teenage schoolboys who played it quietly decided, as a group, to ignore some of the rules to make it easier (I wouldn't know about serious, adult players). As a computer game, you can't do that. You will have to worry about encumbrance, you will have to go around picking up your (hopefully) unbroken arrows from the corpses of your slain enemies. Add in the scale of the world, the number of characters and the range of choices available and it was just too much effort for me at the time. I did restart from the beginning with the aid of a walkthrough, but didn't get much further.
The game deserved a lot better than to be tried in half-hour bursts, with even those interupted by boarding and switching trains. I rather liked the story - as far as I got - and enjoyed the setting. Even with my dips into the game some of the characters were memorable ("Go for the eyes, Boo!"). Yet somehow I've never felt the urge to give it another go, or try the remake. I do think, however, that there have been games that I've loved that owe a lot to Baldur's Gate and its success.
It may have looked easy, but that is because it was done correctly - Brian Moore