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Some Thought’s On Baldur’s Gate
I have just finished about two months during which Baldur’s Gate (BG) was my primary computer occupation. BG is the best computer roleplaying game in a long time... maybe the best ever. I say this having played a lot of classics: Wizardry 1-7, Ultima 4-8, the two Ultima Underworlds, Might and Magic 3-6 (MM), Daggerfall and many others. BG uses pretty strict AD&D rules. Old timers will remember Pool of Radiance and others of the family which were also AD&D rule based. This leads to very good play balance during the whole game. Many times, these games start to fall apart at the end because your party gets super weapons and huge numbers of spells. Not here. Fans of Diablo who enjoyed getting the Big Bopper of Super Strength and Magic Shielding will find weapons in this game pretty tame. Finished MM6 at level 105? Best you can do here is 8 and that only for a rogue (thief/bard). Although a lot of random battles in the wilderness do get pretty easy, the fixed opponent (scripted) battles are pretty tough and they are not made tough by having hundreds of monsters like MM6.
For wargamers, interested in battle tactics, there isn’t too much strategy here. I thought Dark Sun had about the best battle mechanics for this type of game. In BG, if your party walks into a room full of spell casters, you are probably cooked. The most important tactic is to use a thief who can hide and approach unseen to single out a monster or two and have them chase him back to your party. Like MM6, archery is very important. Except for the Summon Monster spells and wands, I didn’t get too much offensive power out of my Mages. Too prone to blow themselves (and everyone else) up in a Fireball or get them Webbed.
The story line is strong and very linear but not at all cvident from the beginning. This keeps it interesting and makes it easy to know that you are on the right track. (A journal is automatically updated if you lose track of what you are doing.) There are lots of side quests and mostly there are no evident time constraints, which is nice. There are real decisions to be made in conversations. Saying the wrong thing can get you into a fight or deny you useful information. Some of the errands that you run also leave you a decision on whether to return their neat stuff. Even the “commoners” sometimes have interesting things to say.
The game plays very well as far as mechanics are concerned. The controls do what you expect them to and most of the actions are easy. Buying, selling, casting spells and what not all work in a convenient way. I do wish that my thief wouldn’t by default leave the shadows and attack. The AI is on by default after loading a game and I can’t count the number of times that I forgot to switch off after a reload to avoid this problem. There is also a problem with the party moving though tight places. You need to be very careful that someone does not go wandering off into dangerous territory in a completely unplanned direction. (This is a pretty minor quibble. The path finding is actually pretty good. It’s just that when someone wanders into a trap when they were supposed to be going in another direction, it gets really annoying.).
There are actually two modes that a single player can use. In both you can control all of the characters. In single player mode you create only one character and fill the other five slots with NPC’s. This is fun since finding and keeping good help is one important aspect of the game.
Characters make some interesting comments although some of this can get stale after awhile (you can turn them off). Each of the NPC’s also has a script to control his behavior. This can be a curse or a blessing. Scripts can also be turned off or even rewritten. A single player can also generate and control up to 6 characters in multiplayer mode. This has the advantage of letting you adventure with some of your favorite characters but you do miss out on some of the fun. I didn’t actually use the multiplayer mode to go adventuring with other real players.
BG takes place in real (speeded up) time but can be paused at any time so reflexes aren’t all that count. The one exception to this is when using inventory in single player mode. Since some classes have only one ready weapon slot available this hurts a lot; can’t switch from bow to sword. (I read that at least 2 ready weapons are allowed for all classes in the expansion). There is no rapid movement method. To get from one side of a map sector to another, you have to walk and that takes several minutes real time. There also is no teleport spell which could have helped some. Speaking of travel, this is a big world. Too big at times. The game comes on five CD’s. Although some of the more recent sectors are stored on you hard drive there can be times when you get pretty tired of swapping disks. I used the small (550 MB !) install and in the city of Baldur’s Gate I needed to swap disks nearly every time I traveled between the surface and the sewers. Game speed was fine even though my 166 MHz system is below the recommend 200 MHz. One minor gripe; it takes 6 mouse clicks to exit the multiplayer mode with some significant delays in between.
Its hard for me to comment on bugs since some of these may be a result of my equipment. I had a _lot_ of trouble at first. So much so that I went out and bought Windows 98. This wouldn’t work at all until I discovered that there was a problem with my video card driver. Using the “wrong” (but related) driver fixed the problem.* Windows 98 runs OK and so does BG, better than most DirectX games. I did have a problem with unloadable saved games (about 1 in 25?). This was really annoying until I started making a lot of extra backups in addition to the “Quick” save. There were very few lockups or unceremonious exits.
No roleplaying game of recent memory has done such a good job of immersing you in a fantasy world. This is what it is all about and BG is a winner. It may not be the perfect game and I don’t know how someone new to the genre would like it. But, it certainly is a major contribution to a game type that was almost dead a couple of years ago.
*I have a vintage Diamond Steath 64 DRAM card. I had to use the VRAM driver. Go figure.