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Rating Reviewed by: Dave(Unregistered User)
Review Date August 5, 2003
Overall Rating 5 of 5
Visitors rate this review 4.43 of 5,
7 votes
Review NaN of 104
, from Denver, CO
Summary: Baldur's Gate has been played by me several times over the last couple of years. I enjoy playing different characters, different races, and different classes. This is a great game to get a basic feel for RPG's. This is not a game for the RPG diehard who has already played several other RPG's.
This game has been ejoyable each time I played it and a good escape from reality for a couple of hours at a time. I think this is one of the best games with which to start playing RPG's. Enough work to create the character in the beginning to get you personally linked to the character. A little involvment in developing the character as it progresses. Not too much involvement to overload a new person to RPG's.
Great way to start RPG's. And the characters can be imported to later games if you want.
Summary: This is game is a really fun game. I played it for over 18 hours... it's an addicting game that really puts you at the edge of your seat. You'll make mistakes, and wish you would've saved at some points, but it's all good because you will know how to defeat some hobgoblin in a different way than you did before. This game is just unbelieveable in some parts. The graphics are incredible. When I beat this Baldurs Gate I am so going to get Baldurs Gate2...
Summary: Admin. note: No need for apology. There was a programming error. You didn't make the mistake :)
I have an apology to make; I think. If I remember my facts correctly, I posted a review on a game saying that this website, though good in most ways, did not have Baldur's Gate or Baldur's Gate II available to review. Unfortunately, I made a bit of a fool of myself, for not only did I find the Baldur's Gate game in the 'Role-Playing section', (I only looked under the aplhabet listings), but when I looked back the next day or so, there it is, found in the alphabet section, staring me in the face: 'Baldur's Gate'. I'm sure I missed it the last time, so I think that the owners of the site must have added it in when I wasn't looking. Thanks guys, but could you have done it in a way that I wouldn't look quite such a prat? Probably not, as the incident may not have even happened, but enough of my ramblings. Baldur's Gate; one of the best RPGs on budget in existence. As I have already stated, probably, I find that computer RPGs don't really show up against their pen-and-paper counterparts, Baldur's Gate does give the impression of Role-Playing. Immediate marks there then, as some computer games' role-playing elements stretch as far as making your party. Umm, yes... very role-playing indeed. Though the game does try and limit evil characters (by the reputation system, plus the fact that most evil characters are distinctly below par), you can go the evil path if you want. Hooray! Baldur's Gate is also great fun. I've had more fun with the 'party creation' bit than I've had with entire games (think Diablo 2 here). Though the multi-player game does get a bit boring quite quickly, single player fans will be rewarded with a long single player adventure with a great plot, great characters and decent replayability. Don't expect things to be radically different when you play again, but therre is still a few fun things that you can find. There are some items that I still haven't found (and I played this game a lot a few years ago, before computer games decided to get decent). Oh, and the game is quite hilarious at times, with some comical names, some very silly items and the gravestones at Nashkel. Try clicking on your characters repeatedly and right clicking on things to achieve funny results. This is all boding up for a very high mark, but unfortunately, it doesn't quite find the right mark. If you've played Baldur's Gate II and are now coming back to this to try and complete your collection, then you WILL notice all of the major niggles that Baldur's Gate has. You cannot load the quicksave simply by pressing 'L'; a feature which Baldur's Gate II doesn't proudly boast: it's a minor improvement, but it's REALLY annoying in Baldur's Gate. Also, Baldur's Gate doesn't support dual-wielding weapons, which really does hamper the score. It's also not so much that Baldur's Gate is bad; in fact it's very good; but other games are better! Sorry, a simple fact of life. While it definitely would have got a '5' at its peak, Baldur's Gate has unfortunately been surpassed by other games. However, if you want a challenge, then try and work out ways you can kill Drizzt Do'Urden. I reveal now: there is more than one way of doing it (discounting the sheer bombard him with spells and physical attacks head on, which is nearly impossible). I've thought of 4 ways, but I'm sure I'm missing something...
Summary: Indeed Baldur's Gate is successful in every aspect of the game. It is quite astonishing how I played this game until a few months ago (for three consecutive years!) when I got Baldur's Gate 2...I must have been mad. But the truth is, I am (still) not an RPG maniac, but I find this game extremely addictive, and I really mean it. Ok, it's pretty ancient compared to games such as Morrowind or Neverwinter Nights, but I think it's worth having a look at the 'Classic Model RPG' which many newly released games should pay attention to. And since it's so old, you can buy this game cheaper, and I think every game-lovers should try this game out.
Let's look at the game itself. A very complicated world and storyline yet very simple controls and highly enjoyable for months of continuous gameplay. What more can an ordinary gamer want. The way you play the game is very simple; just click-and-command style. Baldur's Gate is enjoyable for any, and by that I mean ANY gamers in the world (although, of course, you need to speak english). Before I tried this game out, I was a crazy fan of RTS esp. Starcraft, and in fact I still enjoy RTS by playing War3, and I managed to go through this game without any problem. However, I am quite disgraced by the fact that I used cheats to shorten the game length (or speed up my game play rather) -.-
The most fun part of the game comes from the character creation and developement. You have such a large variety of choices to create your character into, and note that the game will be more fun with more unusual characters e.g. a lawful good thief or an evil mage. I started with boring 'good-n'-all' paladin but soon got bored of his lack of uniqueness. All he could do was just plain hack-and-slash in battles, and had not many special moves. So I started again, this time with a thief. Much better.
This is the biggest reason why the game is worth so much more than the price. You can play it again and again until you realise you have tried all possible characters that the game allows. In the three years of playing Baldur's Gate, I have tried most of the classes in the game, and let me assure you there are A LOT.
There are several 'superficial' letdowns in the game, the biggest being the lack of levels. You start with a character (level 1) that has more or less 8 health points and later realise that the max level you can get is level 9! what the heck...if you are a mage, then your health (at max level) is never going to be more than 60 HP...O.O At first glance this sucks...but later in the game you will realise that this is more fun and challenging than having massive HPs that requires a heck a lot of hits by the enemies to kill you. Because you have less HP, every hit has more impact on you, therefore the game becomes more challenging and requires micromanagement. You will have to save the game often because you never know when you are gonna die. First time I played the game my character died about 10 times before I even reached the middle of the game.
Another letdown is the complex story. Since I was used to simple strategy games that had no storylines (like Starcraft), I didn't know what the heck my character was suppose to do and couldn't be bothered to follow the storyline. If I wasn't so bored at the time, I would have gave up the game. But incidentally I tried to understand the game like reading a book, and once I was in the game the game was amazingly fun. I really want to show respect to the storywriters (whoever they are...)...it's just amazing. Anyway, you'll never get lost because you can refer to the journal often that keeps all the quests automatically.
Another thing that makes this game different from others is that the game is not about hack-and-slash and 'beating the evil' kind of game. There are many quests that require you to think. There are no obvious answers in side quests and you gotta figure the best of the choices. Battle is only a small part of the fun in BG.
What more can I say? A fun and enjoyable game to play...certainly worth having a go at it. And to add my humble opinion, Baldur's Gate series is the best RPG game(s) you can ever have, and believe BG will stay as the best for the next decade.
Summary: This game definitely has some strong points which will attract certain people who get involved with characters and story - although to me it was more of a low-quality book with some good and some really terrible conversations. I also found plenty of bugs in the conversation by talking to people in a different order than expected, i.e. after just about every major happening (or before) people tell you stuff. The stupid thing is that people tell you the same stuff in a different way 20 times, yet each time you can only react as if you here it for the first time. After the 10th time it really irritates me that my character is still intrigued by what it has already heard so many times before (i.e. who are the bad guys, chapter 7). The major issue I had was the lack of sense of achievement - I've played countless of RPG's and strategy games (turn-based mainly) that really give you this sense because of the tactics and intelligence you need in this game. The only thinking in this game is battle tactics (even if you don't read any of the conversations which I found pretty boring you can finish the game by killing all the guys that attack you first). As for battle tactics, I used the same strategy as the last reviewer as soon as you find fire wands (I found 4 in the game which is enough to kill most of the really tough dudes). The trick is to click in front of the baddies, before you even see them or talk to them. Afterwards you walk up to talk to them and only then they start talking after which they attack, and by that time I've killed all the 'helpers' and the main guy is at least half dead. Then I just get my best guy with all the best gear on to confront him while the rest uses range weapons and 2 people healing my best guy and there's no way he can lose. Furthermore most spells are no good because the only people you'll have trouble killing later on are tough guys with high saving throws, so most spells don't work on them (maybe only if you load 10 times). Funny though that fire wand always work as there's guaranteed damage (except final bad dude) so I could win many of the hardest battles by letting my mage fire away at the distance while the others sit and wait, and STILL gain experience for simply watching the show!
Another really stupid thing is gaining levels - for one, health improvements are random so every time a char. gains a level you'll want to load the game each time to get the best 'random' increase! (same goes for character creation, you can roll a dice until you get a good char!). So 6 chars = about 5 levels average = 30 times loading game many times to get the best random health increase. What also irritated me is that the dumb weak monsters from the beginning kept popping up as you go from place to place - you get such little experience (you need to kill about a 1000 to make it worth it, contrary, 1 nasty guy by itself with equal experience points derived is much faster and easier if you can find them). In the end I just kept walking along while they frantically hack away at my near invisible group (when it comes to them at least) while I walk because it is too much of a hassle to keep killing them off.
Then there are loads of quests which are completely brainless, and you get a reward of like 300 or 1000 experience for the hours to find the bloody place and kill a dumb monster to get reward (which is the format of 99% of the quests). Why not just go to the ankheg map, which when you've built your characters are a piece of cake to kill. Kill about 40 of those by walking around for an hour, get 40 x 1000 (or more) experience, which is the equivalent of going on 40 quests which will take you at least 40 hours to complete (which is walking times, trying to FIND the bloody place, and killing monsters on the way, then sleeping so you can heal again - not the actual quest battle which is done if around 5 minutes).
Where are the times when you need some puzzle solving skills to complete an RPG? The saddest thing to me is that people are satisfied by this, to me, shallow game - some of the conversations are downright childish and if they were intended to be humorous its even more sad. Like so many times you meet a scared solier saying "no please don't kill me I'll tell you everything I know, please don't kill me". And what about people like the nobles in Baldur's Gate saying exactly the same thing, takes away all the realism, I'd rather have it not possible to talk to most of them and only some wanting to talk to you. What was really dumb was how everyone just want to tell you the plot of the game, what's going on, like teacher to student, seriously - everyone! Ok so I had a good reputation, but how realistic is it that everyone preaches to me all their secrets (they're supposed to be really important people), coming you don't tell that to someone you don't know bursting in like that - be a little more discreet. The conversations didn't get me involved at all, I ended up finishing the game with hardly any quests, just to get the satisfaction of 'completing' it so I wouldn't feel too bad about all the hours wasted on it. To me this was a shallow hollywood production - satisfy the masses but lost the sense of what a real RPG is about.
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