I am near the end of the first Baldur's Gate and I have to say that I do not like the game overall, as many things are tedious even if this is an enhanced edition. The only think I like are the personalities (even simple) of some characters, but some of them are absent in part two.

Hence, my question is how the second part improve these features. Or if Planescape: Torment is enough better (as I do not like the combat, it was recommended because it have a much better and interactive story and is not aimed to combat). The other game I have and i am looking to play if it improves these things is Pillars of Eternity.

My problems are:

-Boring exploration, most of the maps actually empty or without any interesting. For example Divine Divinity developed some years later is much better in this aspect.

-Narrow corridors in all inner scenarios and dungeons. Even more realistic, for isometrical perspective they are very annoying, much more if I am using a party because they are usually jammed together. Other isometrical rpgs do not have this problem.

-Characters are almost always jammed in doors or in front of chests if I try to open it.

-If i am not controlling every action of every character, they do not do nothing. Even if there is an obstacle between party member and target while casting the spell (like a wall), it just do not move to have target at range. So spell is never casted.

-Formations are not mantained while moving. If characters have different movement speed they do not move equal while moving on the whole. These are features of old real time strategy games that are missing in this game, even in this new edition.

-In general i feel there is a problem in the pacing of the battles. Some things like casting as spell or a status effect may take a lot of time, but other things are much more faster and more abrupt. I would prefer to not be pausing the game every time but this irregularity makes combat not funny.

-Level up is slow and not satisfactory. For example i am near the end of the game with my cleric and I still cannot resurrect allies. Maybe this is more a feature of D&D, i remember in Eye of The Beholder I completed the game without have enough level to resurrect. I assume that this problem will not be on second part if I import my higher-level character.

These are things I do not liked of Baldur's Game, in general some quality of life issues. I wonder if they were improved in posterior infinity engine games or they are mostly a problem of the engine itself.

I have the second game, Planescape; Torment and Pillars of Eternity, If these games improved some of these issues let me know.

In general I do not like the combat, exploration, leveling process. I liked some party members. The main quest is ok but not hooked me. If you know if the previous titles or any other games that that are better in some of these aspects let me know.

Baldur's Gate II does improve upon most of the points you mentioned.
- empty wilderness maps: BG2 doesn't have any. The devs probably realized the same issue and made sure to rectify this.
- nagivation: party members and allies can "bump" each other out of the way when they're moving about, significantly reducing getting stuck
- leveling: the level range of the first game is way too low to be exciting. You don't get access to higher level spells. In BG2 the leveling pacing is faster and the level range is much higher. That being said, leveling up spellcasters is much more exciting than leveling up fighters.

Things like long/short spell casting time has to do with the rule set. Some spells take one whole round (6s) to be cast while others can be cast instantly. Actions like using items or attacking are faster.

"Even if there is an obstacle between party member and target while casting the spell (like a wall), it just do not move to have target at range" Actually, the character *does* move toward target until it is within visual range, as long as there is at least a path around said obstacles. If your character's visual sight is blocked, they will try to find a path until they get a clear view of the target, but if they can't, they won't do anything. If there is a door in the way, that door needs to be open.

The second game also has much larger scale and more epic story, much more powerful enemies, larger creature variety, interesting locations, much more complex combat with more classes, a lot more powerful items and spells and abilities, deeper party interaction, more developed character personalities.

So I think BG2 is worth a try. After that, Planescape Torment is definitely an excellent choice too. The whole of PST is a magical and bizarre journey with fantastic writing.

A bit late maybe but...

The Infinity Engine games are horribly outdated and were cumbersome and tedious to deal with even back then.

Planescape Torment is probably the only one worth playing nowadays because it has more of what was good about those games (story/characters) and less of what was bad (controls/AI/UI/inventory management/combat).

IMO you should check out "recent" games of that kind like Pillars of Eternity & Tyranny and IF AND ONLY IF you enjoy those, feel free to check out all the old stuff, like Baldur's Gate & Icewind Dale.

If turn-based combat is more your style, you can check out the recent Divinity games, Wasteland and the Shadowrun games, and IF AND ONLY IF you enjoy those, you may want to check out old ones of that kind, like Fallout 1 & 2 and Arcanum.

This genre is condemned to obscurity when people new to it are told to go play horribly outdated examples of it.

I had similar thoughts when I first started playing the Infinity Engine games, and Planescape: Torment is your answer. With emphasis on storytelling instead of combat, it ignores most of the issues the engine has.

And while PoE and other modern games have their own quirks, the quality of life improvements are much appreciated.

Yes.

- As a general rule, why yes, different rulesystems are different. What happends in one system wont happen in another.

- But the reason why BG1 leveled so slowly is because it was originally planned to be a Triology, and D&D sort of has maxlevel 20 (even D&D5 still has that). So BG1 went from level 1 to level 7 or thereabouts (in AD&D back then different classes would be different level at the same xp).

- And yes, you are supposed to control every action of your party in BG (and BG2). Thats why you can pause the game and yet still give commands to everybody. You will be a lot less effective if you dont do that.

- You can raise characters even at level 1 just fine in BG1. You just have to visit a temple and pay a fee.

- BG2 is much better than BG1. Still doesnt fix all your complaints though. Properly controlling your party is still a skill. I dont remember still needing to ever control the movement of every character by itself though, its been a while since I last played the game but I think I did just fine, usually using the zickzag and sometimes the line party formations.

- BG1 is much more enjoyable when you use the BG2 engine, which the fanmod Baldurs Gate Triology allows. It also supports the EEs.

- I dont consider the EEs an "enhancement" of the original game. Its simply a modded game, and one can debate about the quality of this mod. When I looked into it, I ended up believing its not worth it at all. For example, simply looking at the character sheets of the new characters I wouldnt be interested in any of these new characters, they are all useless. Clearly designed by people who have no clue about AD&D. And by the way, the last thing BG1 needed was even more friggin potential party NPCs, theres already far too many to begin with.

- I havent played Divine Divinity. But I know that game has a rulesystem specifically designed for the computer. BG is based on AD&D, or Advanced Dungeons and Dragons, which was the second version of the pen and paper system Dungeons and Dragons. This system in the original is played at table with a group of people, and without a computer. Therefore it will play a lot different than systems that can exploit the advantages of a computer, such as making complicated computations easily in the background.

- I cannot join into the choir of praise for PS:T. It was fun for a while, but then I just lost interest in it. You get textflooded. You cannot design your own character, so the replay value of the game is pretty poor. You can develop your main character according to your preferences, but theres only three options (Fighter, Thief, Mage). The interface is a PITA, for example you cannot move your main character from the front spot, which means he's always at the front line even if you make him a squishy wizard. Etc etc etc. All in all I cant say its a bad game, but I never actually finished it.

Divine Divinity is a classis isometric hacknslash full keyboard+mouse skill. Very similar to Diablo II. It has three classes and male and female for each, but in game, the leveling system opens up in a interface letting you upragde any class, giving this way great freedom, being able to build mage melee tanks, stuff like that.

DD is a very atmospheric game, has a slavic gothic art, that has nothing to do with the colorfulness of Original Sin. Regarding storyline is setted AFTER Oiriginal Sin 1 i think. DD is very fun. Has a giant map, giant dungeons and caves, etc.


Planescape Torment is a unique stuff, but to be honest for me is more like an enjoyable interactive tabletop-book game. There is no true "gaming" challenge in pst rather than having the soul for process and mind the TEXT.

Your post has a low rating, however I completely agree with you, new "old" crpg games are much friendlier to young players. I'm very disappointed by people who call old games that have a high entry threshold, when in fact they just aren't ready to understand the simplest mechanics, while insulting the entire classic crpg genre by disowning it. New games are much more enjoyable, consequently, they are easier to hook and more likely to make a fan of the genre, so the modern player is better off starting with them

Damn, I agree with all you said and still likes the games overall, but definetly not looking forward for another playthrough, BG2 did a lot better though, like A LOT better. So you definitely have to check that one out.

I also tries to play the classic version, but what do you know, it's shit. Don't trust these rose eyed reviewer who told you to "play the original" -- by the end of your attempt to play the original version, you'd have to check your eyes to the doctor I can tell you that. These retro idiots, lmao.

Also agree that PS:T is dumping you with *a lot* of proposition that you struggling to follow. BAD FONT style also does not help for what could have been 'true' cult classic. I'm sure Chris Avellone put his heart and his entire balls to make the story, but if it's presented bad, it's like a delicious cake with a shit topping and of course rosey eyed retro gamers would gloss over these fact. Although it is worth to mention that it is the most functional game compared to BG1 and 2. It's GOG crowd.

You'd take a lot of better advice on Steam forum than these lot, no offense.

Возможно ТЕБЕ следует использовать steam для выражения своего мнения? Неужели ты думаешь, что все должны быть такими же как ты? Любая графика имеет место быть, а тем более классических CRPG, всё, что сделали в EE - увеличили разрешение и добавили пару бесполезных и портящих атмосферу нип'ов.

Серьёзно, каким нужно быть дураком, чтобы в целом хорошо выполненная графика вызывала такие эмоции? Тебе следует играть в графонистые игры, если ты так считаешь и не лезть к людям, которым графика не важна

I didn't use English because не считаю нужным утруждать себя формулировкой предложений на не родном языке при ответе тебе

My name is Rachmanovski but I am not Russian, so I can't understand what you said without using Google Translator.

It's true that graphics is not most important thing in the game. But the problem with BG1 is not that the graphics "looks old" -- it is literally almost unplayable and borderline safety hazard if you proceed to play the game without any graphics enhancing mod. The graphics is not bad, it is *too* pixelated to be considered playable and can potentially hurt your eyes.

BG1 is not a bad game, I love it, but EE did a better job to polish the game to the state that it is playable for modern viewer. Other additional thing worth to mention is that you almost certainly requires to mod this game, to the state that it would 'playable'. That requires unnecessary extra effort. Even my friends who was originally playing this game in early 2000 told me, even though EE did a lot of mistakes in UI department, it did a lot of good to to make the game presentable with current machine standard.

These culminates in my opinion that: BG1 classic is not worth to install at all, but it is worth to own for the novelty of it.

BG2 classic however is whole another story, it is playable in classic state and I much prefer to play it compared to EE, even though I missed a lot of useful feature like quick loot.

[1] A large part of the game is managing resources, which includes the individual team members' inventories of items and spells as well as the journey time (away from safety, which is generally in the settlements where provisions are available to purchase and rest is not dangerous) . Because it takes half a day to travel to an unexplored area, the characters will be vulnerable after a few hours of exploration and/or a fight or two. This means they may be killed trying to return to safety, or killed trying to sleep out in the open.
See notes on point 5, and my recommendations, vide ut infra, for suggestions that avoid this.

[2] The whole point of the game is to place each character in the best position to conduct the battle, with mêlée fighters close to the action and missile weapons behind, with spell casters as far from harm as possible whilst still being able to participate. This allows the game to (ocassionally) surprise your group with an ambush from the flanks, etc.
Also, see point 4, below.

[3] Just move them. Or, if they are able (like a rogue) use them to open the chest or door.

[4] There are profiles that will give the characters default actions. A fighter can be set to attack hand-to-hand or use a missile weapon, whilst a spellcaster can be configured to buff (protect) & heal team members or attack with spells.

To configure the behavior of a character, select their Character Record (where you level up) and note the four buttons along the bottom: Information, Customize, Reform Party, & Export. Left-clicking Customize will give you four options in a pop-up dialog; the fourth option, Script, allows you to select from the list of pre-designed choices. Read the manual for more details, especiallty pages 25f.

Further, there is an icon on the bottom right of the interface (the lantern, below the portraits) that toggles the team AI on and off because sometimes you don't want them doing what they always do, like if they attack on sight whilst you are trying to spy out the area before an attack.

See the the manual, pp.13 (interface screen capture) & 18 (for the explanation of the Right Menu Buttons, located under the character portraits) for more details on the AI (a lantern, left) & Select All (on the right) toggles —— but, see next point.

[5] The AI is quite limited.

For instance, don't open the map view and move the view to an edge of that map to (left-click) select a destination to set the team off for that point, expecting them all to keep together as they traverse it, because they the game is dynamically determining their path as they are moving and will try to find the best route to the destination. This means if two character try to walk down a corridor, for instance, the first to reach it will and the second will decide that there is no path and try going around. And, invariably, get lost —— or ambushed. even in "safe" places, like a town. Or trigger an encounter with NPCs, which might be the one character who isn't very charismatic and messes up the dialogue.

N.b., the game is really meant to be played at the original resolution (640×480) which is a tiny fraction of the Enhanced Edition's huge screen. This limits your focus and, I predict, will prevent a lot of your problems. (I am currently playing through the original game for this reason.)

In other words, you are in too much of a hurry to clear each area.

[6] This is the DND ruleset. Higher level spells take proportionally longer to cast. Any Items at the ready, like a healing potion, the character will use instantly. In other words: this is a feature not a bug. (But, also don't be disheartened; this is a huge skill to master and easy to mess up. :)

Don't forget that, unlike a lot of the other games, Balder's Gate originally un-pauses the game when you start messing about in the inventory screen. (This is not the case in the Enhanced edition, though. Again, if you read the manual, it was a design decision that proved to be less popular over time. I know I spend as much time in the inventory screen as in the actual game. Probably more! ;)

[7] You seem to require more instant gratification in your gameplay, so I doubt these games will satisfy you, since they are more about planning than providing you with a dopamine kick.

Recommendations
Have you tried Arcanum?

You would probably prefer a game like:
Morrowind, or, the sequel
Oblivion which both have a more linear feedback in skill advancement.
If you don't mind (or prefer) an over-the-shoulder third-person view of the protagonist, rather than an isometric 2½-dimensional top-down view, there are the Star Wars RPGs (start with Knights of the Old Republic) which also has an unlimited inventory and two other teammates, so they are decidedly less complicated to play.
If the inventory management is getting you down, as well as the KotOR games, also try:
Shadowrun (Dragonfall is superb) which has a very restricted inventory (each mission only allows each of the characters to take five items, plus weapons, spells and their role-specific gear).

edit: added balloon help for Scripts & more details for the recommendations.

At the end of the game I found new information on how to improve some of these features. There is a pathfinding number in an editable file of the game's folder, it should be increased to be acceptable.

Other things that can be edited in this file is the possibility to see the area of spells effects, and being able to increase frames per second to improve game's speed, which is at 30 and was much better at 45 fps.

Why these features are not available to be chaged in the configuration menu inside the game is a flaw of the enhanced edition.

You are right, if the gameplay satisfactory from the beggining I usually enjoy more these games. but there are others like Dark Souls for example where even if I do not like the combat system i like the level design, the same with Thief where i do not like stealth but exploring the levels is fun.

Between rpgs, i like dungeon crawlers like Might and Magic and action rpgs like Grim Dawn. I also like most person rpgs.

However, while i like a good gameplay with instant gratification, I prefer Might and Magic before the original Wizardry 1-3 style (Dark Spire, Elminage Original) for the same reason I prefer Grim Dawn (and Divine Divinity) before the original Diablo 1-2 style (Path of Exile, Torchlight).

Because these games have usually more content like quests, level design for exploration, worldbuilding. They are combat heavy games but with more than these chore elements.

I usually do not like pure roguelikes or pure tactic games, I cannot be hooked to play and complete them as they lack some continuity.

I played Divine Divinity thinking it is another Diablo-Like, but there was more content like a huge world to be explored, quests that require searching for clues or with different options to solve problems. Baldur's Gate was recommended to me because they say that Divine Divinity was a combination between Diablo and BG. Now I know that that was a mistake because that game was based more on Ultima 7.

My expectations were caused by the following situation, isometric rpgs after 2000 are grouped as the classic ones similar to "Baldur's Gate" (isometric CRPG) (I have played a few of them) in contrast to those similar to Diablo (isometric ARPG) (I have played a lot of them) and these have different audiences. The first ones have more roleplaying elements besides character progression, like more narrative interactivity, for example having different options to resolve quests, searching for clues to make appropriate decisions, adventure elements and more exploration, etc. However the first Baldur's Gate is not an example of this, It not comparable to Fallout for example (or Ultima 7?, I have not played that game yet).

Because it is a combat heavy game, and the maps of the open world are just layouts where I am just fighting with mobs, the interactivity is limited, there are a lot of chests and I can enter the houses and open their chests but they are usually with uninteresting things. The quests are very simple, usually the only option I have is that I can kill npcs but this is not a mechanic considered in their design. The main quest is fine but not better than quests of arpgs.

For the previous reason the nature of the game is more between Fallout and Diablo, I know some people may be annoyed with the comparison to the last title but for me this can be fine, Grim Dawn and Divine Divinity are also in this area. My main problem is that if I do not like the combat of Baldur's Gate I can't enjoy the game, and this is the difference with Fallout because even if I do not like the turn based combat with one character I can appreciate the rest of the content. It is difficult to appreciate Baldur's Gate 1 if I do not like how a round based system like dnd is played in real time, because i do not find it good in other areas (like exploration, interactions, loot, level design).

This is just my opinion, i guess the majority like the combat system, and I have read that others like that the maps are empty and the loot is limited because they say is more realistic.

I will try BG2 and Planescape Torment, I have already been advertised that Icewind Dale is more like BG1 (totally aimed to the combat system). However i will try Ultima 7 and Dark Sun: Shattered Lands first (i am currently playing Lords of Xulima).

I played KOTOR many years ago, for some reason I enjoyed the combat system in that game even if it is similar to BG, i guess i will try Dragon Age or Drakensang some day.

Yes, I probably should have mentioned that but I had already formulated my reply and was reticent to add detail to an already large response. Some other games do this. (I'm not sure about Neverwinter Nights, but I think Icewind Dale has a starter app that allows the player to set these values before running the game. ) Anyway, it has been done for one Infinity Engine game, so there is no excuse for a modern professional release not to do so.
If you play any of the Ultima games remember to keep a pad and pencil by your side, since you will have to remember exact details (names and numbers) for a lot of the plot items that are given only in conversations with NPCs far distant from where they are useful. It is a lot more work, especially if you want a map. (But, as John Lennon sang: the love you take is equal to the love you make. :)

Based on your comments I doubt you will find Baldur's Gate 2 much more to your liking. The spells are higher level, so the delay between casting and effect is longer (a ninth level spell takes 9 rounds to cast, or nine times as long as a first level spell, during which time a fighter of equivalent experience has about 30 attacks with a mêlée weapon!) and, without the advantage of the Enhanced Edition interface cues —— which superimpose a character's action on their portrait —— to guide you, you will probably find it even more irritating. And the fights are really tough, because the magic is more powerful. (You can't just explore everywhere, like in, say, Oblivion, because there are areas of exceptional difficulty that will obliterate lower-level characters.)

The deep roleplay in Planescape Torment is certainly a high point in cRPG design but, again, the fighting is very tough. With the Enhanced Edition higher resolutions there is the same temptation to rush through the maps (again, this game was released in 640×480 resolution, and I think it plays better with that intimate focus) and this will not help the player at all.
Dragon Age is probably more to your liking.
I'm just replaying KotOR again. (Actually, since it's always installed, I play it continually, if infrequently.) There are dozens of mods available for widescreen and item additions (see the link for the sequel, below),

It is actually a pretty tough game. (For instance, the sequel has both health and magic rejuvenate, but the original only replenishes the Force power of a character, so there is an additional step to healing after battles that requires Force to cast a heal spell, then wait for the character to regain Force power, and repeat.) Also, the AI is woeful.
The sequel is well worth playing, if you haven't already. Skip the released content game and install the Restored Content mod. Trust me, if you don't like playing with the restored content, you won't like the original release, which was butchered to meet the prequel movie schedule and suffered manifestly for it.

edit: added PS:T