What's your favourite Bioware RPG franchise?

joxer said:

It's called bad port from consoles to PC. And it's not the only such port out there.
Please don't blame Bioware for doing what console audience demands. Demiurge failed later to adapt it properly onto PC. But Square Enix does the same mistake too even today.

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I don't know... I haven't played any game in ages (or ever?) that was that retarded. Even console ports. Most games either allow you to skip the cutscene (at the very least after you have seen it ONCE) or autosave the game AFTER the cutscene. But being forced to watch a cutscene over and over until you finally beat the fight (which can be hard due to the insult to injury super braindead AI of the retard companions) is the pinnacle of sloppy, lazy and plain shitty game design.

I think it's predictable and acceptable that Baldur's Gate would win any such poll even though Neverwinter Nights 1 was absolutely great (in many ways even better and not just because it had better technology at its disposal).

It's tempting to say something like Baldur's Gate was great in its day, but thinking about that for even a moment it's kicking more arse than ever by today's standards. Not just because there are more games for it to be lauded over but even the new(er) "AAA" titles don't hold up well to it in many areas while failing miserably in many others, there's maybe a handful that come close over what's approaching 17 years now (and about 14 years since Bhaal) can anyone even think of 10 others that can so much as hold a candle to it.

Sure lately there's big games, long games, detailed games, well written ones, good characters etc but virtually all sacrifice something as an expense. It feels like comparing something that was made with a passion to something where a great deal of that passion is replaced with "requirements" dictated by people who have no interest in the actual game itself and that's something that can be felt even if you don't take note of it.

It is no surprise to see BG leading in the poll considering its status.

Personally, I have never been too impressed by the BG games, most likely because in my personal experience they were overshadowed by Fallout and PS:T.

The BioWare game I enjoyed the most is KotOR. I didn't follow its development so I didn't know what to expect but I bought it blindly and impulsively assuming that swinging lightsabers was enough to get my money's worth . The game was a real surprise and I enjoyed it much more than I had expected.

But I didn't vote Star Wars in the poll because the sequel, which I think is better despite its shortcomings, is developed by Obsidian and haven't played the MMO and have no intention of doing so. (I watched some vids of the MMO and it just turned me off).

The second BioWare game that I enjoyed the most is DA:O. Somehow, I just clicked with that game and I particularly enjoyed playing a mage. An interesting thing to note is that I also didn't follow its development and just played it without any expectations. Since I am not the biggest BG fan, my expectations were not influenced by the claims of it being the spiritual successor .

But no way am I going to vote Dragon Age after the DA2 debacle . I haven't played DA:I and won't do so until they get rid of the Origin requirement.

Carnifex said:

Baldur's Gate, nothing else even comes close to me.

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I'll second that.

Awesome, I guess I better vote then! Lol

My vote would also be for Neverwinter Nights, and mainly because of the two marvelous expansions and associated Modding community. While all the other franchises had examples of quality I think only Neverwinter has this overriding sense of being a in very specific place that no other game has ever provided, there are no Neverwinter clones and Neverwinter wasn't part of a wider 'craze'. It's difficult to put into words, but if you're in the mood for a Neverwinter-like game, you've only really got Neverwinter.

As has been mentioned above, For Baldur's Gate you can play not only similar games, but possibly better games, such as Fallout, Planescape or Icewind Dale to scratch the itch and by the time of Dragon Age then there's loads of non-D&D actiony RPGs knocking about with cooldowns and percentage based itemisation. I'm more into fantasy than Sci-Fi, so it's gotta be NWN for me. I really think they should have fought to keep the D&D rights.

Erm… Isn't that Balder's Gate?

Um, wasn't Baldur's Gate a Black Isle game? By that token Torment and Icewind Dale should be included. Anyway, I couldn't have voted differently if they were. My answer was NWN for the simple reason that the online communities were multitude, the mods were many, and I didn't make many friends playing the others (strange that huh). NWN was the best game but it was the best game because the users made it the best game. Don't like the word "franchise" either since NWN2 was neither Bioware nor good. Same goes for KOTOR2.

The 4.88% that voted they don't like Bioware..you DO realise these boards are about RPG games right?

MrMuse said:

Um, wasn't Baldur's Gate a Black Isle game? By that token Torment and Icewind Dale should be included. Anyway, I couldn't have voted differently if they were. My answer was NWN for the simple reason that the online communities were multitude, the mods were many, and I didn't make many friends playing the others (strange that huh).

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Bioware developed BG1 & BG2
Black Isle was publisher.

Voted Star Wars,had the most fun playing the Star Wars games than any of the other ones.

Voted BG as well No brainer there. I really do love ME franchise too though, despite the fact it's extremely streamlined. I don't think I can say I love DA series, because I only liked Origins. NWN was good too, but I don't think I can give full credit to Bioware, since it's mainly the mods I enjoyed

I voted none, they have had their share of a couple of Good to Great games and that's about it for me.

Does two games make a franchise? I mean ultima was 9 games.

I'm torn between MDK2 and Shattered Steel. They were both better than Gastroenterology Patient Simulator.

Baldur's Gate was the better game but NWN was a mindblowing product, giving users capabilities above and beyond anything else.

Sure, all of it has been done before, but never like this. Only its sequel tried to do that much and its largely too difficult to use.

Carnifex said:

Baldur's Gate, nothing else even comes close to me. Bioware lost all relevance after Dragon Age One, and being associated with the Origin platform….well, that's just an abomination. When the mighty fall, often they can really make a splatting sound.

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Yep, Dragon Age 1 was the end of the road for the BioWare that we knew.

Mass Effect here. I'm an old timer, played through all oldschool sagas, and none of them had me so impacted, feeling like I had real loss when a character died for good as part of the story as Mass Effect did.

Baldur's Gate had good storytelling, but it's eons away from Mass Effect in its ability to really make the player feel as if she was the protagonist.

Stingray said:

Yep, Dragon Age 1 was the end of the road for the BioWare that we knew.

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No....EA was!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

As I spent several years playing NWN mods with our current DDO group the choice was easy. The actual game story was terrible though. And don't ask me about NWN 2; it had almost nothing I liked.

I really like them all (though, I haven't played JE or SWToR), but I voted NWN. I don't know, something about its tile based nature made me feel excited about each new dungeon. The same thing with Spiderweb games, but NWN being in full 3D where I can zoom and rotate around the action freely makes it so much more enjoyable.

NWN here too. Spent more time on it by far compared to the other titles.

Still trying to fall in love with NWN2. Still trying to finish BG1 (in the BG2 engine, is it called HUTU mod or something). Still trying to finish KotoR. Only played the ME1 and DA:O, I enjoyed them enough to complete them, not the later releases yet. Haven't started JE.


-kaos

Baldur's Gate and by some margin. It's the closest to the vintage Goldbox AD&D experience that we've had and I like the party configuration options, which lends it a nice replayability factor.

Despite the increases in role-playing potential, I didn't particularly like the lack of party in NWN and found the combat in that game very underwhelming. That said, I do need to check out some of the additional mods at some point, including the extra non-expansion material from the Diamond edition.