Infinity Engine (BG1&2, PST, IWD1&2) Combat Poll

Please select from the above responses how you rate the combat (and ONLY the combat) of the Infinity Engine games. The engine used for celebrated classics such as Baldur’s Gate 2 and Planescape Torment. This is not a critique of any other aspect of the games, just how you felt about the majority of combats presented in said Infinity Engine games.

Option 2 is the closest match for me, except interactivity isn't the issue. I'd reword it to be more generic about "room for improvement" or some such.

I agree but it won't let me edit, sorry.

I voted for "combat was ok". I don't have any problems with IE engine combats, I thought it was fun, not the best, but one of the better than the most. The reason I didn't vote for "room for improvement" option is, I'm not sure how it can be improved. I think it works well as it is, so I don't really see a need for it to change, if that makes sense.

I guess I'd consider path-finding part of combat. That's the thing that needs improvement in my eyes relating to combat. Also, area of effects before you cast would be helpful.

The last two choices almost need to be split up into each individual game since they are all so different from each other at their core, aside from the use of the same engine (although I understand that would also make the poll far too long )

I really don't like the Infinity Engine's combat. Way too hectic and fast-paced, in addition to the already mentioned lack of interaction or tactical options (outside of the robust magic system, of course). Yes, you can pause anytime you want, but this results in a very awkward pacing issue where it's not quite turn-based and not quite real-time. I have enjoyed other RTwP games quite a bit though, so I'm going to chalk that up to a personal taste issue where I feel the moment to moment actions occur way too quickly. I'm also not a fan of D&D as a CRPG rule-set, so that certainly plays a part.

For Planescape, it would be 3. The story, characters, dialogues, and atmosphere pulled me in so much that I didn't let the combat stop me from completing it.

For IWD, I would say 4. Combat is really the heart of IWD, and since I never enjoyed the Infinity Engine combat mechanics, I didn't get very far.

For BG2, I managed to get pretty far (I was in one of the later chapters when I stopped playing), but I got so burned out on the combat that I finally gave up. It's on my "I really should just buckle down and finish it someday for the sake of the story" list, but I don't think I'll ever be able to stomach 50+ hours of Infinity Engine combat. So I would place BG2 in between 3 and 4. It's a case of a great game that I just couldn't fall in love with.

The poll is asking what you would rate the combat..not what you would rate the games because of the combat. Just saying.

The combat in PS:T was, by far, the worst of the IE games imo. Very little variety and just plain boring compared to BG or IWD. But then combat obviously wasn't the focus there.

I enjoyed IE combat in general though.

I went with OK. I've played worse, but it definitely felt lacking in tactical options. With the addition of new spells it got worse, especially in BG2 with the large number of broken protection spells, force-casting, cheap tactics, and general cheating the designers threw in. PST's combat definitely felt like an afterthought, and some of the spell animations threw the pacing off something awful. IWD felt a bit tighter, but still would have done better with a turn-based system like ToEE.

Both the IWD and BG series had fantastic combat in my opinion. PST? Not so much. Too clunky, too many bugs.

Just ok. Far from the most interesting system I've played, but a far cry from some really bad ones.

Okay overall.

My best combat experience was with BG2 since it was supported by great itemization, good encounter design and robust (though bloated) spell system. BG1 felt more bare bones, but that´s okay too, within the context of the series (low levels and all).
In my book combat in both gets into great territory once Sword Coast Stratagems mod is installed since it makes encounters more complex and unpredictable, which forces one to take better advantage of the games´ rule system and itemization. BG2 with SCS is my favourite RTwP combat iteration to date, despite some persisting issues (path finding, occasional chaos).

I think PS:T has the weakest IE combat when judged in isolation, however as a relatively minor gameplay element I think it fits the okay category as well.

My worst combat experience was actually with IWD, largely because I felt the game´s combat-heaviness was not supported by sufficient encounter variety. I finished my only playthrough mostly thanks to the game´s atmosphere.

Even though I played each game (besides the IWDs) multiple times for a good amount of time the combat ended up killing it for me. I think it is a mixture of three things – the first is I have the attention span of a gnat. And the second is I love to min-max and build strong parties. Until the EE came out I never played BG1 with anything besides a party I fully created through the LAN play option (besides one slot I keep open to revolve npcs through). The third is I am a hoarder. I don’t use consumables pretty much ever (unless it is a really, really tough encounter) and I tend to save damaging spells for tough encounters and try to build my mages as tough range fighters so they are more useful for the vast majority of encounters I face (which are trash encounters).

Combining the above makes me play a click and forget style play where I click on an enemy and wait until they are all dead, as that is the fastest and most efficient way to play. Wasting time pausing and issuing commands just slows it down and makes it so I have to fight the AI as well. I really hate fighting my party’s AI.

Some encounters you have to pay attention and try some tactics. A dragon in BG2 comes to mind. When I got to him I don’t think my party was ready for him, and I had to save and reload a ton to beat him, trying a slew of different strategies. But I was engaged with the game and had hyper-focus and really enjoyed that battle.

But this is true for a lot of games. In DA:I I built a strong party that killed quickly and I just went around looting as they killed, and that game has active combat (for the character you have selected at least).

Bad turn based systems are the same, where you just click, click, click through the attack options and wait for your round again without thinking or really paying attention. If a game is going to force you to fight endless hordes of enemies I really wish they would put a lot more effort into making combat fun and engaging.

There's some very important factors that you're not addressing Bubbles.

Firstly, you've played the games multiple times. Well, it's not a game killer then, it only became a game killer for you once you had experienced it over and over and over again. This ties into the second point:

Secondly, you like to min-max. The whole point of min-maxing is to make the combat as much of a non-issue as possible. So you're never really playing the game "as intended" and this is why only things such as Dragons give you much of a problem, because the game is balanced round balanced newb parties, not maxed-out parties. If you go with even slightly lesser stats in a lot of the key areas you'll be required to do a lot more than auto-attack. But then your dislike of IWD, the most easily replayable of all the IE games, suggests combat is not a great interest for you anyway, so you don't dedicate much of your concentration power to it (hence preferring min-max etc etc).

What you don't understand about the IE combat which makes the IE combat so fun isn't the kind of stuff that happens when you just leave people to auto-attack. It's also not the kind of combat which just has default actions. Each character has a huge amount of options and enhancements, all of which require battle-dependent micro-management if they are to be used in an interesting way. There's a huge skill difference between completing an entire level without losing barely any hitpoints (that can be cured by low level healing spells) and just zooming a level with save scumming after every battle or every time someone dies.

And this is the true beauty of IE combat gameplay - the sheer variety that simply isn't there in virtually any other games to the same degree of freedom of movement / freedom of function.

YOU can choose how under or over powered your characters are going to be.
YOU can choose what type of character/s and specialisations you play.
YOU can manipulate a huge number of sprites during combat.
YOU can choose what actions are preferred in any given encounter.
YOU can choose you own personal and exact combat style/methods.
YOU can choose if you want to cheese or play with strict personal limitations.

The list of variables is almost endless in RPG terms and few other games come close to the sheer number of player decided combat options.

RPGs are not supposed to be purely combat games, they are just combat heavy games (relative to playing Football Manager or Call of Duty). In an RPG you do not want a 10/10 difficulty encounter throughout the game and neither do you want 1/10 difficulty throughout the game, what you want is plot-relevant 'Saving the Day" combat and the occasional intense battle, so you really want a combat difficulty range of 5/10 to 10/10 with most battles falling in the 7.5/10 mass (the 10/10s often being 'optional' aside from end-bosses). Because combat is mostly there to reinforce your 'quest resolution' ego, not to provide you with a new game of chess every 3 yards.

The IE games offer so much 'variety' in resolving the questing aspect of combat that they generate a lot more wonder than most games, it's really that simple. You could argue it's not the 'most complicated' or 'most simple' but it's most certainly one of the 'most customisable' which, in RPGs, often counts for a lot more.

That argument, in my opinion, is false. There are a ton of crpgs that offer a nice challenge for every combat while min-maxing. There are a ton of crpgs that offer variety of attack choices for physical damage characters (ranged and melee). The IE games offer none of this. The designed the game to have 90% filler combat but failed to make combat interesting or engaging.

The fact your list comprises solely of choices the player can make to make the default boring combat more interesting, instead of being a default of interesting like in other games. For instance, I gave an example of a RTwP game that has active, fun combat in Arklash Legacy. There are a ton of examples for TB games including ToEE, the new X-Com game, D:OS, Jagged Alliance Wildfire, etc.

YOU can choose how under or over powered your characters are going to be.

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Why would I want to be underpowered to make the horrible combat better when the combat should be better? I can choice to gimp myself in pretty much every real crpg, but doing so isn’t a game feature

YOU can choose what type of character/s and specialisations you play.

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Yes, this is one of my favorite parts of crpgs

YOU can manipulate a huge number of sprites during combat.

Click to expand...

How is this unique to the IE engine?

YOU can choose what actions are preferred in any given encounter.

Click to expand...

How is this unique to the IE games?

YOU can choose you own personal and exact combat style/methods.

Click to expand...

How is this unique to the IE games?

YOU can choose if you want to cheese or play with strict personal limitations.

Click to expand...

I can do this in every game. Creating my own rules for a game to make the combat more interesting when the combat should be interesting to begin with is silly.


If a game fails to have fun and engaging combat, but fill the game with 90% easy, filler combat with endless hordes of easy, nonsense mobs, the game has horrible combat. PEriod. It is not up to the player to gimp characters and try and find fun where there isn't any to be had. My reason being are plenty of games have fun and engaging combat from the get-go without player made up rules or character gimping.

Bubbles said:

The designed the game to have 90% filler combat but failed to make combat interesting or engaging.

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That's your opinion. I liked most of the combat in the IE games except for PS:T. Whether or not most of it was filler combat is irrelevant. The majority of combat in nearly all games is filler combat.

JDR13 said:

That's your opinion. I liked most of the combat in the IE games except for PS:T. Whether or not most of it was filler combat is irrelevant. The majority of combat in nearly all games is filler combat.

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There is filler and there is filler. In games with good combat, each encounter is important and feels special and offers a challenge, making it not feel like filler, but an engaging and fun part of the game. In games with good combat you can't click and watch or click and forget until combat is over. Dungeon Siege was a very popular game, and games like it are as well, but it you had to have the patience to wade through endless encounters of extremely easy filler combat. If you have patience and are able to enjoy overly easy and abundant filler combat by way of endless hordes of trash enemies, you probably liked and enjoyed DS. If not, you didn't. Unlike BG2 and PST, there wasn't a lot to DS besides the combat so that game articulates the point more.

And it isn't my opinion I can click and forget through 90% of the combat, because it is a fact and I have done so on every IE game. Same with NWN, NWN 2, and the Kotors.

I didn't say all these things were "unique" to IE games.

I said the IE games had all of them.

A very important distinction...

Also, you said this:

The fact your list comprises solely of choices the player can make to make the default boring combat more interesting, instead of being a default of interesting like in other games.

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and this:

There are a ton of crpgs that offer a nice challenge for every combat while min-maxing. There are a ton of crpgs that offer variety of attack choices for physical damage characters (ranged and melee). The IE games offer none of this.

Click to expand...

Suggests that you choose to play the combat boringly. You select the most boring way to play and then criticise it for being boring.

If you find melee and ranged boring, play without them on your next play-through. You might say "why should I?" - well, because you've already beaten them many times over, why are you replaying them if not to try something different?

I had a computer chess set when I was younger, a really good quality Kasparov one. Wow, that was so awesome having genuinely challenging battles every time I played... until I had played it too much, and I finally knew how to stalemate it on the highest level. Then I never played it again.

I can replay IE games though, because next time I can try with all pawns, or 8 Bishops and 4 Rooks, or a Half-set or any combination I choose.

I have no idea why you're choosing to replay something exactly the same way over and over again.

lackblogger said:

I didn't say all these things were "unique" to IE games.

I said the IE games had all of them.

A very important distinction…

Also, you said this:



and this:



Suggests that you choose to play the combat boringly. You select the most boring way to play and then criticise it for being boring.

If you find melee and ranged boring, play without them on your next play-through. You might say "why should I?" - well, because you've already beaten them many times over, why are you replaying them if not to try something different?

I had a computer chess set when I was younger, a really good quality Kasparov one. Wow, that was so awesome having genuinely challenging battles every time I played… until I had played it too much, and I finally knew how to stalemate it on the highest level. Then I never played it again.

I can replay IE games though, because next time I can try with all pawns, or 8 Bishops and 4 Rooks, or a Half-set or any combination I choose.

I have no idea why you're choosing to replay something exactly the same way over and over again.

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I've never completed an IE game. I've played BG1 and 2 a couple times. I've probably got to about 75% completion on BG1 and 2 and PST. 50% for BG1, and about 25% maybe for the IWDs. Also, since I started playing rpgs, min-maxing has been my favorite aspect (chargen and dev). I've spend countless hours planning parties for Wizardry 6 and 7, Realsm of Arkania, Darklands, Buck Rogers, etc. I'd take a manual and a note pad into the bathroom and shit for hours planning my parties.

I played DDO for a couple months (tight after issue 23 was released) and spend about 80% of my time creating and deleting characters. I NEED to min-max. Just like I have to clear every square inch of every map. I have no choice in the matter. It is ingrained in me.

Bubbles said:

And it isn't my opinion I can click and forget through 90% of the combat, because it is a fact and I have done so on every IE game. Same with NWN, NWN 2, and the Kotors.

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Yes, it's a fact that your personal opinion is what you're saying it is. I agree.

It is a fact that through the 75% or BG2 and PST I played, and the 50% of BG, I was able to click on an enemy and watch until combat was over for 90% or more of the combats. This is not opinion, it is fact. You can say it is not fact but I know there are other competent players out there that can back this up. This is also true for the NWNs and Kotors.

In fact, if this isn't the experience of anyone, then people really, really, really suck at combat and chardev. I mean really, really suck badly. Like close to needing to wear a helmet in real life suck.