Baldur's Gate EET - is it any good?

Fluent said:
Just finished the first part of the trilogy in EET, and I'm already glad I'm playing with EET. I didn't even head to Ulgoth's Beard yet, and left a few really tough encounters behind for later. Nice that I can go back to those as well as get a really nice Longbow crafted by Thalantyr around the start of Siege of Dragonspear.

Overall it's a great experience, very hard with the Sword Coast Stratagems enhancements but it's doable. Having a blast with the modded companions, too, like Finch and Isra. Finch is adorable and Isra is a tough cookie of a Cavalier. Fun playthrough so far.
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+1

Sword Coast Stratagems is a good mod to have if one has played the games through few times. I love the fact that it improves the npcs & enemy A.I and encounters in a fun way. And it is highly customizable too, so one can choose which components to install. Been using it for some time now.
 
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Dez said:
+1

Sword Coast Stratagems is a good mod to have if one has played the games through few times. I love the fact that it improves the npcs & enemy A.I and encounters in a fun way. And it is highly customizable too, so one can choose which components to install. Been using it for some time now.
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Big World Setup is a great install tool, too. Very customizable and breaks things into convenient packages you can choose and then pick extra options on top of those. I ended up going with "Recommended" and then adding a bunch more of the companions, turning on all the SCS extra "tactical" stuff, and a few other things. Really great stuff.

I would have added more quest content (the Drizzt one sounds great) but I foolishly thought it would mess up the XP balance. I didn't realize at the time that you can change the XP gain manually, which I ended up doing anyway. Unfortunately, once you start a playthrough you can't tweak "major" things, so you can't really add quests and stuff without restarting.

I just started SoD in the EET, worked great. I'm running at 50% XP gain from quests and monsters, too, which helps to keep the challenge up so you don't overlevel things in SoD on the way to BG2. You can adjust all that to your liking. Also playing on Hard, although it's been a bit brutal at times (especially when I'm mentally lazy) but it's doable overall. Pretty cool stuff so far.

I wish IWD-for-EET was ready, but it's been silence there for awhile. I've heard a rumor that it's done and just waiting on the official 2.5 patch, but who knows. That actually is going to add IWD *and* the early parts of IWD2 to the BG campaign. Crazy stuff. I dream about being able to explore that map and have unique content in each spot, haha.
 
Fluent said:
Big World Setup is a great install tool, too. Very customizable and breaks things into convenient packages you can choose and then pick extra options on top of those. I ended up going with "Recommended" and then adding a bunch more of the companions, turning on all the SCS extra "tactical" stuff, and a few other things. Really great stuff.

I would have added more quest content (the Drizzt one sounds great) but I foolishly thought it would mess up the XP balance. I didn't realize at the time that you can change the XP gain manually, which I ended up doing anyway. Unfortunately, once you start a playthrough you can't tweak "major" things, so you can't really add quests and stuff without restarting.

I just started SoD in the EET, worked great. I'm running at 50% XP gain from quests and monsters, too, which helps to keep the challenge up so you don't overlevel things in SoD on the way to BG2. You can adjust all that to your liking. Also playing on Hard, although it's been a bit brutal at times (especially when I'm mentally lazy) but it's doable overall. Pretty cool stuff so far.

I wish IWD-for-EET was ready, but it's been silence there for awhile. I've heard a rumor that it's done and just waiting on the official 2.5 patch, but who knows. That actually is going to add IWD *and* the early parts of IWD2 to the BG campaign. Crazy stuff. I dream about being able to explore that map and have unique content in each spot, haha.
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I too like big world setup! It is a bit messy to get it working properly, but installing mods becomes so much easier with it. For bg1 I always install few of those npcs mods, like the npc project. The tweak anthology is highly recommanded as well.

Just out of curiosity, which race & class did you choose? Stats? weapon choise? :)
 
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Chaotic Good Gnome Illusionist/Thief .. Was going to make an evil character but it's hard to role-play for me, hah. Using Crossbow as my main, with a point in Katana (lol.. just for fun. I'm thinking by the time I get to BG2:EE I should have enough defensive spells + buffs to maybe use it somewhat effectively.)

Stats.. 19 INT, 18 DEX, 13 STR, 16 CHA (I like getting this just for shop bonuses), 8 or 9 WIS, 10/11-ish CON (off the top of my head here.) Pretty nice THAC0 with the crossbow so far, and I like slinging fireballs from my wand of fire. He's pretty versatile so far. I focused him on Detect Illusion + Pick Locks .. What else. I like keeping him with haste boots so he can fly around hitting things with Aganazzar's Scorcher, then darting away before they can get to him. :) The Let's Play is on my channel for anyone interested. It's gon' be huuuge since it combines all the parts of the story into one campaign.
 
Fluent said:
Chaotic Good Gnome Illusionist/Thief .. Was going to make an evil character but it's hard to role-play for me, hah. Using Crossbow as my main, with a point in Katana (lol.. just for fun. I'm thinking by the time I get to BG2:EE I should have enough defensive spells + buffs to maybe use it somewhat effectively.)

Stats.. 19 INT, 18 DEX, 13 STR, 16 CHA (I like getting this just for shop bonuses), 8 or 9 WIS, 10/11-ish CON (off the top of my head here.) Pretty nice THAC0 with the crossbow so far, and I like slinging fireballs from my wand of fire. He's pretty versatile so far. I focused him on Detect Illusion + Pick Locks .. What else. I like keeping him with haste boots so he can fly around hitting things with Aganazzar's Scorcher, then darting away before they can get to him. :) The Let's Play is on my channel for anyone interested. It's gon' be huuuge since it combines all the parts of the story into one campaign.
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Congrats on not dumping CHA!

19 INT is really handy when playing a mage.

I'm more of a dual class kind of guy but it's a pretty solid character you have there.

Detect Illusion is a really nice trick when facing mages.

I personally can't play as a Gnome because I don't want my guy to play second fiddle to Tiax or Jan Jansen. ;)
 
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Gloomseeker said:
Congrats on not dumping CHA!

19 INT is really handy when playing a mage.

I'm more of a dual class kind of guy but it's a pretty solid character you have there.

Detect Illusion is a really nice trick when facing mages.

I personally can't play as a Gnome because I don't want my guy to play second fiddle to Tiax or Jan Jansen. ;)
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Or Finch, in my LP. :) She's adorable!

Detect Illusion is great but I have to remember to use it. It's easy to forget to have him do it instead of shooting bolts, d'oh.

I also rolled a 92 and 2 90s, no lie, in the process of making this character. And I was hitting the button so fast I missed all 3 of them! lol. But yeah, he's effective enough for now.. not sure if he'll ever be a Katana-wielding phantom as I envisioned but really it's more interesting to have chosen that and you can only get one proficiency point in any weapon anyway, so why not? :)

Love Tiax too but I ended up dropping him later in favor of Finch. And at the start of SoD, he was not happy to see me and didn't want to join. :)
 
Oh yes, Finch is definitely a keeper! :)

What I usually do is set the AI to take care of detecting traps and illusions, that way I don't have to worry about forgetting to click on it whenever I'm not in a fight.

My last character is a Swashie dualled to Cleric and I don't let the fact that I can't put more than one point in most weapons get in the way of the fun (of course dual wielding helps getting more than one attack which is the problem with non Fighter types).

I don't have SoD (not that interested to be honest) and I've realised that this mod can't be used without it which is unfortunate. I would have given it a try as I used to play Trilogy -back in the day I did prefer Tutu but there is something to be said about seamlessly moving between BG1 and 2.
 
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What's the reason for not wanting to play SoD if I may ask? I'm playing it now after hearing lukewarm things about it and it's actually pretty good.
It's a bit more linear in some ways than the original series but the content is quality so far. The first dungeon could have been something from Tales of the Sword Coast, IMO, and I liked the little things they did in the city of Baldur's Gate. There's lots of cool little tricks they used, like having lots of NPCs on screen at once simulating armies and large amounts of refugees in the streets during wartime, interesting cutscenes, little puzzle type things and interactive objects in dungeons, etc.. And the story and villain seem pretty interesting, with the returning characters and "future" characters that are in BG2. Writing is pretty good, no complaints there, and the graphics are actually gorgeous. They really squeezed some great things out of the Infinity Engine. And it's been quite challenging with the SCS + Hard settings so far. They don't play around with that. :)

I'm surprised at how good it is to be honest. And I can say that I haven't been hit over the head with any sort of social justice stuff so far. In fact you can be deliciously evil if you want to be (almost comically, insanely evil.) That's too hard for me to RP though. :)
 
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Well, I've been playing BG on and off since 1998 so I couldn't see the point of adding a chapter in between the two games.

Then there is the controversy regarding SoD. I'm a lefty and a liberal irl but I dislike the idea of pushing an agenda in games. I don't mind topically that much provided it's both subtle and relevant but I do mind the decision to rewrite decades old characters to make them fit within the new writer's ambitions.

Basically I didn't mean the transgender character, what I do mind is a writer who didn't get the existing characters and their interactions and labelled them as sexist and took upon themselves to change them… BG wasn't sexist, Safana wasn't a sex object but a femme fatale (which is a common trope). Then there is Shar Teel who defied stereotypes and the whole thing with Edwin/Edwina or the belt of masculinity/femininity (and if that wasn't transgender I don't know what is).

I could go on. Bottom line I care too much about these characters including Khalid and Jaheira to go for that sort of thing.

EDIT: here is the link with the interview

https://kotaku.com/the-struggle-to-bring-back-baldur-s-gate-after-17-years-1768303595

I really didn't care for that part:

“If there was something for the original Baldur’s Gate that just doesn’t mesh for modern day gamers like the sexism, [we tried to address that],” said writer Amber Scott. “In the original there’s a lot of jokes at women’s expense. Or if not a lot, there’s a couple, like Safana was just a sex object in BG 1, and Jaheira was the nagging wife and that was played for comedy. We were able to say, ‘No, that’s not really the kind of story we want to make.’ In Siege of Dragonspear, Safana gets her own little storyline, she got a way better personality upgrade. If people don’t like that, then too bad.”

“I got to write a little tender, romance-y side quest for Khalid and Jaheira where you could learn a little bit about how their marriage works and how they really feel about each other.”
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Too bad indeed.

In any case I'm not getting SoD just to get this mod working, to me that's just not worth it.
 
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Well I'm playing it now and Safana is still very sexual, lol. And a femme fatale in every sense. Haven't met Jaheira yet. Viconia is still pretty evil, maybe not as nasty as she was in BG, but close. Imoen is still witty and a bit airheaded, etc..

Dunno, but I haven't noticed anything out of the ordinary so far. To me the game feels like BG 2.5. Cool new features/quirks that it feels like a new game yet after playing 80 hours or so of BG:EE it feels close enough to me.

I think going by that quote is a mistake. She was probably just being defensive in it. The writing doesn't jump out at me in a bad way so far. And since Infinity Engine content isn't being made in droves I can't be that picky anyway.
 
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Yeah that quote made me shudder as well, but I agree with Fluent that SoD is actually a pretty enjoyable expansion, at least for one playthrough. My only real complaint was just that the overall scope of the story felt too epic to be "the bit between BGI and BGII".
 
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Frankly, I think the writer made her intent very clear and she must have known full well that she would elicit some reactions.

After all there is only one way to understand her statement: "If people don’t like that, then too bad."

That last bit doesn't sound very defensive to me...

In the end that's definitely not something that I can condone (or something that I will reward with a purchase) but I hear you guys and it's a good thing that you've been able to enjoy SoD. :)
 
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She didn't say anything terrible there. All she said was, "If they don't like how I wrote it, too bad." Good for her. Most developers would be too politically correct or wouldn't have the balls to say something like that.

I see nothing else wrong with her statement. Jaheira had loving/tender moments with Khalid in the first game already. Safana is still a sexual demon in the game, but has more dimensions now. What's the problem?

Since I want more content being made for the Infinity Engine games and D&D in general, I have an RPG obligation to support Beamdog. New writers mean new twists and takes on characters and I'm fine with that.

But beyond that, I have not noticed anything "off" with the writing yet, several hours in. It all seems on the up and up to me.
 
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joxer said:
IMO it's good only if you don't have PC and you don't plan to buy PC ever but are playing games on phones.
If you have PC, buy yourself originals.
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Depends on who. I have the originals and EE. The time spent on installing the originals off the CDs, installing mods to get it like EE, etc, vs the time installing EE from Steam and having it work outright, I've already made much more than the extra dollars paid spending that extra time working.

You're right about the mobile versions though. They did a great job for those wanting to play on a tablet.
 
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Caddy said:
Depends on who. I have the originals and EE. The time spent on installing the originals off the CDs, installing mods to get it like EE, etc, vs the time installing EE from Steam and having it work outright, I've already made much more than the extra dollars paid spending that extra time working.

You're right about the mobile versions though. They did a great job for those wanting to play on a tablet.
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Yeah, the mobile versions are nice. They are by far the best RPGs on tablet if you aren't counting emulators. It's nice to be able to relax and play some Planescape while in bed. :)
 
Fluent said:
Yeah, the mobile versions are nice. They are by far the best RPGs on tablet if you aren't counting emulators. It's nice to be able to relax and play some Planescape while in bed. :)
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Yeah absolutely agree. It's a bit off topic, but have they said whether they're doing a tablet version of NWN yet? That would be awesome.
 
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Pongo said:
Yeah absolutely agree. It's a bit off topic, but have they said whether they're doing a tablet version of NWN yet? That would be awesome.
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As of now it's PC-only. But yeah, can you imagine having mobile access to all those modules? Sheesh. Would be crazy!

I'm trying to float the idea of having them open up the Infinity Engine more to modding. I'd love to see full-blown user campaigns in that engine, too.
 
Oh well, hopefully they'll add it to tablet at some point in the future - it would be great.

I was wondering if tablet sales haven't worked that well for them actually. Last time I checked the Siege of Dragonspear expansion still wasn't available on tablet, which is weird. But according to Google Play they shifted 10k+ copies of planescape and 50k+ of BGII which seems decent to me.

(And "yes" to more Infinity Engine :))
 
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Pongo said:
Oh well, hopefully they'll add it to tablet at some point in the future - it would be great.

I was wondering if tablet sales haven't worked that well for them actually. Last time I checked the Siege of Dragonspear expansion still wasn't available on tablet, which is weird. But according to Google Play they shifted 10k+ copies of planescape and 50k+ of BGII which seems decent to me.

(And "yes" to more Infinity Engine :))
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According to Trent all their projects have been successes for them, on mobile, too. BG:EE has 100,000+ installs. SoD is on its way to mobile with the 2.5 patch (that's why it isn't on mobile yet, they had to update the other IE games with 2.5.)
 
Ok, good stuff. I'm pleased to hear that - hopefully it bodes well for a mobile NWN eventually!
 
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