Originally Posted by magerette
If there's a sci-fi aspect, I can usually get into that.

There's an optional SciFi subplot in the game, you can choose to include it at game start. It doesn't change the mood or setting of JA2 in a significant way, though - it remains your typical, camp mercenary flick with lots of violence, dozens of joinable NPCs and wacky, dark to silly humor. A bit like the A-Team on crack .
I doubt that a demo could demonstrate what's the best thing about JA2: NPC interaction. In some cases, this just needs time to develop.

Because I'm currently playing it, I voted other for Might and Magic VII. Might and Magic VII doesn't have deep NPC's but it definitely has tons. You can hire bankers, chimney sweeps, merchants, Gate Masters, etc. There are probably 30 or more total NPC's and each offers a different perk to the skills of your main party. I thought this was an awesome idea and so I'll place my vote for MMVII.

I thought the NPCs in JA2 were fun. Big characters, written even larger. But the interaction you had with them was very limited, and for me personally, a bit of fun inter-NPC banter (PS:T had plenty of this too. Particularly Morte and the female NPCs) in no way compares to the depth and believability of the PS:T NPCs. But to each his/her own!

Originally Posted by crpgnut
Because I'm currently playing it, I voted other for Might and Magic VII. Might and Magic VII doesn't have deep NPC's but it definitely has tons. You can hire bankers, chimney sweeps, merchants, Gate Masters, etc. There are probably 30 or more total NPC's and each offers a different perk to the skills of your main party. I thought this was an awesome idea and so I'll place my vote for MMVII.

I don't want to seem down on other's opinions, I'm just interested in the different take people have on the issue of NPCs, and what they did/didn't enjoy. I loved MMVII, but I thought the NPCs were easily its weakest aspect. They were all identical, had virtually zero dialogue, and did nothing other than to boost your stats. You couldn't even access their inventories, so they didn't even act as pack-horses! What about them appealed to you (again, not a criticism, just curious), their sheer volume?

Torment gets my vote - though I haven't played JA2.

Torment just has so many fascinating characters with the best writing in a game I've seen.

Uh, I can't vote … I've simply got no favourite one in here.

What I hate, though, is when NPCs disappear without the possibility to re-hire them once again (BG1 had this, sometimes).

But that's just my personal choice.

Originally Posted by Alrik Fassbauer
What I hate, though, is when NPCs disappear without the possibility to re-hire them once again (BG1 had this, sometimes).
.

I know exactly what you mean and I feel the same way. There were several instances in BG1 where an NPC could just disappear for the rest of the game. At least they listened to the fans and changed that for BG2.

I think everyone knows what I've voted for…. *cough*bg2*cough*

No surprise there. I did think there'd be more BG2 votes, though. Even though I really don't take too well to most of the female chars in BG2 there were more interesting characters to pick up than most games--I like some of the NPCs in Arcanum also, but that's mostly in a support role rather than as fully fleshed personalities.

@Alrik--you couldn't even vote other? Surely somewhere there's been a game with joinable NPCs that you liked. Or did you mean you couldn't pick between them for one that stood out?

Planescape Torment was great, obviously, but in the NPC
department BG2 gets my vote.

I think I'm going to have to pick up PS:T. I love the infinity engine games so I think I'm just going to finally have to do it.

I think one of the things that turned me off of it was the cover and the title. There was just nothing that grabbed me when I saw it on store shelves. Granted, I never did PnP role-playing so I'd never heard of this campaign setting before.

It's a very heady game, BN. Lots of reading combined with crappy combat. Still a classic, and well worth picking up.

… and after a sales pitch like that how could he pass it up!

Yeah. You might want to remember that the next time you write up a rave review!

We all bow at the PS:T altar around here (rightfully so, IMO), so I thought I'd at least mention the common complaints in the interest of fair reporting. I don't think BN is looking for nor expecting Diablo, but if he is PS:T is going to be a bit of a disappointment, doncha think?

OTOH, sales was never really my bag. Part of my pitch was, "I make a better engineer because I have a bad habit of telling the truth."

Ah, the one thing engineers have in common with Preachers: We both tell the Truth, but people don't really want to hear it!!

If we are going to talk NPC systems that are dislikable I'd vote Betrayal at Krondor. Build up a character with specialty skills only to randomly lose him in the next act… That bugs me more than a character leaving permanently (which at least theoretically could be a good plot twist if done in a logical/balanced way).

Yes, that part of BaK did annoy me too, but I guess it gave the game some variety. At least it made you careful about your inventory management!!

Tough call between BG2 and PS:T. My all time fav. NPC is Dak'kon from PS:T, but BG2 still gets my vote since it had so many great NPCs (Korgan, Edwin, Viconia, Minsc, Keldorn, Jan, Jaheira and so on). The evil NPCs are hilarious, but unfortunately hard to keep since playing evil usually either ends up with 0 reputation and attacked by thousands of guards (you should reload if you ever get 0 rep), or with not being evil at all (so many quests give +1 rep).

Jaz, have you played any of the JA2 expansion packs?
If so, what do you think about them?