Baldur's Gate 3 by Larian Games

Kirun said:

Yeah, Pathfinder's combat system was perfection - the way they allowed you to customize when shit would pause depending on what event "triggered". It made the fights with wolves nice and facerolly, but the big, end-of-chapter style fights had a LOT of tactics to them.

I honestly can't say enough good things about Pathfinder. Easily the best CRPG since NWN1/2 and maybe even the best since BG2. The only "downside" to the game was all the campaign/city building shit, but you can turn all that off too if you find it too annoying to deal with. Also, it apparently released in a pretty buggy state (I wouldn't know, since I played it about a year after release). The next Pathfinder game has me so hyped. Not only because of all the good will they built with me after the first game, but I am a complete fucking sucker for Heaven vs. Hell style storylines.

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Agreed.

The Kingdom building aspect of the game was interesting but it was too punishing. If you didn't pay incredibly close attention to the wording of every quest in the log and/or stay acutely aware of the progression of time you could literally run in to numerous game-ending scenarios. I don't mean game-ending in the sense of re-loading a save...I mean...game over. Start over from the beginning.

It was infuriating. I think I was about 60 or 70 hours in when I experienced "Game over" via missing a quest deadline that I had no idea was active. I wasn't interested in re-playing it at that point so I searched for a memory hack that I used to turn back the clock. I flipped the switch to Kingdom autopilot after that.

Rajaah said:

How can I avoid that when I play it? Just put Kingdom on autopilot?

I think the only time I ever lost 60+ hours on a game was the infamous Velius fight in Final Fantasy Tactics. Like a lot of other players, I got boxed in on that fight and my party had no chance of defeating the boss (since he's about 5x stronger than anything up to that point) so I had to start the entire game over. I was quite pissed, and the only saving grace was that it was one of the best video games of all time at that point and playing it a second time wasn't exactly a punishment.

Still, I'd like to avoid that ever happening again. It's multiple saves all the time for me.

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Yeah. Kingmaker actually has incredibly granular difficulty settings, letting you tweak the difficulty on just about every possible parameter individually. You can in fact put kingdom management on autopilot if you want; I think it just also disables any achievements tied to it. If you do decide to try your hand at doing the kingdom stuff, I would actually still recommend setting it to the lowest difficulty (well, the next lowest after autopilot). It'll still require effort to get the truly ideal outcomes, but you at least don't have to worry too much about your kingdom collapsing under you from some bad rolls.

Rajaah said:

Would Pathfinder be a good game to start with out of this group? As in, the first one I play all the way through? I'm looking for the most user-friendly one to start off. Maybe the easiest one. Granular difficulty settings usually accomodate that. Or would Pillars of Eternity be a good one to do first since I've already gotten a look at it?

Just so folks don't have to scroll up, the list is: Planescape Torment, Torment: Tides of Numenera, Pillars of Eternity, Divinity: Original Sin 1 and 2, Baldur's Gate 1 and 2, Icewind Dale, Neverwinter Nights, and Pathfinder: Kingmaker.

Edit: Also, any suggestions on Wizard versus Monk in Pillars of Eternity? Those were the two classes I particularly liked the look of, not sure which one to play.

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D:OS 1 and 2 are probably the "easiest" as they have their own systems (the combat is great in those games). Their stories are not as good though (though not bad). But anyone can pick them up and not know anything about DnD or rulesets or what skills to pick when. You can reroll stats (I forget if you can in the first game, but you can in DOS2) and you buy skillbooks and can have as many skills as you want.

Pathfinder for instance is still "hard" on easy/normal. And unless you toggle things off, as others have mentioned, you can literally game over 80 hours in because you did something wrong or didn't pay attention to quest lines. I flat out modded the Kingdom part when I started playing it a second time that just autowins any kingdom section. More enjoyable for me that. Still need to pay attention to them and make sure I do them, but at the same time I don't have to reload if an important kingdom mission critically fails.


Only ones I haven't really played on your list is Icewind Dale and Torment - ToN. The rest are all A tier though. With (personal opinion) Divinity games having the best combat (though I do love the turn based combat they added to Pathfinder Kingmaker as well, but playing that with turn based = 200 hour game). Best story is still Planescape Torment, but that might be nostalgia. Followed by BG 1 and 2, but overall I think Pathfinder Kingmaker is better now as it is more modern and the story is fantastic as well and I enjoy the combat more in that game.

Tldr - Can't go wrong with any of them

Rajaah said:

How can I avoid that when I play it? Just put Kingdom on autopilot?

I think the only time I ever lost 60+ hours on a game was the infamous Velius fight in Final Fantasy Tactics. Like a lot of other players, I got boxed in on that fight and my party had no chance of defeating the boss (since he's about 5x stronger than anything up to that point) so I had to start the entire game over. I was quite pissed, and the only saving grace was that it was one of the best video games of all time at that point and playing it a second time wasn't exactly a punishment.

Still, I'd like to avoid that ever happening again. It's multiple saves all the time for me.

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Yep. Just turn on Kingdom Management auto-play very early. It's still possible to fuck yourself if you don't do it soon enough.

Rajaah said:

Would Pathfinder be a good game to start with out of this group? As in, the first one I play all the way through? I'm looking for the most user-friendly one to start off. Maybe the easiest one. Granular difficulty settings usually accomodate that. Or would Pillars of Eternity be a good one to do first since I've already gotten a look at it?

Just so folks don't have to scroll up, the list is: Planescape Torment, Torment: Tides of Numenera, Pillars of Eternity, Divinity: Original Sin 1 and 2, Baldur's Gate 1 and 2, Icewind Dale, Neverwinter Nights, and Pathfinder: Kingmaker.

Edit: Also, any suggestions on Wizard versus Monk in Pillars of Eternity? Those were the two classes I particularly liked the look of, not sure which one to play.

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Having played and beaten every game you've mentioned in this thread, I'd probably play them oldest to newest. As much as I love BG I/II, Torment, etc....the graphical fidelity and refinement of modern, isometric RPGs will definitely diminish the experience of older games if you play the new ones first.

Grabbit Allworth said:

Having played and beaten every game you've mentioned in this thread, I'd probably play them oldest to newest. As much as I love BG I/II, Torment, etc....the graphical fidelity and refinement of modern, isometric RPGs will definitely diminish the experience of older games if you play the new ones first.

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This is probably the best plan. I went back and played the BG1/2/ToB EE Trilogy, over the summer, and the melee classes felt rather bare-bones, after playing Pathfinder (and Pillars too, I guess). The newer games are more complicated, but usually let you tune the difficulty better. Infinity engine holds up surprisingly well though.

It is also hard to compare the difficulty of these games. The super hard parts are usually optional fights (like talking your way into getting murdered by a friendly dark elf), or if you gimp yourself by duel/multi classing when you are a noob. If you happen to get stuck on what to do next, you can always look it up online.

Planescape: Torment is probably the easiest of the old games? Dying is part of the game, and it can, sometimes, unlock things. You don't have to worry about picking a class right off, as The Nameless One (the PC) starts as a warrior and can unlock rogue/wizard as they progress.

As for Neverwinter Nights 1, I tried to go back and play a bunch of high rated mods last year, and man is that game ugly and clunky now. I would recommend playing it last...

Neverwinter Nights 2: Mask of the Betrayer, on the other hand, is just as good as the other classic games (the original Nwn2 campaign is mediocre, though).

a c i d.f l y said:

Out of all of these, for someone who has more or less gotten his fill on the original concept (BG1), what has the best story-driven experience?

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Planescape Torment.

In Planescape Torment combat is more of an obstacle between the dialogue and story which still today is considered one of the best in gaming history. It's a game where focus on the wisdom and intelligence stats are recommended not for combat, but to get the most out of the game.

If you want fun and good combat along a very good (though far longer between plot lines) story, then Pathfinder Kingmaker. But it's 3x as long as Planescape which is more of a 50 hourish game if I remember correctly.

Rajaah said:

Would Pathfinder be a good game to start with out of this group? As in, the first one I play all the way through? I'm looking for the most user-friendly one to start off. Maybe the easiest one. Granular difficulty settings usually accomodate that. Or would Pillars of Eternity be a good one to do first since I've already gotten a look at it?

Just so folks don't have to scroll up, the list is: Planescape Torment, Torment: Tides of Numenera, Pillars of Eternity, Divinity: Original Sin 1 and 2, Baldur's Gate 1 and 2, Icewind Dale, Neverwinter Nights, and Pathfinder: Kingmaker.

Edit: Also, any suggestions on Wizard versus Monk in Pillars of Eternity? Those were the two classes I particularly liked the look of, not sure which one to play.

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I'd personally say that it'd probably be best to get something like Baldur's Gate or Pillars of Eternity under your belt before trying Pathfinder. Pathfinder feels like it sorta assumes that you will have familiarity with these types of RPGs in general, and with the DnD ruleset in particular, and I can imagine that it could get a bit overwhelming to jump in as a first RPG. (Hell, getting to character creation and seeing the thousand fucking classes and subclasses would probably do the job.)