So that I don't derail RBT again...

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Well, now that I've been playing BG:EE for a while I'm much more happy with it. A restart of the game seems to have fixed the sound issue, fortunately, and the rest of the game is a fun trip down the memory lane. I can't believe it's been more than 12 years since I last played BG1... one thing that they really should have left in there was the "Save early, save often!" warnings, though. I'm reminded just how important that is every time I don't have a recent save game to revert to when one (or more) of my party members gets killed. Not exactly friendly to new players who don't know the drill and would probably get frustrated with the game when they didn't have a recent save to go back to. The help tips could be displayed after saving the game, so I don't really get why they removed all of them altogether.

 

Yeah, the save early, save often drill is ingrained in me from over 30 years of playing these games, so I don't even think twice about that. New players who are only dealing with newer games (more frequent autosaves) probably don't have a clue on that.

 

Right now my PC is a human Fighter (probably better than any NPC) and I've got Khalid & Jaheira, Branwen, Imoen and Neera. I would probably have taken Dorn if there was actually any way to do so earlier, but short of a 3-sentence exchange in the FAI where he basically told me to take a hike, I'm still waiting for an opportunity. Not exactly the best of introductions for a new NPC if you actually want anyone to use them. Neera literally gets shoved in your face by contrast. She's almost more trouble than she's worth right now, but I'm hoping that that'll improve with time. I could easily ditch Khalid, but I like having two healers and Jaheira is so far the only one available. The new monk seemed a bit meh so I didn't take him...

I'm still noticing occasional slowdowns and stuttering of the characters (for instance around the jellies in Ulcaster), which is really disappointing. Some spells like the AOE web also seem to have the sound level completely off, because they're 5x as loud as everything else - I literally have to turn the volume down every time I'm around those spider traps because if one goes off, that deafening boom starts shaking my whole table. I've also noticed combat sounds going completely mute in certain fights - no thuds, slashes or anything. These are annoyances, sure, but they are noticeable and simply shouldn't be there after 2 years of patching. Oh and I also noticed that when they re-did the world map, they forgot to draw the road going from BG down to Nashkel and splitting off to Candlekeep. Lack of attention to detail, I guess.

The pathfinding seems much better now, though. The characters still get stuck occasionally or take ridiculously long detours for some reason, but I seem to remember there being much more of that in the original than now.

 

Can't say I am as I haven't read any yet.

 

Haha, that surprise just came - nice timing with that post.

Dorn certainly looks overpowering but I'm having doubts about an evil character in the party... how does he play along with Neera and a good party?

 

As a complete aside Tal, you owe it to yourself to read the Black Company books.

Carry on.

 

Well, I've taken Dorn and Kicked out Khalid & Jaheira... at this point I don't really need a second healer, but maybe later. Dorn packs such a punch that it's silly, pretty much everything that he mows down gets chunkified with pieces of flesh and gore flying all over the screen. Maybe I'll take the new monk along just to see his quest since I've got a free spot in the party now.

 

Yikes, talk about disappointing when it comes to Neera's quest. The whole thing was over in about 15 minutes and with very little reward. And not even supplying the entire map of goblins with a few grunted responses, but rather leaving them with "Goblin has nothing to say to you."... that's just half-assed, along with piling some useless items on top of a very difficult to spot quest hot spot - that doesn't show unless you pick up said items - which you never would if you're higher than say level 3. A shame because otherwise the area and the encounters are quite decent, but polish is obviously not Beamdog's strong suit. The lack of any location markers on the map just adds to the feeling of the area being incomplete.

 

The log window is much less cluttered by default now, plus saving/reloading clears it so that's not really a valid reason. They could have even made it into floating tooltips that'd disappear after a few seconds, for example. The loading screens also had some nice art that is never seen anywhere now. That kind of complete content removal irks me a bit.

Oh yeah, instantaneous saving and loading is VERY convenient... almost too much so, hehe. I'm not sure whose idea was that the log window never shows the actual log if you expand it until you click on the top button again... I'm having to do that constantly and it's really stupid. Is there a mod to fix this?

 

I took Rasaad along and he deals decent damage, but I need to keep him out of reach often because with no protection just a few arrows can kill him, which isn't much fun. Dorn left my party after my rep shot to 20 as a quest reward... and I don't have a recent save to go back to. It's really annoying that there's no "sensible" way to lower rep in the game.