How can I teach BG2 to a friend?

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There is still stuff I forget and Miss. I can sympathize a bit with the want to do everything mentality. specially if he likes things like Final Fantasy Games and such. Sadly they promote such a mentality and I can be guilty of it myself on occasion.

that also tends to be when I lose my focus is when I try to do everything. Now I have little things that I leave and maybe come back to later.

 

Well it is true that he is fairly unexperienced in such games, he has only played Diablo II as a RPG game, and you all know how Diablo rates as a 'R'PG game eh?

I will try to prevent him from using walkthroughs, that is for sure...wish me luck!

 

Bah...BG2 is something you have to discover. It can't be taught.

I tried doing this with my girlfriend, who was REALLY keen to play it, especially after all the time I used to rant and rave about my successes (or failures ) and she was very impressed.

When I got her a copy, she played it for a week, and then calls me up and asks me how to get through the TUTORIAL!!

Then I tried to sort of walk her through it personally, but the learning curve was too high for her apparently.

Ah well...you win some you lose some.

 

Well my friend complained that he was stuck in the tutorial too! And unfourtunately there was no walk-through for it!

Now I am really worried.

 

This reminds me of trying to get my friend to play. I lended him BG 1, and he returned it the next day. "Too much like Diablo", was his answer! Too much like Diablo! That's an insult, a huge one!

 

^That is a grave insult indeed. Now, don't get me wrong, I enjoyed Diablo, Diablo II, and LoD. These games have their own charm, to kill hordes and hordes of vivious monsters quickly and stock up levels, skills, and items etc, these are really fun...for a while.

But BG is very different than that. This is ROLE playing afterall, I really want to feel like my character when playing the game and I manage to do it most of the time. I feel the atmosphere, I feel the world, story, I feel the NPCs, their personalities, friendships, and even hostilities. I was about to shout loudly when poor Minsc and Boo was disintegrated by a lich, for example. And I almost cried when Viconia declared to me that she will try to become a nicer person, just for me. This is the spirit of the game IMHO!

Needless to say, I can't recall doing such things in Diablo type games. It was just 'cool, let's kill more and more, and I really need to complete this item set!' Heck, your character can not even answer back to NPCs, or talk for him/herself in Diablo II, but only listen as they give you quests etc. And you call that 'R'PG!

 

Well another obvious difference if the friend bothered to make it even an hour into the game would have been that you don't have one set base town but lots of different towns and ways to do the game.

 

You know...I honestly think that unless someone has prior knowledge of AD&D rules etc, they're not going to find this game easy at all.

I am a very good example of this. I bought the game ages ago, but it took me a full 3 months to actually figure out what saving throws and spell casting etc was. I had played almost halfway through the game TWICE before I actually found out what I was doing.

For instance...I played a fighter/mage the VERY first time...but I had such little idea of what I was doing, I was wearing full plate mail and running around killing stuff without even memorizing spells in my spell book! I figured I'd be able to cast spells from my MP or something like that!

So...I guess what I'm trying to say (apart from the fact that I was the biggest NOOB ever) is that this game is really hard to get into unless you're into all that AD&D stuff.

 

Yes, you are right, but still it has a tutorial to teach many basics...in which newbie players get stuck!

Seriously though, BG and IWD series are excellent for learning D&D table-top rules! My very first game in this genre was IWD2, and thanks to its fantastic playing style and very helpful ingame screens I learned the basics of the rules. Then I played BG2 and was stunned as this was entirely a new system, everything was turned upside down! (AC was being lowered as armor is worn, and just what did THAC0 mean?) But eventually this game lead me to love 2nd edition AD&D, and learn its rules, even the smallest details, and today I can both DM and play in a table-top game with little problems; thanks to Bioware games, they are my teachers!

 

Hmm...well, I came to it the other way round. IWD2 had been out when I bought BG2 with ToB...but the main reason was:

1) I visit GameRevolution.com very regularly and I was extremely impressed by the high reviews it got.

2) It was on sale for very cheap at the time...approx. USD 15.

I decided to give it a go and I've been addicted ever since.

Conversely, I got IWD2 last. I got NWN after BG2, eager for more of the same goodness. Needless to say, I was phenomenally disappointed, although I did like the flexibility offered by 3rd Ed. So...I used NWN to learn 3rd Ed. and then perfected it to Munchkinistical levels ( )

 

i do own the players handbook for 3.5 it does strike me as being geared towards munchkinism in some respects.

 

Mmm my friend re-started again, I fear he may be a chronic re-starter. This time he made a female elven Swashbuckler, and seems to be enjoying it so much. He did Unseeing eye quest too in adition to all other quests he has done so far, killed the lover of Keldorn's wife, and his Nalia got abducted by Isae...

How many times did you re-start the game? I hope he likes this chaaracter and continues to play with it. He dual-wields, and hides in shadows much, and says he is having real fun!

 

Ummm. I restarted a couple times myself. but i got through most of the quests first. Was trying to do all of them.

Wasn't so much for the classes but then I had already been playing BG1 for quite a while and knew the classes. The kits were the only real thing new for me on that front.

Friend of mine restarted a good 10 times though trying different kits and classes. Once he got settled in though he hasn't restarted a single time since.