Brought on by TNK talking about Planescape: Torment (a game I sorely need to play one of these days), a bit of BG2 rambling, since I actually played an entire game of it while traveling across the country.
So let us make a couple of additions to this list here. I should put all of this on a page somewhere one of these days.
Najah (NE Elf Male Assassin)
BG1 Tutu end date 12/12/05 (Level 10)
BG2 stop date 09/11/06 (Level 16)
At the bottom of the old list, I mention a couple of things I really wanted to do, two of which were soloing a thief through, and soloing BG1. I also wanted to test out a mod called Tutu, which ports BG1 to the BG2 engine. Thus was born Najah the assassin, who as of this writing is in the middle of quests in BG2 and got abandoned for Argorath down there.
Verdict? BG1 solo was mostly pretty hard. Low level thieves don't have a lot of staying power. A backstab with or without poison weapon is insanely powerful, however, if you know what you're doing. The Iron Throne fight was still ludicrously hard, however. Sarevok was actually fairly easy, though, once I figured it out.
BG2, on the other hand, is all hard, all the time. It turns out that you CAN solo a dragon as a thief, but it's spectacularly hard. Even the routine fights are exhaustingly hard. It's why I paused to go play Argorath.
Worth noting, too, that while the idea of Tutu is good, getting the save to port from BG1 to BG2 is really hard. I ended up porting the character. It was very frustrating.
Argorath (CG Human Male Fighter->Priest of Lathander)
BG2 end date 09/07/06 (Level 26/9); Viconia, Imoen, Solaufein, Nalia
ToB end date 09/11/06 (Level 37/9); Viconia, Imoen, Solaufein, Nalia, Sarevok
Argorath is a guy I started mid-trip sometime or another when an exhausting day of driving and an exhausting night of driving Najah was getting to be just too much. Except for the "I've never had Viconia in a party" and "Sure haven't played Nalia in a while" bits, he does not especially conform to the list. What I really wanted to do was test out the Nalia romance mod and the Solaufein as a joinable NPC mod. To do that required a fighter, but I didn't want to play a pure fighter (been there), so I went with a fighter dualed into a cleric instead. I also played as a not-quite-solo. Started with just me, ditching everyone but Imoen. Picked up Nalia/Viconia to replace her at the appropriate time, and to tank for me while I was in that weak not-a-real-cleric stage duals go through. Rescued Imoen, then picked up Solaufein in Ust'Natha and Sarevok in ToB for the final full party.
This was new and novel and worked pretty well. I also liked Solaufein as an NPC. On the other hand, the Nalia romance had horrendous dialogue (and a couple of bugs, IIRC), and I forgot how ANNOYING she is. And Solaufein, well, let's just say that some of the fights are pretty ludicrous. I got one of them sprung on me directly before the Ilasera fight in ToB, which was a little intense. The Eclipse fight made me angry, too, more than being fun. There are people who enjoy that sort of thing, but I'm not one of 'em.
I think the next time I play (probably sooner rather than later), I'll end up finishing my BG1 bard (or starting a new one with some of the NPCs I never use), then sending him through BG2 with an "I don't use these characters ever" party, though most of those are evil, so I may need to merge the two. We shall see.
One thing I'll say for the BGs, they sure do have replay value. 10/10 alien type games.
[edit] Because I didn't even remember actually doing this...
Nargol: (CN Half-Elf Male Bard)
BG1 end date 08/16/06 (Level 10); Coran, Kivan, Branwen, Xan, Yeslick
Not quite 6 years to the day of the stop date (9/24/00), but at 5 years, 11 months, who's counting, really? I'd like to talk about this one, but I actually don't remember a bit of playing it. I would like to point out, however, that Coran and Kivan rock, Branwen and Xan blow, and Yeslick is actually a lot better than I gave him credit for.
Posted by Dwip at November 12, 2006 4:42 PMNerf rogues IMO.
Posted by: Marechal at November 15, 2006 10:59 AM