Should I play BG first ?

[Egg Shaped Israeli Operative]

Somehow I've managed to avoid playing either BG or BG2 so I'm wondering if there is any benefit to playing BG first, and does the story continue ?

[Hopper]

Yeah it's all one big connected story. You can even import your BG1 character into BG2.

[Egg Shaped Israeli Operative]

Thanks, looks like I'll start with BG.

[wedge]

BG is an awesome CRPG: it's not as complex as BG2, but I love the regions and the exploration. You won't regret playing it!

[Zig]

I prefer the structure and story pacing of BG1 compared to BG2, even though BG2 is more of everything.
With the EE editions, they are also basicaly the same games on the technical aspect.
If you already have BGEE, SoD and BGEE2, you can merge them all in a single giant seamless adventure using the BGEE Trilogy mod : https://github.com/Gibberlings3/EET

I did 2 complete playthrough using BGEET and some other mods (Sword coast Stratagems, Ascension and spell revision, mostly) and it's been very stable and bug free, as the BGEET auto-installer does all the work for you.
For a new player, a standard BGEET no-mod playtrhough is perfectly fine though, as some of these mods steeply increase difficulty and require to delve deeply into the DnD systems.

Enjoy the best cRPG saga ever made !

[Egg Shaped Israeli Operative]

Appreciate all your replies, I'm going to start BG for a first time this evening.

[mrandocalrissian]

Good luck! The best thing about starting with BG is that you get to experience the whole journey from being a totally useless nobody in the beginning (stick with it!) to an absolute machine by the end of BG2/TOB.

[Zotliatlicor]

Originally posted by Kurisu:

Appreciate all your replies, I'm going to start BG for a first time this evening.

Just take it slow and be carfeul. Be prepared to do some reading of text.

You have very little to offer in combat early on and can die in one hit (depending on class) so just be mindful of that.

The Playing 1 then 2 then TOB is only viable if you really want to take one special character through all of it.

Both BG1 and 2 has immense replay value. So dont be shy of starting another character long before you have completed all with your first.

And After you have Done 1, maybe you want to try some different in 2, and you can. Story continues, but you can swap characters if you are not 100 % happy with your first try.

All in all i feel BG2 has most charactrer variation and replay value, but 1 is still a gem of a game.

[Valanar]

I recommend play the games in order BG1>Siege of Dragonspere>BG2 and if is possible with the mod trilogy, i explain:

The BG2 its a good game itself, but, for example the initial moment its hard to understand how deeply is without the previous game, this story is about how your life scale from a simple student in a citadel to a... well, you discover it, but the npcs and the problems you need to face in BG1 are a crucial part for understand the deepest of BG2, you have advantage playing the BG1 first too because you can use import/export function and give your main character to BG2, and in BG1 exist some books what can upgrade your main stats, what can make the difference.

I hope that help, greetings.

[✙205🍉🐆→]

yes, you can reach some extra level and transferred some items

[Hamish]

The best thing about playing BG1 first is you get tomes that raise your ability points 1No. str, dex, con, int and cha plus 3No. wis tomes can be found and used. It is rather nice being a fighter with 19 str, dex and con :)

[sick duck]

Its a pain in the ass trying to learn BG2 without anything to compare it to, so yes.

[Dorok]

Originally posted by Zug:

I prefer the structure and story pacing of BG1 compared to BG2, even though BG2 is more of everything.

+1 on that, except that "more in everything is wrong". BG1 is more than BG2 on:
- Freedom and adventure feeling.
- Amount of companions available, you can make a full play constantly changing your party, ok it can looks weird, but it has its value too.
- Amount of little tricks.
- Doesn't inflict the suffering of Irenicus Dungeon start of BG2 (should have been just a cinamatic).

:-)

Originally posted by Valanar:

I recommend play the games in order BG1>Siege of Dragonspere>BG2 and if is possible with the mod trilogy,...

Mmm in a week or two, I will have the question, play SoD before BG2 or not.

One problem with importing characters from BG1 to BG2 is to have a too strong main character for first parts of BG2, SoD can only aggravate the problem. That said BG2 is supposed to have a sophisticated enemy scaling system but it's still always the feeling I had and for now always ended stop play an import and switched to new character at BG2 start.

Moreover I wonder, SoD probably has no link with BG2, so for a BG2 play, I wonder what's the point to play in between SoD.

[sick duck]

The prologue dungeon of Irenicus was needed because BG2 is a complicated game and they can't simply design the thing assuming everyone is competent at the game. There are still people to this day advising and asking about skipping right to BG2, so I think it was a good choice having that prologue.

The SoD has you starting the game at 500,000. Because of the way level up experience point costs inflate drastically the closer you get to 3 million it doesn't matter much. I could and have on a few occasions started the game at that level before leaving the promenade with a bit of pickpocket and spell scribing chicanery, so I know what I'm talking about. BG2 actually scales to your experince point total but it does it in a sneaky way by having a few different versions of each encounter for protagonists of different levels. I kinda like doing it better this way, because if I don't I know I'm always going to do the same things in the same sequence until I've got a good amount of stuff and a good half million experience before I get creative. It is the boss battles that do not scale to level, and by the time you've done everything except for spellhold 500,000 experience points one or two level ups.

[Zig]

Originally posted by Zug:

I prefer the structure and story pacing of BG1 compared to BG2, even though BG2 is more of everything.
+1 on that, except that "more in everything is wrong". BG1 is more than BG2 on:
- Freedom and adventure feeling.
- Amount of companions available, you can make a full play constantly changing your party, ok it can looks weird, but it has its value too.
- Amount of little tricks.
- Doesn't inflict the suffering of Irenicus Dungeon start of BG2 (should have been just a cinamatic).

I agree, BG1 was more visionary in it's structure (which eventually led to "open world" games) compared to the more linear BG2, and completely linear ToB. Sadly, at the time, the world was not ready for this, and they had to dumb the structure down in the following games.

I just restarted (another) Legacy of Bhaal BGEET run, the open structure makes it a survival game since even a pack of gnolls means death when not prepared enough.
(Though, I did reduce the cheese needed in LoB difficulty by giving my team custom items that alleviate the need to constantly rest and abuse summons).

[Dorok]

Originally posted by sick duck:

The prologue dungeon of Irenicus was needed because BG2 is a complicated game and they can't simply design the thing assuming everyone is competent at the game. There are still people to this day advising and asking about skipping right to BG2, so I think it was a good choice having that prologue.

I totally disagree, it's a lot too long for a tutorial, I don't even remind the tutorial aspects.

The problem of this section is, not enough short, a lot too linear, totally weird writing with a poor attempt to try feel gore/macabre and the conclusion with Irenicus escape is ridiculous at this point of the story.

I can't count the number of time I replayed that section and get bored before finish it. One of the worst RPG beginning I remind.

Originally posted by sick duck:

The SoD has you starting the game at 500,000. Because of the way level up experience point costs inflate drastically the closer you get to 3 million it doesn't matter much. I could and have on a few occasions started the game at that level before leaving the promenade with a bit of pickpocket and spell scribing chicanery, so I know what I'm talking about. BG2 actually scales to your experince point total but it does it in a sneaky way by having a few different versions of each encounter for protagonists of different levels. I kinda like doing it better this way, because if I don't I know I'm always going to do the same things in the same sequence until I've got a good amount of stuff and a good half million experience before I get creative. It is the boss battles that do not scale to level, and by the time you've done everything except for spellhold 500,000 experience points one or two level ups.

I failed understand the details of your answer.

What's sure is I don't do stuff in the same order not the same ways, and for sure it can change a lot some combats. I didn't know boss battles wasn't scaled, but what is tagged boss battle?

Well I suppose your answer is overall it can work fairly enough. :-)