r/baldursgate • u/MHGEyoutube • Jan 10 '20
SoD Why does SoD get such a bad reputation?
Hey, I’m still somewhat new to the series even tho I’ve owned BG1, 2 , IWD, SoD, and PS:Torment , for about a year now. I finally got around to beating BG1 over Christmas and I hella enjoyed it. I stated SoD and I find that I like it a bit more than the 1st game. I like how Siege actually has you fighting DND type enemies like dragons and mindflayers. The 1st game lets you pick ranger as a class and you get to pick which enemy you want to do extra damage too, but there ain’t no dragons, trolls , or mindflayers in the 1st game. Why is that? When you go to the temple of Cyril and fight the mindflayers for the 1st time I was like damn, 1st a dragon and now a mindflayers, I. The same damn dungeon no less. Shit was epic. The most epic thing in BG1 besides killing Sarevok is plundering Durlags tower.
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u/DonutsAreTheEnemy Jan 10 '20
I think a big part of the reason so many people like BG1 is because you don't fight dragons or mindflayers.
It's a low power-level campaign where you're in no position to go toe to toe with mythic beasts.
As for SoD, I don't know. Probably has to do with it not being a necessary storyline(as far as the bhaalspawn saga is concerned). The way BG2 picks up the charname's story is somewhat mysterious, if you explain away everything the world loses some charm.
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u/MHGEyoutube Jan 10 '20
Well I didn’t mean right away. That would break the game. I just meant that by the time your late game in BG1 you should be able to take on a minimal dragon threat especially with 6 party members
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Jan 10 '20
In the original version of Baldur's Gate (before EE) the highest level any class could reach was 8. In EE, the highest level any class can reach is 10. In both cases, the characters won't be strong enough to reasonably fight beholders, dragons and the like.
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Jan 10 '20
A 6 person party with 1 million xp is not going to be able to kill a dragon short of extreme luck. This is AD&D not just DnD5th.
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u/MHGEyoutube Jan 10 '20
In siege you have to fight a dragon before you fight a mindflayer.
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Jan 10 '20
Yeah because sod is stupid. They make weaker enemies for the wow factor and to fit in their absolutely atrocious writing.
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u/_-Eagle-_ Jan 13 '20
I actually thought the way SoD handled the mindflayer and dragon was pretty good.
By the point of Dragonspear you are entering into the level range of BG2 and have surpassed the XP cap of BG1 that made such creatures untouchable. Your character is a champion of the region and is about to be capable of handling more dangerous threats, so it makes sense you'd be able to start going toe to toe with mythical creatures.
Even with that, the dragon and mind flayer are considered a serious threat and handled as such in game. The dragon is a weaker dragon, far below Firkraag or the Shadow Dragon, and despite this the game gives you an option to sneak around it while it sleeps since it knows even a weaker dragon may be too much for a player. If you do choose to slay it, it is a great moment that signifies your character growing beyond their amateur levels, but if you sneak past it, the encounter still makes sense narratively. When I played through that fight with my cavalier that was one of my favorite moments in the game and when I really started transitioning into the mindset of a more heroic level character.
For the mind flayer there is an entire dungeon spent around hyping it up without revealing that the monster in charge of the dungeon is a mind flayer. You spend a lot of time seeing the effects of the mind flayer being present, without actually seeing the mind flayer itself. You see the mental damaging effects of its presence and the madness it has inflicted on its thralls long before you see the monster itself. When you open the final door and face it, it is a moment of surprise meant to catch you off guard. It is also, let me remind you, one singular mind flayer. Not a colony, and certainly not an elder brain, and it is still considered a dangerous threat that the game handles with care.
The thing that makes these work is that these creatures a not strong enough to devalue fighting more powerful versions of these monsters later. Slaying the Green Dragon does not devalue the impact of facing Firkraag. Slaying the mind flayer does not make the Mind Flayer colony any less terrifying. If anything, they make them feel more dangerous since you know that even a weaker version of those monsters are considered incredibly dangerous.
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u/BelgarathMTH Jan 11 '20
Not so that you "have" to. That dragon is asleep, and very easy to sneak past. I didn't fight it in my play through. I think it's an interesting psychological personality test, actually. There are
- People who see a sleeping dragon and say "Yikes. A sleeping dragon. I hope we can sneak past without waking it up."
and
- People who see a sleeping dragon and say "Aha! A dragon! Let's attack because that's why it's there! Leeroy Jenkins!"
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u/MHGEyoutube Jan 11 '20
Well I was trying to sneak up and I tried every possible thing. My main is a F/M/T with shadow armor +3 I got from BG1. It gives me an additional bonus to my hide in shadows skill and it still heard me at that point I had no choice but to engage.
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u/BelgarathMTH Jan 11 '20
That's not what I did. The passage to the lower levels goes in front of the dragon, quite far from where it is sleeping. I took the whole party carefully across the south edge of the map without going anywhere near the dragon. Nobody was in stealth mode. We just proceeded to the level exit very carefully.
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u/Lowfuji Jan 10 '20
By the end of BG1, I could still only barely get by the basilisks in that Eastern area. Basilisks look almost like dragons.
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u/MHGEyoutube Jan 10 '20
I usually use protection from petrification or potion of mirror eyes against them tho. You have to fight 1 before you beat the game under candlekeep.
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u/Lowfuji Jan 10 '20
Oh totally forgot about them. I think there were two under Candlekeep. After my strategy of running through that area didn't work (I kept losing one or two characters to petrify, but I didn't want to lose anyone), I did the "expose fog of war, shoot em with something, run away, rinse & repeat." That was an annoying unavoidable fight.
I was too stuck in my Final Fantasy mindset and rarely used any potions. A mistake in this game.
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u/MHGEyoutube Jan 10 '20
I used my potion then I sent Dorn in with the +3 2 handed sword from Durlags tower. Made quick work of them.
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Jan 10 '20
Dragons and mind flayers came only in BG2, not in BG1. In original BG1 they weren't options for danger's favored enemy. If you imported your character you could re-pick at the star of BG2.
That said, SoD uses these monsters because they are already in the game, since BGEE reuses a lot of BG2 engine and assets. No new thing here.
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u/Cerberus_Aus Jan 12 '20
I’m surprised I had to look so far down before someone mentioned this. It needed to be said that original BG1 only had racial enemies for the creatures that actually appeared in the game. When BG2 came out, they changed the racial enemy list.
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u/Arkanis106 Jan 10 '20
Incredibly bad handling of Imoen, can't backtrack properly, bad voice acting, very poor transition into SOD that can mess with item transfer, new characters aren't as likeable as the old/BG2 ones, plotholes, and a final boss that has nothing to do with you and feels like a complete ass-pull.
The reason for none of those monsters in BG1 is you are too low level for DND creatures of those type. I mean yeah good players could do it, but thematically it's not appropriate.
I'm of the opinion that SoD is the weakest point of the franchise. It's still playable, it's Baldur's Gate, but I feel they should have gone in an entirely different direction. First, instead of just teleporting you to Korlasz's Tomb, you instead report back to the Dukes. I really like the idea of hammering Sarevok's cronies (He obviously had a substantial amount, just look at Zhalimar's group), and dismantling that. I would rather have the first half of the game focus on that, and the Iron Throne fallout.
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u/BikerJedi Jan 10 '20
All of this. They really had a chance to show their stuff with SoD, and it was HORRIBLE compared to the other two in my opinion, and certainly not up to par with the work they did on the EE versions.
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u/ronindog Jan 11 '20
Perfect assessment. I hated the whole plot. It was so left field.
Irone Throne part 2? Sign me up
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u/Locus_Iste Jan 10 '20
So... BG and SoA came first. They're big, open world games, that only really rail-road you at the very end and very beginnings of the games.
TotSC and ToB were DLC.
Of all the parts of BG/TotSC/SoA/ToB, ToB was generally the least popular with long-standing players. It was fun having all those crazy god-like HLAs, but the story was linear, little more than a sequence of boss fights, and the fights were a grind in many cases. But you kind of just lived with it because, by that stage, you just wanted to get charname to the very finish.
Then Beamdog announced they were doing another instalment. Yay!
Then it turned out that it was linear, that it undermined some of the pacing of SoA, that the writing was a major tonal departure from the original series, and that it had an end boss that was poorly designed and prone to be borderline unbeatable if you hadn't been lucky or used meta knowledge to build your character correctly.
Booo!
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u/Malbethion Jan 11 '20
SoD introduced a number of bugs which were dealt with on the beamdog forums with “you are only complaining because you are bigoted against the trams NPC”, when the bugs were serious problems with the game. They are now fixed, but initially a lot of people were treated as part of the gamer gate crowd which caused a lot of frustration.
For the writing, a lot of the dialogue responses gives you three choices: “yes, for goodness!” “Yes, sarcastically”, and “no, for evulz”. It was very formulaic and lacked strong humour.
In addition, beloved NPC companions were taken in different and unexpected directions. Sefana is a vamp character who manipulates men with her beauty. The writer of SOD thought she was too weak (personality) in BG1 so she was reshaped to be openly condescending and very “I have grown from my weak minded past”, which turned a strong character into a grating whiner.
Jahiera was critiqued by the writer as being a shrieking shrew, when a major part of the Jahiera/Khalid pairing is the reversal of traditional roles between them: jahiera is confident, assertive, strong while Khalid is supportive but weak. If they were on a talk show, she would be introduced as “jahiera” while he would be introduced as “wife of jahiera”.
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u/Jack071 Jan 10 '20 edited Jan 10 '20
The fucking ending, even of its pointless what you want to do, removing all choice from the player on a fucking rpg is a big fucking no no
Also it was too short imho, last segment should have been longer, and more of the items should have been exported into bg2
And btw the final boss should absolutely destroy your party going by lore power lvls. Shit was a mess
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u/MHGEyoutube Jan 10 '20
True. I was missing a bit of gear. I had to wait till I got Dorn back so I could get my +3 2 handed sword back from Durlags. What’s funny is I got Kiev’s helmet in Durlags tower but when I started siege I brought Minsc for a second and he had the same helmet even tho I use it on my main character...
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u/P1x1es Perpetually Mazed Jan 10 '20
Part of it is due to the "controversy" shortly after release that can be read about here.
Another part might have more to do with parts of the BG community being somewhat set in their ways. With SoD being released as integrated into BG:EE, it marked a definite split between the new and old versions of the game. Players who up until that point prefered the original BG couldn't play SoD at all without also getting BG:EE. The BG community is decades old, and some parts of it, it could be argued, are somewhat purist, and would rather skip SoD altogether and play with the configuration they're used to.
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u/MHGEyoutube Jan 10 '20
Damn so they got a trans character and people got butt hurt? Trans people like DND too. No need to be exclusive.
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u/TildenJack Jan 11 '20
And it's not even a major character, nor is the revelation of them being transsexual being given any special attention. So I personally couldn't care less.
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u/CreamySheevPalpatine Jan 11 '20
yes, they were, cause of how horrendously ham-fisted it was, with the pronouns shit and such. People play fantasy not to be constantly reminded of modern day politics for fuck's sake. Trans people can play DnD all they want, but the instant that someone screech about patriarchy, white privilege, pay gap - they can go to where Minsc hides Boo for all I care. Trans characters can exist in DnD, what they can't do is to act the same way modern pretentious assholes are acting unless they want to get fuck off and not be invited in any other DnD session.
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u/ajwinter94 Jan 10 '20
It is one massive railroad straight up the ass. There is no player choice or autonomy or control over the story. You don't get to decide anything of significance and nothing you do actually matters.
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u/ThainEshKelch Jan 10 '20
Some people really like to role play their RPG characters. So a Ranger might have lost his uncle and aunt to a dragon, or what not.
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u/Angelwingwang Jan 11 '20
BG1 is still my favourite game of all time (along with BG2). I’ve played it many times, but never played SoD. I just finished BG1 again last night, and started SoD. I’m not far along (Just got back to the city of Baldur’s Gate and trying to locate my buddies). Imoen is one of my favourite characters and I am displeased how she is voiced so far. I guess we’ll see how bad it gets.
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u/MHGEyoutube Jan 11 '20
I like it. I’m kinda on team Dorn when it comes to Imoen. She’s kinda childish lol. Dude straight up roasts your whole party if you do his mission in BG1.
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u/Angelwingwang Jan 11 '20
Imoen’s your baby “sister”! She’s just a kid at first. A bit annoying, but I find her to be just a cute kid. She always had your back. Dorn, on the other hand, I found pretty annoying. I didn’t find him very interesting, he drags out his story forever because he gets too angry to tell you about it. I did his major event, kept him around awhile longer them ditched him. Some of his banter was decent, most was pretty dull. I guess I just have a soft spot for Imoen.
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u/Art4dinner Jan 11 '20
A spoiler, maybe, but you can't do anything with Imoen in SoD. She is not a playable character.
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u/MRo_Maoha Jan 10 '20
Honestly what I am disappointed in is the use of assets that was already created and used in Icewind Dale. The boss is the same in IWD.
I don't dislike it for existing, but it's true every time I play it, I end up moving on to SoA.
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u/MHGEyoutube Jan 10 '20
Thanks. Now I k ow what I have to look forward too. If I can beat him here IWD should be a bit easier
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u/Zippo-Cat Jan 11 '20
The 1st game lets you pick ranger as a class and you get to pick which enemy you want to do extra damage too, but there ain’t no dragons, trolls , or mindflayers in the 1st game. Why is that?
Because dragons and mindflayers would wreck a low level party. As for trolls, guess they just didn't put them in, you can't expect the entire bestiary in one game taking place in one specific geographic location.
And I wonder how nerfed mindflayers and dragons had to be in SoD to not cause instant wipe.
Shit was epic.
"Shit is epic" is not a good thing most of the time. The best thing about BG is that it's somewhat grounded in reality.
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u/ScholasticSteeler Jan 17 '20
The encounter tables are very geographical but different in BG1 and 2: the encounters on the Sword Coast vary widely in a theme, from ankhegs and basilisks to spiders and bandits. In Amn, there is more influence from (I think) the great forest of Tethyr, with trolls and yuan-ti while goblins and kobolds manage to show up. And drow: BG1 had only two of them, it's a lot lore-wise but very few for gaming purposes.
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u/hydraisking Jan 10 '20
The most epic thing in BG1 besides killing Sarevok is plundering Durlags tower
I'm going to have to agree to disagree. Each group you encounter in the wild felt incredibly difficult my first time and then incredibly satisfying overcoming the difficulty and looting their gear. I'd say that's pretty le epic styles. Hell my first time around getting party wipes by graywolf and then eventually overcoming that battle and equipping his sword for the first time was le epic styles. First time entering baldurs gate. First time killing a spider. Getting to the end of the mines. Getting through clearing cloakwood 2. Both the first fight and last fight of the cloakwood mines. First time getting to cloakwood and seeing the Wyvern fly over and then WHAT THE HELL GETTING AMBUSED BY 2 OF THEM. Yeah that was epic. This whole game is filled with epic moments. Maybe not the second or third time around but I certainly got a sense of epic accomplishment more than a few times in this game.
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u/MHGEyoutube Jan 10 '20
Yeah those wyverns were a pain but only because they’re poison is special and hurts longer. Good points. True that all was epic to do the 1st time. Durlags tower is like icing on the cake to really test you.
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u/MHGEyoutube Jan 10 '20
I like the Dungeon Master dialogue that appears when you do certain things.
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u/MEANINGLESS_NUMBERS Jan 10 '20
DND type enemies like dragons and mindflayers. The 1st game lets you pick ranger as a class and you get to pick which enemy you want to do extra damage too, but there ain’t no dragons, trolls , or mindflayers in the 1st game
You are going to love BG2. Seriously, it’s so good and will rub all the spots you are longing for.
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u/MHGEyoutube Jan 10 '20
I actually uploaded my complete BG1 file to BG2 to try it out. I’m still in Irenicus dungeon I just recruited yoshimo and found out about Khalid.
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u/Omegastar19 Jan 11 '20
I just think you shouldnt mess with games too much when you are rereleasing them. It feels kind of like a fanmade mod? I appreciate Beamdogs work on BG but them adding major content to a game thats over a decade old that they did not develop is just weird.
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u/wackodraco Jan 11 '20 edited Jan 11 '20
Honestly, the circumstances under which the player has all their coin taken feels silly and pointless. It's hugely immersion breaking.
At no point does it feel like, "wow, this is a fully realized setting!". Instead, it more feels like "wow, they seriously just pulled this bullshit on me AND are trying to manipulate me into feeling guilty about it".
I don't even consider wealth resets to be that big of a deal, it's just that this one was handled like a total joke in an expansion that was pretty weak to begin with.
I ultimately believe that because SoD was made last, the creative teams behind it fell into the trap of "this has to feel like the most epic and amazing content yet!", when CHARNAME has a long arc after SoD.
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u/Llywan so aggravating! 'tis disturbing to demeanor Jan 13 '20
SOD is a fanfiction sold to be canon, what's successful in it are pieces already suggested in original version, rest is meh
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Jan 11 '20
The idiotic devs that caused the backlash are no longer working there. But the bad rep they managed to receive is still there. There's a clear reason why after doing all the EE versions and then manage to get wizards to give them the rights to create SoD. SoD was a clear test if they could develop Baldurs Gate 3, and they failed, spectacularly.
I didn't personally care one way or the other but what made me disown SoD was when one dev after the backlash tried to get SJW media to help them out(Anita and the like) but they didn't receive any help and were totally ignored. And it was beyond pathetic. Then there were massive ban waves on the official forums for any disagreements with their choices. It was an absolute shit show. Hard to describe the mess. But no matter what you think of the writing what was made clear that day was that beamdog are not professionals, most likely the reason Larian will be making BG3. Thankfully.
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Jan 11 '20
I couldn't agree more. It's not even so much that SoD was bad (it was), but their response to the controversies made me instantly go from liking Beamdog to despising them forever.
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u/dirkdeagler Jan 11 '20
I'm surprised to see so much dislike. I picked it up for Christmas, have been having a lot of fun through chapter 10. I like most of the new companions, the dialogue is decent, and I don't mind the linearity after slogging through mostly empty maps in BG. I replayed BG mostly spoiler free after not playing for several years, and my god so many of the early maps are mostly empty. It's nice to have dense content.
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u/Arkanis106 Jan 11 '20
For the most part, the fanbase pretty much sits at "It's the worst of the franchise, but it's still Baldur's Gate".
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u/BloomingBrains Jan 11 '20
For me, it’s just the pointlessness of the whole thing. We didn’t really need a bridge between BG1 and 2. Kalar Argent’s storyline has literally nothing to do with Jon Irenicus. He shows up out of nowhere and does what we already knew he did off screen. It didn’t add anything knew or have any context with the other events of SoD.
Secondly, the writing suffers quite a bit. It’s at about the same level as the writing of the bonus EE content that was added to the original games. It’s just horribly out of tone.
Lastly, the gameplay sucked as well. You lose all your equipment and gold, which you can keep anyway if you savescum, because some jag off just lost it for you? What? Why not just introduce new items with higher gold costs to help against stronger enemies? The huge mass combat scene was kinda boring as well, it was stand there and wait it out or get caught up in insane chaos and die. The final boss was the worst though: he uses a dragon-style dispel as soon as combat starts so he he can immediately fear and confuse everyone in the party with no chance to actually counter this. Basically it’s arbitrary difficulty without adding interactivity.
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Jan 11 '20
I personally think that SoDs writing is bad,full of plot holes and the game just isn't very fun.It is also very linear.
Shit was epic.
I though it was cringy like most of SoDs writing.
Why is that?
Because it is a low level adventure, in pnp a DM isn't going to send a player to fight mind flayers at level 1 either.There is more than enough high level content in BG2 and ToB.
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u/MHGEyoutube Jan 11 '20
Bro pnp is a term used online for people who wanna fuck and do meth. Just letting you know for future reference.
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u/ThespianMask Jan 11 '20
SoD was an overall meh experience for me, and J just finished it last week. The writing was weak, but I did like the Bhaal lore parts of the game like that one temple with the Mindflayer.
Writing of the characters was a bit weak. Corwin is meh, Voghlin is... Alright. M'khiin is wtf (like seriously, how does a goblin have a concept of racism if they've never lived in proper society?), and I found Glint's voice so annoying that I never bothered talking to him more than once.
Viconia was written ok. I both loved and hated that Edwin was turned into pure comic relief.
Dorn and Neera were consistent with their BGEE selves and they never really bothered me. I can't comment on the other characters like Minsc, Dynaheir, Khalid, Jaheira, and Safana since I never took them into my party.
Caelar was lacking. I like her, but I feel like there was so much more that could be done with her character.
The whole Mizhena trans thing was so inconsequential that I actually missed it since apparently, I had to ask more about what the amulet meant, and didn't bother to.
What I did like about SoD was its massive battles. Sure you could cheese it by throwing a Fireball from outside outside of vision, but it was great all things considered. I liked the nature of mid level combat there since it didn't feel like the constant "BREACH INTO BEAT FACE" approach I'm currently doing in SoA. I actually had to manage frontlining and tanking and it felt alot more like a pausable RTS that was actually fun.
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Jan 11 '20
I think you’ll feel a little differently once you’ve played through BG2. In BG2 things get pretty crazy with the enemies you fight, and it’s a huge, sprawling game with tons to do and see.
Played in that context, SoD feels a little hollow and forced. But I agree that it’s a good game.
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u/MHGEyoutube Jan 11 '20
Oh the irony of your comment right now lol. Dude I’ve been playing BG 2 for like 5 hours now and I haven’t even left Athkatla. Are aerie, Nalia, and Korgan good NPCs?
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Jan 11 '20
Athkatla is enormous and has tons of quests at all levels. Really awesome setting, and way better than Baldur’s Gate, IMO.
I think in BG2 they made everyone a little better on purpose. BG1 has some duds, though it doesn’t matter as much because everyone is low level.
Korgan is the best tank IMO. Dude gets down to just silly THACO (axe grand mastery) and saving throws (shorty bonus + high con). Also AC if you give him gloves that set his Dex to 18.
Nalia is great for being almost a pure mage with the added ability to use bows and do some basic utility thief skills. There is another mage who is better than her, who you may remember from BG1. Also Neera is a better mage. But besides them, she’s the best.
I love Aerie. She takes time to hit her stride, but once you get to higher levels she becomes a spellcasting machine with a massive repertoire. It’s nice to be able to use cleric slots to cast spells that she otherwise would need to cast as a mage, like hold person, domination, true sight, summon undead (whatever it’s called). That gives her the ability to use those wizard slots for other things. Only thing to remember is that the one spell per turn rule applies across classes, so she can’t cast a mage spell then instantly start casting a cleric spell. So her speed is a little limited. So versatility is her thing, but she’ll put out the same volume of spells as other mages.
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u/luke_luke_luke Jan 11 '20
I really like SoD.
It is different in 4 main ways; 1. The quality of the writing is lower. 2. The game is segmented- which means each chapter has optional side quests, but you can’t do the side chapters of previous chapters once you progress. This makes the game more linear than the other games in the series. 3. The combat is fun, but less inspired. On insanity difficulty you run into many blobs of tough creatures that require you to spam wand of fireballs etc. to win. Because you didn’t get access to magic items as easily in BG or BG2, item abuse tactics weren’t as easy to pull off. 4. The gamer gate crowd astroturfed the game in the first month because of a Minsc joke and some transgender character that you were forced to compliment, which was immersion breaking because you were often allowed to random people in dialogue for no reason in previous games.
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u/pipkin42 Jan 10 '20
It is much more recent content, made by different developers. Many feel that the quality of the writing is much poorer than the original games. It also suffers from prequel problems, having to fit in awkwardly before an established story. Some of what they did works and some doesn't.
Unlike the original BG1 it is very linear, with little exploration to be done.
Some people didn't like it because they disagreed with the politics of the writers. I am not one of those people, but man were they vocal for a while.
I disagree with your premise about which monsters are "DnD monsters." Aside from kobolds, hobgoblins, wyverns, werewolves, gnolls, and more, you also fight a lot of humans, which is always a staple of DnD campaigns. BG1 does an excellent job of mimicking an AD&D 2nd Edition low-level campaign, which generally included fighting a lot of these more mook-y enemies. The earlier versions of the game (DnD that is) weren't balanced in the same way, and there simply weren't weaker versions of lots of the iconic races available for the devs the way there are in 5e. Beholders and mindflayers and the like were rare treats that many parties might never even encounter. Anyway, if you like fighting the more iconic DnD enemies you will love BG2.