I’ve been cleaning up old backups and found few screenshots from Ice Wind Dale, Baldur’s Gate 2 and Throne of Bhaal expansion.
I’ve spend many good hours playing those games. I’ve read a dozen books from the Forgotten Realms realm . I remember being in a library (in the game) and spending there quite a lot of time, just to read few books. Playing those games was like a deep dive into the fantasy world, side by side to the characters from the books, or sometime against them. I even took a screenshot of the map, where I’ve met Breunor’s Battle Hammer team and I remember it to this day! I played it around 20 years ago.
I think, I finished Ice Wind at least 3~4 times. Baldur, I tried to finish 2nd time, but gave up - it’s really long game. Whole D&D physics of the world was quite complex, but game on it’s own was straightforward. Of course, first game you played with sub-optimal characters, then you learn and play again. Character development trees were simple - despite the weapon specialization, there was not much you could influence. Creators were playing by adding fragments of non-linearity on few quests, something quite unusual in the world where most games were linear.
I remember that the strongest opponents were dragons, so I tried to defeat all of them, which can be clearly seen on the screenshots.
Ice Wind Dale
I played Ice Wind a lot, but I have only one screen from it. I don’t know how did it happen 🤷 It might be actually from The Heart of Winter expansion, which I played for sure and I don’t recall the dragon in the basic game.
Baldur’s Gate 2
It was like 4 CD, which have to be changed from time to time as it was too much disk space to install the game completely, eh.
I remember few strategies to those fights:
- calling fire elementals as they were perfect cannon fodder,
- druid calling the cloud of insects, which was lowering opponent’s defense capabilities,
- I overused the Abi-Dalzim’s Horrid Wilting spell, which was working on the area, not impacting he team (in comparison to fire balls) and was just sucking life from opponents,
- having an evil clerk Viconia was also helpful as she being a Drow could open gates of hell an release the daemons which were attacking everything around, but with one more spell team could be protected,
Baldur’s Gate 2 Tron Bhaala
I don’t remember this expansion. The only thing I remember, is that Sarevok was strong. He had a Deathbringer Assault passive ability which was killing even powerful opponents with one hit of the sword. It’s pictured on first 3 screenshots.
Final
I posses Extended Editions of all of them now. Maybe it’s time to try the journey again. Would it be the same? Or maybe it’s better to leave the memories blurry and glorifying the experience.
Enjoyed?
