Bhaal state

“You must gather your party before venturing forth … you must gather your party before venturing forth … you must gath- … .”

I’ve been replaying the Baldur’s Gate II expansion, Throne of Bhaal, over the past three weeks in the hopes of actually completing it this time around.

I opted for full installations of both BGII and ToB but despite depositing 2.7 GB of data on my hard disk, the game still requires the ToB CD-ROM in the drive before you can play.

That’s probably a minor inconvenience to most but my DVD-ROM drive is acting up; it’s faulty but not faulty enough to warrant replacing it. A press of the eject button results in the tray sliding out but it retracts immediately. I have to retry several times before the tray stays out. I initially thought the Eject button was faulty but this happens even with a software Eject command.

It’s weird but then I’ve come to expect weird behaviour from my PC.

Infinity and Aurora

It’s been said BioWare improves with every game and I have to agree. The RPG quotient might have been lacking in NWN but it otherwise improves on BGII/ToB in so many ways.

For instance, to check the effects of an enchanted item on a character in BGII/ToB, you’d have to first check the inventory screen then check the character record screen and then it’s back to the inventory screen to equip the item and finally to the character screen to see its effect. By contrast, you can have both the character and inventory windows onscreen simultaneously in NWN.

NWN’s Aurora engine doesn’t get many props from gamers — some sneer at it now and it wasn’t exactly stunning back in 2002 — but it does overcome the limitations of the BGII Infinity Engine. Characters and summoned creatures in BGII/ToB are sometimes obscured by other objects and this can prevent you from clicking on them individually. You can still select party members by clicking on their hotkeys or their portraits but you can’t do that with summoned creatures or doppelgangers. It’s not a gamestopper but it’s an annoyance that’s thankfully absent from NWN thanks to its multi-position, rotatable “camera.”

Party on, dude

I’ve often bemoaned the lack of a party for the NWN single-player game. You have but a single henchmen. The second NWN expansion, Hordes of the Underdark, allowed up to two henchmen (and even briefly allowed a third at the end of the first chapter) but it still falls short of a classic six-character AD&D party. However, I’ve been reminded of the hassles of commanding a six-character party during combat in ToB.

I’m a turn-based combat fan so that’s how I play ToB. I set up the game so that it automatically pauses whenever a party member completes a turn or casts a spell. It’s not quite classic turn-based but it’s close enough for me. It also happens to be the easiest method of keeping track of your party’s actions during a pitched battle with multiple foes.

And you will need to keep track and micromanage because the battles much tougher in ToB. Encounters often require a lot of tactical thought especially when it comes to spellcasting. Some opponents are only susceptible to certain spells while others may need their spell resistance and spell protections reduced or removed before you can cause any damage. You’ll have to learn what spell to cast and when to cast it to avoid seeing this often:

Scripted

ToB does ship with some scripts to help manage combat but they aren’t particularly comprehensive and you’ll often find yourself cussing as your script-controlled party members display some awful judgement in batttle.

Thankfully, there are some good fan-written AI scripts available. I’m currently using Erik Kerr’s eSeries scripts. These AI scripts require additional downloads which modify some game files but they seem well-behaved and they’re easily uninstalled if they’re not to your liking.

While I do find the scripts useful, I still spend time on tedious tasks that should ideally be automated e.g. post-rest and pre-combat buffing. The eSeries scripts include hotkey-activated buffing but it falls short of what I want. I suppose I could always modify the scripts myself.

More on ToB in future entries.