VP is still one of the prettiest games I've ever seen. I don't think there's anything else from its generation I can even contemplate saying that about without laughing.
~
ToB: Where was I? Oh right, Demogorgon. He's dead. So is everyone else who stood between me and GODHOOD (enlightened godhood though, because come on it's me, so yeah all those people I killed you can just take my word it was for the greater good). Yeah, this was basically my weekend.
I think I can pretty confidently say I'll never play BG again just because god this thing just ate a month of my life. But still, glad to have seen the whole thing now, ToB adds a lot to a game I already liked a great deal. Some of the bosses can actually put up a decent fight against all of your crazy broken shit! Sendai/Draconis/Balthazar/Ravager all had a pretty decent amount of cheese going for them. Good fights in the sense that they killed a couple people and burned through a chunk of my resources but I didn't gameover. Melissan butchered me a couple times before I just said fuck it and swarmed her with planetars/devas (this is probably the optimal solution for everything, though). Speaking of, good lord Melissan was hungry for scenery. Well, she had been waiting the whole game, and it is in the series' tradition.
Other stuff, well, the environments look nicer? Also, ToB music cribs heavily from the Conan the Barbarian soundtrack. This is of course a good thing, as we know how inordinately important proper noises are to my appreciation of a gaming experience.
Final party standings, just for the hell of it:
[Bhaalspawn]: Level 26 CN half-elf sorcerer. STR 12, DEX 18, CON 20, INT 10, WIS 12, CHA 20. I imagine my priorities are pretty obvious there. The sliding scale of caster power in these games is pretty ridiculous. Early BG1 was fire off a couple Magic Missiles then hide behind her cat the rest of the day (not even joking). Then eventually I got Haste and spiderrrrs. BG2 she picked up Melf's Minute Meteor and was an extremely effective caster interruption mechanism through the midgame. Lategame is Mordy's swords and Warding Whips and sequenced Fireballs. And then ToB hits and I can stop time and toss down four Horrid Wiltings before anyone can even move and whyyyyyy.
Most powerful foe vanquished: Firkraag (Chromatic Orb!)
Kill percentage: 28% (ended the game with exactly 1,000 kills).
Minsc: Level 28 Ranger. Minsc is a meatgrinder. Ran two-handed swords from start to finish.
Most powerful foe vanquished: Bodhi (I'd contest this; the game seems to credit plot power in these rankings more than it sometimes deserves, and he definitely killed plenty of things that put up more of a fight).
Kill percentage: 35%. Butts were kicked in liberal measure.
Viconia: Level 35 Cleric. Does pretty much what clerics do, patch up the other idiots when they get themselves killed. Also summon BWOOOOAR and later fallen angels (arguably more important).
Most powerful foe vanquished: Thax'awhatsit (Finger of Death).
Kill percentage: 8%. Yeah keeping people alive is usually more her priority. Also bears.
Edwin: Level 26 Conjurer. Summoner of cannon fodder, Haste battery, peels away magic defenses when needed.
Most powerful foe vanquished: Dragon (the nameless Watcher's Keep one. Before that it was the Suldenessellar dragon whose name I will not even try to type, who died as a squirrel).
Kill percentage: 7%. Not too surprising since he was usually on buff/debuff/summon duty (and he sat out BG1). I'm the artillery, Edwin calls the cavalry.
Imoen: Level 37 Thief. So yeah that bit where I didn't want her getting behind on levels in BG2 is pretty hahaha what in retrospect. What the hell, Thief XP tables? Even before the end of BG2 it'd become painfully apparent why they made all the game's thieves dual-class, but I kept her vanilla because it seemed too late to productively start on a caster class (also I already had three of them to keep track of and jesus they all had like four or five lines of spells to wade through by the end of the game). So yeah, Imoen, she has a bow and she shoots people with it. Except near the end when I dumped spare proficiency points into dual-wielding because why not, I've got all these awesome spare weapons and it's a shame to just leave them in inventory.
Most powerful foe vanquished: Elite Fire Giant. Yawn.
Kill percentage: 11%. Surprised it's even this high. But I guess she was usually on scrub cleanup duty.
Sarevok: Level 29 Fighter. Holy shit Sarevok is good. (I know, huge shock, right?) Apparently it's possible to get his alignment to shift? Didn't happen in my game, never had any banters trigger past Saradush.
Most powerful foe vanquished: Draconis (this ranking is bullshit since he also got the last hit on Demogorgon. Draconis was a fucking pain in the ass, but c'mon, he's not Demogorgon).
Kill percentage: 8%. It says something about his acumen for slaughter that it's this high when everyone else in the party was at it for three games and he's just got ToB on his record.
MC's spell list for the BG nerrrrds. I trust the regrettable consequences of leveling at 3AM will mostly be self-evident:
1st level: Armor, Chromatic Orb, Find Familiar, Identify, Magic Missile
-Armor was nice in BG1 and worthless thereafter, Identify ditto that stopped mattering once Edwin joined (insta-ID anything due to GODLY INTELLECT), we've already been over Find Familiar...but seriously, in the long run, what do you care about from 1st level spells but Chromatic Orb and Magic Missile?
2nd level: Agannazar's Scorcher, Acid Arrow, Mirror Image, Ray of Enfeeblement, Resist Fear
-Yeah I dunno. Scorcher damage looks good on paper when you can first get it, but then you see your party members running through the beam and aw god dammit. Acid Arrow kills trolls and that's pretty much it. MI got tossed into sequencers occasionally. I used Ray like twice. Resist Fear I think I was thinking "At some point there will be dragons." But they almost all got statused to death and I think I never even used the spell. Whatever, it's 2nd level spells.
3rd level: Dispel Magic, Fireball, Flame Arrow, Haste, Melf's Minute Meteor
-These are pretty much all great, though Dispel Magic stopped seeing use once I could have Edwin toss Remove Magic instead (and not ruin my own buffs in the process). I think I never bothered with MMM before because why would I want to cast a spell to give me a weapon to throw when I could just cast a spell to shoot someone instead? It turns out the answer to that is: because this way you hit fast enough to stunlock people from even doing anything.
4th level: Confusion, Greater Malaison, Improved Invisibility, Minor Sequencer, Spider Spawn
-I don't think I ever used Confusion. I don't know why it's there. Greater Malaison was only ever employed to make humiliating dragons easier, but I consider that worth the spell slot. Spider Spawn is worthless by the end of the game but pretty nice when you can first get sword spiders out of it. The other two never stopped being handy.
5th level: Breach, Domination, Lower Resistance, Oracle
-Breach is great, Lower Resistance was again purely there to fuck with dragons (and thus totally worth it), Oracle was immediately outclassed by True Sight, Domination was like never used (just because I play video games 'til dawn sometimes doesn't mean I have a problem stop looking at me like that).
6th level: Improved Haste, Pierce Magic, Summon Nishruu, True Sight
-Improved Haste is godly, so is True Sight, both usually got tossed into a sequencer for boss fights. Nishruus are pretty cool at first but horrible fodder by the end of the game. Pierce Magic is neat in theory but was already outclassed by the time I got it.
7th level: Khelben's Warding Whip, Mass Invisibility, Mordankainen's Sword, Spell Sequencer
-Wait, I took Mass Invisibility? Huh. How about that. Anyway Warding Whip is like the best debuff in the game. Fuck that contingency some enemy's got prepped at 50% health or whatever, this way you get their current and future buffs (if you can spare a couple extra turns for them to fall one by one). Mordy's sword is the best summon short of ToB, almost nothing in BG2 core can reliably hurt them and they'll solo tons of pesky enemy types for you. Spell Sequencer is triple Fireball. End of line.
8th level: Abi-Dalzim's Horrid Wilting, Improved Mantle, Simulacrum, Spell Trigger
-I never used Improved Mantle. My MC always had the speedy boots on, and if someone was actually in a position to hurt her, I was probably already fucked on account of the rest of the party being dead. Simulacrum is pure cheese (double your spellcasters!) but I rarely used it just because tracking and controlling 2x spellcasters is such a hassle. Horrid Wilting of course is supreme crowd control, and Spell Trigger was usually loaded with buffs for anything that looked like it actually meant to put up a fight.
9th level: Comet, Dragon's Breath, Energy Blades, Energy Drain, Improved Alacrity, Spellstrike, Summon Planetar, Time Stop, Wail of the Banshee
-Improved Alacrity -> Time Stop is absolutely ridiculous. Casting times? Fuck 'em, I want all my spells to go off now god dammit, now! Energy Blades makes for a fantastic upgrade over meteorspam, only hurt by having to compete with all this other stuff. Planetars are supreme and like the only thing that made the last fight look winnable (it looked like no one in my party but Sarevok could even hurt her, not sure what the deal was there). Spellstrike is neat in theory but doesn't do anything about the contingency that asshole caster's probably got waiting down the line. The rest of that stuff basically never got used.
Man all those words I just typed and I don't think I talked about the plot at all? Well that pretty much sums up the BG experience. You just play it for SWORD, MEET EVIL, EVIL, MEET SWORD.
Oh god I just realized Mazzy was still in the pocket dimension when it stopped existing.
