Poll: Baldur's gate 2 or Dragon Age: Origins?

[SynapseHavok]

Hello Escapists!

I seem to be having a bit of a dilemma. I've always been a fan of western RPG's like The Elder Scrolls series, KoTOR, koTOR 2, the Fallout series, and many others. But two popular and supposedly very good RPG's have slipped past my radar -mostly due to me not having the time to actually sit down and play them- Baldur's Gate 2 and Dragon Age: Origins.


Now my questions to you all are: Which of these two games should I buy first? Which one is the "better game"? Or should I just forget both of them and wait for Baldur's Gate: Enhanced Edition to come out and play that one first?


Thanks.

Captcha: no regrets. I hope you're right captcha..

 

[lRookiel]

Enhanced edition definitely :3

 

[The_Lost_King]

It doesn't matter if you get it first but get Dragon age. I have only played the first 30 min of Baldurs Gate 1 so yeah.

 

[Therarchos]

It depends. BG is an amasing game,but it is dated.You won't get fancy graphics,and no easy combat. Some of that stuff is mind twisting, but it IS an amazing experience: Compelling story, great story, a world that sucks you in and probably the best balanced spell system ever. You just need to get past it's age.

 

[Irridium]

I'd suggest both, really. Baldur's Gate 2 is on sale on GoG [http://www.gog.com/en/gamecard/baldurs_gate_2_complete] right now for about $7. Comes with the expansion and a bunch of other goodies (soundtrack, art-book, wallpapers, manuals, ect), all DRM-free and works on XP, Vista, and Windows 7.

Dragon Age Origins can also be found for cheap these days. Think the "ultimate edition", which includes the expansion and all DLC, is $30 on Steam [http://store.steampowered.com/app/47810/].

So yeah, for $37 you can get quite a bit of RPG goodness. Both are great games, and you should play them.

 

[Danceofmasks]

I would say BG2, but only if you have some sort of tolerance for 2nd edition dungeons and dragons.
The system would make people who started playing in 3rd or 4th edition tear their hair out.

 

[Gennadios]

If you value your time, BG2 is the way to go. Baldur's Gate 2 had a ton of content, but each individual dungeon could be completed in under an hour and when you were done with it, you felt complete. You could look at it as a satisfying game session and shut the game down for the night.

DA:O dragged. I spent a large chunk of my game time muttering for it to get to the fucking point. It didn't have standalone locations, it had 3 primary quest lines that dragged on and on. Trying to find an elf shaman? He's in the woods. He's been kidnapped by wolves you fight in the woods. The wolves retreat to a set of ruins, but you can't get to where they retreated. You fight through 3 levels of ruins to get to the wolves. You fight the wolves on the third level. You fight through the woods to get back to town and complete the quest. 1/3rd of the game, right there. The most frustrating part is there was no way to end the encounter short to hit town to buy new equipment or swap party members without very tedious backtracking.

I'm not trying to make DA:O look worse than it is, the mechanics were sound and the story standard Bioware fare before it faceplanted, but most of it's longevity is based off of nostalgia, and if that's what you're after, just go to the source.

EDIT: 666th post. Time to retire, methinks.

 

[RubyT]

I don't think there's much between them storywise. Both are good, solid RPG high fantasy.

It really boils down to: can you live with graphics that look like ass? Maybe you even feel a little superior shunning modern graphics. Then BG is for you.

If you like your games somewhat pretty (though actually nothing to write home about...) and 3d, then play DA:O.

If you couldn't care less, play BG, just because it's cheaper to buy.

 

[Poindexter92]

BG was the birth of my love of RPGs

 

[Jux]

If you can get your hands on the first baldurs gate, do that too. And the expansions that came with both games. Still one of my favorite games to date.

 

[ElectroJosh]

I suggested BG:2 because it is, in my opinion, the better game. However when I played it the controls were some of the best I had used in RPG while, now, they are not exactly state of the art.

One thing to bear in mind is that the beginning of the game can be annoying and I would suggest, as a newcomer to the series, to not feel too proud to get help from a walkthrough - think of it as the equivalent of a tutorial: You can learn the gameplay mechanics and difficult combat without being confused as to what you should do.

I enjoyed DA:O enough but wasn't blown away. Too bad because the story and setting were great and some of the combat mechanics were greatly improved over the BG series - unfortunately some aspects were muhc worse and I felt, with what modern games could do, they seemed to be different for the sake of "not being too close to BG".

 

[kingthrall]

Any of the Baldurs gate series, If not Start with Icewind dale and wait for the Enhanced edition.

Origins is a bad joke, with a terrible storyline glued from pieces of lord of the rings thrown in with some dragons. Origins gave you choices but took it always to the extreme with very few choices have small impacts here and there to build up to the big ones like baldurs gate (hope that makes sense).

Note that Icewind dale is similar to baldurs gate in many ways except you make your own party, no npc followers and that its more action orientated.

 

[Jadak]

Depends how well you do with older stuff. Baldur's Gate is the better game, but personally I think it aged like crap and can't really bring myself to play it anymore.

Wasn't overly fond of DA:O, but unless you're sure playing a rather dated game doesn't bother you, go with that.

 

[Beach_Sided]

I would recommend you get Dragon Age now for a cheap price, play it through, and by then the new Baldurs Gate will be out and you can read the reviews before finally going ahead with buying that.

And if you haven't played The Witcher 2 then do that as well.

 

[SynapseHavok]

Thanks everyone for your suggestions! I ultimately went with Baldur's Gate 2 Complete on GOG(Only $6.99 right now, that's too good to pass up)

I figure that DA:O can wait a while for me to pick it up, it seems like BG2 will be the better choice for me right now considering how a few of you said that DA:O has a lot of padding and drawn out quests just to make the game longer.

I might post here later with my first impressions of BG2.


Cheers everyone, SH.

 

[The Madman]

I see you've already decided and decided wisely as well, although my personal advice would have been to wait till the end of the month when Baldur's Gate: Enhanced Edition is lined up to be released.

In all honesty the first Baldur's Gate isn't as good as 2, nor do I think the enhanced edition will do anything to change that having read over its list of improvements, but still if you want to full Baldur's Gate experience the way to do it is to take a character all the way from the steps of Candlekeep to the very Throne of Bhall himself! It's one of the longest, exhaustive, but also satisfying rpg experience available.

Spoiler: Incidentally, comparisson between Baldur's Gate and Dragon Age, although you might want to skip the spoiler bit.

Dragon Age: Origins is good. I like it very much actually. But it really doesn't compare in sheer scale or impact to the BG series. But then again... very little does unfortunately.

 

[Rack]

The way to do it is to get Baldurs Gate 1, put it through Tutu and get all the banter packs. It's hard as hell and requires you to understand a lot about 2nd edition D&D but played through as one amazing experience Baldurs Gate is unparalleled. It loses a bit if you haven't played from the start though.

 

[Amaror]

I'm not trying to make DA:O look worse than it is, the mechanics were sound and the story standard Bioware fare before it faceplanted, but most of it's longevity is based off of nostalgia, and if that's what you're after, just go to the source.

Well thats not true. I never played Baldurs Gate but i loved DA:O. I don't really understand your nitpicks either. Yeah the main quests drag along, but their MAIN QUEST. And your sounding like it would be impossible to save and quit the game during a quest. It's not. And when you buy some backpacks you always have enough room in your inventory to gather everything on your mainquest, so i don't really see why you would want to backtrack and trade.
Oh, but get it on pc, not console, on pc it's way better.

I tried Baldurs Gate 2 myself after enjoying dragon age so much, but i couldn't really get myself to finish even the first dungeon. You fight yourself through one half of the entire dungeon, just to find something that you need at the end of the OTHER HALF of the dungeon. I don't know really why i didn't picked it up again and played some more. I really don't have a problem with graphics, i play the original xcom pretty often. Maybe i will try it again sometime.