Baldur's Gate 2 is the reason there was so much hype for Baldur's Gate 3. It's considered one of the best western RPGs of all time and often included in the list of greatest video games of all time.
BG1 gets a lot of nostalgia shoutouts but BG2 had significantly better storytelling with a lot more actual choices to make and much more in-depth character interaction. Also, the voice lines weren't quite as repetitive or obnoxious.
Also the plot of 1 and the way it presented itself was just... janky.
Personally I thought the overall plot from 1 was better because it kept you guessing "what is really going on" till close to the end where 2 basically told you what was happening in the opening sequence.
It's mid. You aren't missing much. It's 90% flash, 10% substance. Unless you've been a Minsk & Boo Stan waiting in the shadows for 25 years.
Personally I'd go steal Disco Elysium again. Or do the free-to-play class stories in Star Wars: the Old Republic. Light side Sith Warrior, and any alignment Imperial Agent are pretty awesome self-contained stories.
BG3's combat is terrible. D&D 5e is bad enough on tabletop, but in a video game it just does not work at all. D&D needs an incredibly skilled GM to paper over all the glaring problems (and any GM good enough to run D&D well probably knows enough to run something else instead), and just conflicts horrible with the rigid precision of a GM-less video game, nor does its dungeon-crawling resource attrition paradigm work with a fixed narrative world.
In addition to being mid, it's also super biggy atm. Some people have it be fine until the later acts, but our grouos has barely made any progress do to all of us experiences crashes super often
100+ gbs too. why won't these modern studios fucking compress anything anymore i need that space for my ever-growing collection of inefficient pdf ebooks and mod resources goddammit
if you haven't played them, baldur's gate 3 is pretty much just divinity original sin 1/2 with the serial numbers filed on and flashier dragon age-style cutscenes
shit just cut out the middle man and play dragon age origins if you haven't
It's still expensive but you can get refurbished steam decks right now. They're out of stock on the absolute cheapest, but that one is a real good deal. $350 and you'd want to add your own $50-$100 sd card.
You can also emulate a lot of consoles.
Just in case that's in someone's budget! Way cheaper than a gaming PC.
And I can say without a doubt it runs great on my steam deck. I don’t just mean the graphics - I prefer it over my laptop because it’s easier to see - but they also got the controller support done almost perfectly. It’s the first game I’ve enjoyed this much since Baldur’s Gate II.
Pathfinder Kingmaker or Wrath of the Righteous are probably better alternatives, since Pathfinder fixes at least some of the problems with D&D (Pathfinder 2e fixes more than 1e did, but those games are both 1e). Kingmaker at least has some dogshit brainworms (haven't played Wrath of the Righteous so I can't comment on its brainworms), but is probably the best CRPG I've ever seen apart from that problem.
Bg2 is good as is planescape torment. The UI for both are not good by today's standards but they are both cool.
Torment has an especially good story and the combat in that game is pointless busy work anyway so just put it on low difficulty, put all your points in wisdom/charisma/int in that priority and then enjoy the story.
The icewind dale games are good if you like the tactical combat elements of this type of game. ID is all tactical combat, torment is all story, bg1/2 are a great mix of both.
It runs pretty well on wine and proton for me! i5 2500k and 2070super using Heroic Games Launcher and linux Mint. 10 or so hours played and maybe 2 ctd’s is all
Been playing for about 20 hours on wine 8.1 + dxvk 2.2
You just have to use the --skip-launcher option to avoid the atrocious Larian launcher
Got two crashes in that time (one from the game, one kernelspace nvidia driver crash), but otherwise it's extremely fluid on ultra quality on a 1070ti (no lag at all). It's fucking awesome.
It can help but it's not necessary. You will be more familiar with some of the characters. BG1 is a bit slower and has plenty of challenging stuff in a nice big world. BG2 is slightly more linear but has some QOL tweaks so you get into the action a bit faster.
It's a classic for a reason. If you enjoy isometric RPGs (the first two Fallouts, Planescape: Torment, Neverwinter Nights, Arcanum, Wasteland 2 and 3, Divinity: Original Sin 1 and 2, Disco Elysium), you'll enjoy BG2 as well.
BG3 is on the GeForce Now streaming service, so you could try that. If you've not used it before then I'm pretty sure you can get a free 6 month trial and then cancel the subscription. Should be more than enough time to finish BG3!
They are such different kinds of games that I can't even definitely tell you if you'd like Baldur's Gate III (or II, or I) if your frame of reference is the Diablo series.