I tried playing Harvest Moon on the SNES today and having played Stardew Valley for hours, I thought I’d try and see how tolerable the original Harvest Moon was in comparison. I know and understand it is unfair because there’s a 20 year gap between Harvest Moon and Stardew Valley, while also discrediting Harvest Moon’s later entries since there’s more than one.
Harvest Moon to me is a bit hard to revisit. Having to get used to only carrying two tools at the same time, your farm doesn’t seem as big, you don’t have a way to know that you’re tired as readily, you just have to watch for the signs and the village you visit doesn’t seem as characteristic. It’s a basic farming sim, it has to start somewhere.
But Stardew Valley does so many things that it is easier to revisit.
The original Neverwinter Nights after Baldur’s Gate 3.
NWN was fantastic for it’s time, loved the DM mode and online mods, but the clunky movement and walls of text without voiceovers just can’t compare.
I actually prefer walls of text these days. I find myself too impatient to sit through long, voice-acted diatribes. I can read 10 times faster than the voice actor can speak, so I just end up turning on subtitles and skipping most of the voice acting anyway.
I also just find that voice acting tends to compromise the amount of writing. They just won’t have the VA read a wall of text and instead they’ll cut it right down, removing tons of nuance. Voice also similarly compromises the amount of dialogue options available to the character. I have yet to see a voice acted game with the sheer breadth and depth of dialogue option choices as games like Planescape Torment or Fallout 2.
While I agree with you on how mediocre voice acting drags down most games, BG3 is one of the very few where the voice acting elevated the dialogue for me and the dialogue felt a lot less rambling than in NWN and other similar games. In BG3 the player character dialogue options are pretty robust, sometimes having six or more options to choose from, since the character doesn’t speak. I haven’t played Planescape Torment or Fallout 2 to compare, so I’ll take your word on them.
On a side note, BG3 was one of the games where the dialogue choices do matter. The worst are games where there are only a few poorly described choices and they have zero impact on what happens after! While I live Battletech (2019) the dialoge choices were completely pointless other than microfosing information. They would have been better off just having the NPCs banter after a single choice.
Personal preferences of course, which is why I love how many games there are to choose from.
Special shoutout to Astarion. His voice actor adds a LOT to the character, more than any of the others.
I don’t normally like that kind of character but he really grew on me fast. Astarian, Gale, and Karlach are my absolute favorites but the cast as a whole is solid.
Love Karlach, but I couldn’t stand Gale.
That’s what I am glad they included enough for personal preference and included the ability to respec them so they weren’t locked into their starting classes.
While I didn’t like his class much, it was his personality that really got me. I saw he can become a literal god in some endings. Sure didn’t happen in mine!
I’m trying to see some stuff in BG1 and 2 that I missed as I take another lap through the entire series, and I remember BG1 being a fairly easy, straight-forward game, but now that I’m replaying it, I remember that’s only the tail end of the game. Early in the game, when you’re stuck at level 1 for hours, lots of attacks just one-shot you, and it takes so long to get level 2. In Baldur’s Gate 3, you’re barely out of the tutorial area before you get level 2, so you just don’t have that problem with low HP.
I think BG3 also does max HP for 5e classws which is higher than the edition(s) used for 1 & 2. Did 1 & 2 use random HP for first level as well?
I don’t have an encyclopedic knowledge of 2e, but I think first level HP might be set in stone by class, and the Enhanced Editions of BG1 and 2 give you a max HP per level option, which doesn’t really help at level 1. Dynaheir keeps getting smoked with her mere 6HP, and she can’t get to level 2 fast enough.
Yeah, 2nd edition d&d was far, far more brutal than 5e.
If you’re revisiting BG1 via the Enhanced Edition it’s actually been changed a lot from the original game. One of the biggest differences is that summoning spells don’t scale in the number of minions you get the way they did in the original. I remember summoning great big walls of skeletons with Animate Dead and just having my entire party pelt the enemy with slings and arrows from relative safety. Can’t do that anymore!
Pelting the enemy with slings and arrows still works, but now and then they’ll still target me at range and land a hit. I don’t have a summoner in my party either, so I doubt I’d see a difference, especially at level 1.
I got through the original NWN multiple times, as well as various mods.
I got bored partway through BG3, never finished. Barely touched NWN 2.
I had started The Aielund Saga a couple of weeks ago. I never did finish the first time.
NWN is something I like to go back to, same with Titan Quest Because they are my comfort games. Meanwhile, I have so many newer games piling up
I tried playing Baldur’s Gate 2 after a few full plays of BG3, and it was nearly unplayable.