Should I start with 1 or 2?

Should I start with 1 or 2?
Playing the OG Fallouts has gotten me hungry for more isometric CRPGs

>ever playing anything out of release order

Start with 1, cause that's where non retarded people start to count.

The original is fantastic, and serves as a well crafted low level AD&D experience. It eases you in, but its solid. 2 is more intricate, with a deeper plot and characters, and a more tactical experience. Import for best results.

I highly recommend the original, not the EE, for your first time through. The mechanics change a good bit, and it loses some charm.

baldur's gate 2 takes up less storage space (thus takes less time to download) so i kinda wanted an excuse

Some people say 2 is the best and there's an argument to be made for that, but if you've never played them before you may as well start with 1 and go through the series. I also would say don't listen to that other user and it doesn't really matter if you play the original or EE.

1 sucks. Insanely cookie cutter, I guess because it's the mold that the cutter is based on. Still a miserable experience. Plus with how the levels work the combat is inherently less interesting than 2, especially as a wizard

Skip 1. There's no need to play it and is inferior in all aspects compared to 2.

I'm going to give a little more elaborate explanation than the usuall 'skip the first one' poster because I think it usually isn't explained in a way that reflected my own experience.

I recommend skipping BG 1 because I personally enjoyed the type of game BG 2 was a lot more and they are really fairly different kinds of games.

BG 2 is the crowning achievement of the later style of Bioware RPG development where there is a much greater focus on player choice in the narrative and party interactions. These are the kinds of RPGs I like, and the kind of stuff Bioware would really become mainstream doing. KOTOR, Mass Effect and the like. BG 2 is probably the best RPG of this style ever made.

BG 1 is more in the vein of earlier computer RPGs where the focus is more on tactical combat and dungeon crawling. The narrative elements and a degree of player choice are there, but they are secondary to the finely tailored combat.

BG2's combat is infinitely more interesting than the first game's, and dungeon crawling in both is awful.

The first is great so you can get used to characters that appear in the second game and be fully prepared for their retardation or assholishness. The first also allows you to learn Sleep / Cloud and Skeleton tactics or you can just hamfist your way through it while also setting yourself up to have a really strong main character instead of just getting a class at the start. If you're a fan of lore, BG1 also sets up the events of BG2 and Throne of Bhaal quite well, without going too deep into itself for no reason.

Dungeon crawling being more of a genre description. Literal dungeons aren't really a significant part of either.

>I also would say don't listen to that other user and it doesn't really matter if you play the original or EE.
You miss out on more entertaining low level spell mechanics and items that were toned down considerably. You also miss out on RNG lightning strikes, which means my personal favorite thing can't happen.

Drizzt, being struck by lightning, starting his dialogue, then immediately dying to a Gnoll.

You can skip first one if you want. It's good, but not great. But starting with the second one could be overwhelming for a completely new player.

Baldur's Gate is one continuous journey and most of the fun is building your character from a pussy who can't take one a wolf to a God

Just skipping to the second game takes out all the fun, yes BG2 is the better game but only plebs dislike BG1, it's also a very good game

Going straight to BG2 is like going straight to The Two Towers in Lord of the Rings, you miss out on most of the backstory and build up

>only plebs dislike BG1

The whole game is boring. Combat is too easy via bow/Sleep cheese, most of the areas lack any connection to the plot and look/feel identical, none of the NPCs have any character to them, and the plot shits itself in the last act.

The only reasons people praise it are nostalgia or brownie points.

you can cheese BG2 even worse than BG1

you don't really have any idea what you're talking about and just want dismiss BG1 being a classic as nostalgia

BG2's cheese is at least interesting. "Use bows" and "cast Sleep" aren't interesting or fun.

Good luck doing that for end game.

I skipped FO1 and started with 2. Regretted it dearly. Didn’t make the same mistake with BG1 and I’m glad of it.

>Combat is too easy via bow/Sleep cheese
my dude, you can cheese the fuck out of BG2 a lot worse than BG1

i dunno man, why would you skip BG1 when it's not only a great game, but it's like half the story of the baldur's gate saga

2 is by far a better game but 1 does a better job of easing you into the world and getting you used to the mechanics and controls (which are identical between the two games and not explained in any way whatsoever in BG2).

You can start with 2 (that's what I did) but I wouldn't recommend it.

It's a lot more satisfying to play through the whole saga, BG1 is a nice fun warm up, gets you ready for the BG2 main course and I feel a lot more attached to my MC and NPCs like Minsc and Edwin if I adventured with them in BG1

If you're not familiar with how D&D works, jumping right into 2 might be a little overwhelming. You start with a number of abilities you won't really know how to use, and enemies are tougher and require you to have a basic understanding of how things work. BG1 eases you into things, though you'll still probably die a lot.

You start off being a little shrimp who doesn't dare leave the path for fear of encountering a lone wolf that will end you, who dreads going to sleep at night because of the likelihood of being ambushed in the night by bandits or worse. Then, you start surviving those ambushes. Then you start making those bandits regret their decision to attack you. Then you lose your fear of going off the beaten path. That feeling is great and will continue through pretty much the whole trilogy, ending up with epic god-level battles by the end.

You don't even have to explore everywhere in BG1, which gives you much more freedom to wander around than 2 does. You can fly through the story points fairly quickly, though if you want to do the special dungeon it would be advisable to explore and level up and gain better gear. If it turns out that you're feeling bored with it, you can get to the end pretty quickly and move on to 2. There are quite a few nods to the first game in 2 which will make more sense if you've played 1, though nothing is really important to the story.

One of the biggest strengths of BG is that it teaches you by failure. The first time you play, you very well might walk off and die with Imoen. So you try again, and run into 2 fucks on the road. They stick with you, but eventually start bitching and leave if you don't go where they wanna go. So you either move the story forward, or fuck off to find new allies.
In the mean time, you learn HOLY FUCK, LIGHTNING IS DEADLY a few times, and how to position your party.

Is Neverwinter Nights good? I'm aware it has a glowing legacy of an amazing mod community, but is the base game good?

The original is fine, 2 is shit, MotB is good.

It's serviceable but far from amazing (just fetch quests radiating out from a hub town for most of the game with an okay story to push it along) but the SoU and HotU expansions are pretty good.

Considering 2 picks up almost immediately from the ending of 1, play 1 first. If you want to go full-canon, Your party should consist of Imoen, Khalid, Jaheria, Minsc and Dynaheir.

>Playing the OG Fallouts has gotten me hungry for more isometric CRPGs
>so I will now proceed to play shitty h&s garbage with zero roleplaying
Play Arcanum, not this trash.

Going from Fallout directly to Arcanum is why I hate Arcanum.

I started from BG2. The walk speed is slow and the real time with pause combat sucks, and there's really nothing to write home about, but if it's "infinitely better" than 1 then don't look back OP.

The framerate option is there for a reason. Bump it up to 45.

They say that it's cheating so I never did that. Apparently there's boots of speed later in the game. I forgot to mention that I like the town ambiences. The slum district sounds good. And the dialogue is well written and acted, so there is that as well. And some of the loot is alright I guess.

>half the story

The only plot thread that carries over is revealed near the very end of the game. The rest of it is completely pointless.

BG1 is not the greatest game ever made but it is still worth one playthrough. Also the story is important for the second game, and especially for the expansion of the second game.

If there's a CRPG with even more shittier combat, then it's Arcanum. I love the world in that game but it's not a very fun game to play.

>the story is important for the second game

How?

>tfw no Tamoko gf

If you've never played a crpg start with 2, if you have start with 1