Agreed with the lack of foreshadowing in BG1 and BG2! While sometimes fights are foreshadowed, either by the details of the quest or the terrain (hmmm, it’s a long, wide staircase with a long, wide hall at the bottom - is there a dragon at the end? Yes, yes there is), there are definitely some really tough fights without much warning about what’s coming. I probably underestimate this in my own playthroughs, because I’ve played it enough that I know from experience what enemies each fight has, but it’s definitely a lot harder for new players.
Yeah, the limited spell slots are straight up just a mechanic from D&D, so that’s something you’ll find in all CRPGs using 2nd and 3rd edition. It gets easier at higher levels, as you have more spell slots, but in BG at low levels, you do just have to rest often. It is fine to have wizards using, say, a sling for the easy fights and save their spells for when they really need them. If it helps, though, with most quests there’s no actual time pressure, so you can’t fail it if you do have to do one fight, then rest, then the next fight, and rest again. If you like turn-based, BG and BG2 have settings for auto-pausing with each turn, which replicates a turn-based system by allowing you more time to plan out your next move.
So, yeah, the fact that it’s a beautiful game is definitely part of it! Visually it’s stunning, and the music is also really beautiful. I also think it’s superbly written: there’s absolutely no dialogue, but there is still a narrative as you play through each area, and I think that’s genuinely very hard to do well, but Spirit of the North does. I really got invested in the relationship between the two characters. There’s also no combat or fighting in the game, so it’s all focused around the platforming and puzzle elements.
I can definitely see why it’s not to everyone’s tastes. It got “very positive” on Steam, so it’s rated more highly on PC than on the PS, and the negative reviews it did get are complaining about either the controls or the game not telling you what you need to do. So the former is fair, I think: the devs focused on making a beautiful game, so it’s about the experience, not the mechanics. The controls aren’t bad as such, but they’re not as smooth as you’d expect for a platformer, I guess? You get the occasional moment of “why didn’t I make that jump?” But there’s no “miss the jump, die, restart the level” mechanics, so it’s normally 1-3 jumps that you need to repeat if you fall. I found the platforming elements really forgiving in terms of not punishing you for screwing up.
The second criticism, that the game doesn’t tell you what you need to do, I think is unfair. The direction you need to go in is always the way that feels most intuitive, either because of a path, wall, or just the shape of the terrain. Some of the puzzles need you to stop and think about them, and the game doesn’t hold your hand by going “and do this here, and that there, and then that”.
The game I’d most compare it to is Abzu, but with more Nordic and less ocean vibes. If you’ve played Abzu and enjoyed it, then you’ll probably enjoy Spirit of the North too.
I would have thought all those games use very similar rules
They actually don’t! Because each of the D&D games used whichever edition of D&D was current at the time, and the rules of D&D varied a lot between editions. So Baldur’s Gate 1 and 2 used 2nd edition, while Neverwinter Nights uses 3rd edition, and Baldur’s Gate 3 uses 5th edition. So it’s not so much an issue with Bioware or the Infinity Engine, as much as 2nd edition D&D is… not as intuitive as some of the later ones. Just as an example, in 2nd edition a lower armour class (AC) score is better than a higher one: without that knowledge, it’s very easy to use the wrong gear.
That said, a lot of BG/BG2’s encounters are really, really tough if you’re relying primarily on physical attacks. Having a wizard in the party with the right spells makes a huge difference. While there’s a lot of party configurations that can work, a solid mix would be 3 fighter/ranger/paladin/etc, 1 wizard/arcane spellcaster, 1 cleric/divine spellcaster, and 1 thief.
With Neverwinter Nights, because it’s based on 3rd edition, if you’ve played either of the Pathfinder games, you’ll find the ruleset pretty similar. Pathfinder as a system forked from D&D 3.5, so while there’s some differences in the finer details, most of it will be very familiar and will largely do what you expect it to.
Been playing Spirit of the North this week. I’ve actually finished it, including 100% achievement completion, because it’s not a huge game. What is really sticking out to me right now, though, is that I adore this game. I like a lot of games, but it’s pretty rare for me to absolutely love one.
I’ve also just finished a run through Baldur’s Gate 2, playing a bard for the first time ever. I enjoyed the class more than I thought I would. Onwards to Throne of Bhaal next week!
I think this is the crux of the issue. There’s been a trend for AAA to push for bigger and more ambitious games, which leads to long, expensive development cycles. But pretty much everyone who is passionate about gaming can point to a game that stuck with them not because it was huge and ambitious, but because it did one thing really well. Games don’t have to be huge to be amazing.
This resonates so much with me. I was hoping to upgrade my GPU this summer, and… yeah, that hasn’t happened. But new release games are almost always a mess for the price paid, and there’s an awful lot of indie games that run perfectly on my computer as it is right now. I don’t think people like us are the target demographic of AAA studios.
Remember Baldur’s Gate 2, which had multiple installation options for different amounts of the game running from the HDD vs CD, and it felt so extravagant to go “install all of it on the HDD!”
I’m a lot like you as well. I’m one of those players who buys cosmetics from cash shops when I see something I really fall in love with, but I don’t feel the need to buy everything. I look at it as an occasional treat: sure I won’t own it when the game shuts down at some point in the future, but if I spent the money on, say, a takeaway meal or a night out, that lasts a couple hours and then it’s gone. I’m definitely a dolphin, not a whale.
But I wouldn’t spend a vast fortune on trying to get everything if I have to spend real money. In some MMOs I’ve bought cash shop cosmetics from the auction house, though. I think that can distort the impression of how much someone has spent in the cash shop, making it look like they’re “all in”, when in reality, they’ve just been playing for so long that they have more in-game currency than they know what to do with.
I reckon the “dolphins” are more common than you think.
He raised the point that JK had very little to do with the development of the game, and the development team seems to really care.
The development team got paid regardless of how well the game sold, and unless the company operates a system of employee profit-sharing, they’re not going to see any of the benefits of the game doing well. So the “buy it to support the devs” argument doesn’t really hold any weight, save in the hypothetical scenario that they’ll get a payrise for working on the studio’s next title.
Same here. I played in 2016, dropped it for ages because there wasn’t much too it (especially for those of us who don’t live in cities), and picked it up again in 2023. That was largely because friends were playing it. I got bored and dropped it again in less than a week. Apparently my Pokemon from 2016 are quite valuable because of… something that was added to the game that makes them very desirable? But given I didn’t want to keep playing, what would I trade them for that I’d actually want?
So… this is going to come across as a weird suggestion, given that the company providing it is actually evil, but… I’m actually getting good usage from Google Play Pass at the moment. A £5/month subscription gives access to a wide range of Android games with absolutely no in app purchases and no adverts. I’m not sure if any MMOs are included in the catalogue: there’s like a thousand games in the program and I’ve tried out 4 so far. Because that’s the thing I’ve really noticed. With no in app purchases, I play a game for longer as I don’t run up against demands for money, adverts, or difficulty walls that are intended to get you to pay. So I just keep playing until I’ve done everything I wanted to do.
If you can tolerate the evil that is Google, it might be worth getting the free trial month and see if there are any MMOs.
That’s so disappointing. I haven’t really kept up with anime in recent years, but what I loved about the anime I watched when I was much, much younger was how different it was compared to the western media I was familiar with.
I can understand why fantasy settings are pretty stale, not just in games but in a variety of other media as well. Fantasy can be complex, and using old, familiar tropes (elves are haughty and love nature, dwarves are stubborn and love gold, humans are the world’s jack-of-all-trades) lowers the barrier to entry, which is really important when you want something to be easily marketable to as large an audience as possible. People know what to expect from familiar fantasy tropes, which means they can focus on plot and gameplay rather than going “so what’s that character supposed to be?”
But it’s boring. I love it when a fantasy setting isn’t afraid to trust the intelligence and curiosity of its audience and do something weird.