Guys, I'm WitchHunter_Z and I have a confession to make: I've never played a Baldur's Gate game in my life.
 
I've heard so much about the legendary status of these games that it feels embarrassing to admit in any nerd circle that I've never touched these; never gone through that coming of age ceremony of completing one. That all ends today. While browsing Amazon I came across a deal far to good to pass up: both games with expansions on DVD for only £15. Needless to say I picked that up right away.
 
If anyone has recently replayed any of these I was wondering how the combat holds up? As much as I loved Planescape: Torment I almost felt it would be better with 90% of the combat removed. Does the combat in these suffer from the same clunkiness that plagued PST?
 
Soon, I install the first... and become a man.

Guys, I'm WitchHunter_Z and I have a confession to make: I've never played a Baldur's Gate game in my life.
 
I've heard so much about the legendary status of these games that it feels embarrassing to admit in any nerd circle that I've never touched these; never gone through that coming of age ceremony of completing one. That all ends today. While browsing Amazon I came across a deal far to good to pass up: both games with expansions on DVD for only £15. Needless to say I picked that up right away.
 
If anyone has recently replayed any of these I was wondering how the combat holds up? As much as I loved Planescape: Torment I almost felt it would be better with 90% of the combat removed. Does the combat in these suffer from the same clunkiness that plagued PST?
 
Soon, I install the first... and become a man.

PST has the worst combat of the infinity engine games, but none of them have "good" combat.   Probably the closest you'll come to a halfway decent mechanic is in Fallout 1&2, but in those games your companions are a danger to themselves and others.  Baldur's Gate has a pretty good set of spells - many recommend you make a mage (or a dual-class kensai or fighter/mage, since the early levels of BG suck so much) because only one NPC companion mage has the highest level spells (and he's evil).  

So, how'd it go?

I went back to BG recently to try it out again, and I was impressed by the amount of detail they put into the world, that they actually thought about player choice enough to account for the order in which you did things, or if you skipped something.  That takes a lot of attention to detail.
 
For me the combat is fine, but I realize it's not for everyone.  And yeah, sometimes games don't age well in certain categories; we had similar problems with the resolution.  Good to see you're willing to look past some of their non-fatal shortcomings.  Wish there were more folks like that.

You cant stop at shadows of amn!  Thats when the game gets good.

SOA blows one out of the water in every way. It's the best game you will ever play

 **Off topic** but the original Deus Ex is also incredible if you want to continue pushing your PC to its limits.  Not quite an RPG but very story heavy and quite fun once you get the hang of it. "