I guess they haven't tried Temple of Apshai or Wizardry: Proving Grounds of the Mad Overlord yet.

A bit on Apshai from Wikipedia:

Early tape versions of the game had no means to save progress, and thus the player was prompted to note down all statistics when quitting the game, and had to type them in again manually at the start of the next game. Later floppy versions fixed this by allowing to save the status on the disk.

I remember this! My friend had Apshai on his C64 with tape drive. I had it on my Apple II with floppy drive. 😎

Oh gawd.

Hardcore my ass. I'd like to see them play Pool of Radiance (or any SSI Goldbox game, for that matter). Or Bard's Tale, any of the Realms of Arkania games or Darklands. Or you cold go really old school and give them Nethack.

Perhaps they mean "hardcore" as in "frustratingly cumbersome interface" and not in the sense of being unusually challenging.

Zangband, baby!

Jorpho wrote:

Perhaps they mean "hardcore" as in "frustratingly cumbersome interface" and not in the sense of being unusually challenging.

I think so, too. Enhanced Edition doesn't change a lot in the way of gameplay/difficulty, after all. Then again, I can't say that it's a night and day difference in terms of graphics/interface

I haven't played the original version since the early 00's, but when I tried the Enhanced Edition the "high resolution" made my eyes hurt, everything was so small compared to the original I couldn't play for more than 15 minutes. I know you can zoom in, but I noticed a significant loss of quality when you do that, making the game a pixelated mess.

I remember reading that the company that developed the Enhanced Edition only had the original 640x480 sprites & backgrounds to work with, but if that's the case then probably next time I play this game it will be the original version.

Heh... the original Pool of Radiance was hardcore to me.... I need to re-memorize my preferred spells by re-selecting whatever I have cast. There's no automatic "bookmarked" spells for re-memorizing them, unlike the later Dragonlace's Krynn series.

And unlike the later Krynn games, there is no "Fix" option. Fix was using your clerics to cast healing spells on any of your injured party members and automatically re-memorize them and forwards the time required to memorize them. Fix can be selected repeatedly until they are healed.

In Pool of Radiance, you have to do this manually - memorize healing spells, cast them, re-select the spells and rest until memorized and repeat until fully healed. And it's not unusual to start characters with only single digit hit-points.

In Dark Queen of Krynn, in certain areas, every few steps will be an encounter...

I wish Baldur's Gate had true turn-based combat. I felt I had more control over my characters in turn based combats.

Malik wrote:

I wish Baldur's Gate had true turn-based combat. I felt I had more control over my characters in turn based combats.

I settle for turning off party AI, then hit the space bar to pause combat very frequently. 😀

I thought all of the old Infinity Engine games could be configured to pause after every "turn".

Jorpho wrote:

I thought all of the old Infinity Engine games could be configured to pause after every "turn".

Lots of pause options. Probably the most important is "Pause when enemy sited".

edit: just played a bit with pause every turn. It does pause quite a lot, even when nothing happens in a turn. I think I prefer it this way though. Leaving it on for now.

jheronimus wrote:

Jorpho wrote:

Perhaps they mean "hardcore" as in "frustratingly cumbersome interface" and not in the sense of being unusually challenging.

I think so, too. Enhanced Edition doesn't change a lot in the way of gameplay/difficulty, after all. Then again, I can't say that it's a night and day difference in terms of graphics/interface

I've always found BG1Tutu and Enhanced Edition both easier than the original game. No clue why though.

Personally I'd recommend people who can deal with a very archaic interface go with the original version and everyone else play the Enhanced Edition. They're both great options.

im not sure about bg1 but for bg2 you cann have patches that restore original difficulty of the bosses, for example you'd be fighting 2-3 dragons a t the same time + minions in one instance

I suppose in a way, playing the original Baldur's Gate is hardcore. You can install it and play it off hard, durable physical media. That is six CDs, and you don't need to install most of it. You cannot do that with the Enhanced Edition.