D&D General BG 1,2, DiA?

I don't know about magic weapon availability,

Beamdog actually added a few magic items in the enhanced edition so that there aren't any trap options. Some weapon types are still rare, like katana, but there is at least one +2 option somewhere in the world.

For BG1 perhaps. For BG2, the individually strongest party members are evil. Evil is a quick and convenient path to power, and you don't have to fight nearly as many level-draining enemies. If you go evil in BG2, be sure to get Edwin the Nether Scroll.

All my advice was BG1 specific.

I found BG1 to be much harder than BG2. Traps are more frequent and deadly, characters have fewer hit points, and characters miss a lot more often. I only beat BG1 once.

Huh, it was the reverse for me. I can get through BG1 a little easier than BG2. At least the main story, the Tales of the Sword coast extra areas are probably the hardest BG content across both games.
 

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Some notes:

Bards: they level faster, and spells scale with level, they are fireball monsters (if you don't like cheese, turn on friendly fire, it's much more fun to incinerate innocent civies, fireball has a radius of 30 ft in this edition). Both the NPC bards are rubbish and annoying though.

Lightning Bolt. Always use this in confined spaces.

Magic Missile is your go to spell for interrupting enemy casters and removing mirror images in BG1.

Cheese: Take one level of fighter kensai and dual class into mage.

Heya, it's me, Imoen. Your first companion is a strong thief, so you don't need to be one yourself, but it's possible you may find her annoying.
 


Side note
At that price I'd say it's an easy yes, as long as you can deal with the old AD&D 2e rules and the simple presentation by modern standards. There's lots of content and their reputation as classics are well earned. You should know that these two games actually have some big differences between them. So if the BG1 doesn't quite work for you, I'd still recommend trying BG2. BG1 is almost an open world game. Most of the world is open to you at the start and there's a big emphasis on exploration. The story is relegated mostly to the background. The story is interesting once it all comes together, it's just not the focus of the game. BG2 is a more linear and tightly crafted experience, with a much greater emphasis on the story. Your companions in particular are a much bigger deal than the first game.

Playing on a controller has some pluses and minuses. The game was designed to work with mouse and keyboard, so getting it to work on a controller requires a fairly complicated ui. There's a bit of a learning curve to it, but once you get it perfected, I found it works with the controller almost as well as the original mouse and keyboard. On the plus side, you can directly control your party's movement with the left analog stick outside of combat. When doing this your party snaps to their positions in formation, speeding up significantly if they get blocked by terrain. This actually solves some to the bad pathfinding problems in the game. This feature alone makes me prefer it to the mouse and keyboard.

Don't hesitate to lower the difficulty if you find it overly difficult. These games can be pretty hard at first. You can easily die to the first enemy encounter on core rules difficulty, and it remains difficult until you really understand all the systems and options available to you. I recommend pausing often in this game, it really plays best if you treat it more like a turned based system. Trying to play it in real time is almost impossible, unless you lower the difficulty to the lowest setting.

Word is that fans are working on creating a BG1 campaign mode for Baldur's Gate 3 if you don't like 2e rules.
 

I'll give a humble shout out to a Gnomish Fighter/Illusionist in BG1. Hitting things with blindness then shooting them with a bow while they stagger around never gets old, and is amazing for Legacy of Bhaal difficulty.
 

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