Everyone that's saying you can play the BG games in real time, if you have skill, gotta upload a vid of them beating Melissan on insane without cheesing rests or pausing.
This, is to settle the question "Can it be done or not?". Just so there won't be any doubt about it. Not Insane difficulty because the game is meant to be played at CORE RULES. Besides, not that it would have mattered, as the party took almost no damage.
Now that that's out of the way, let me say a few things.
- No, I definitely don't expect the majority of players would try to do something like this.
- This is without pausing at all. If you just pause a few times, it would be more forgiving and easier to pull off. Unless you're going to tell me, "No, pausing 5 times already makes it boring." I have nothing to say to that.
- How many times did I reload? You have no idea how many times I reload on all the big fights throughout the game, and NOT because it takes a lot of retries to win, but simply because it's fun. For this video, I didn't keep count, but I assure you, it was *nothing*. Maybe even fewer times than some players need when playing normally.
- This video is to demonstrate what careful planning, good execution, and good understanding of the game, can achieve. To answer your question, "Was it tedious?" No, it wasn't. Learning your enemies, knowing that you can do better, trying to come up with the best plan, refining your execution, then seeing it all comes together - if you can't find fun in this while playing a combat-heavy game, well, that is a shame.
- Now if you say, "yeah ok, cool, most players are not as hardcore as you." Seriously, what does it take, really? Read ingame descriptions. Keep in mind the important details. Experiment and play around with your toolbox. Pay attention to how things work. It's not like it takes days and nights studying and doing research.
- Now let me ask you something. Have you ever *try* to play the game without pausing? In vanilla BG, there is an engine bug in which if you pause the game while an enemy is casting a spell, they will be interrupted. This is why sometimes I play through vanilla BG without pausing if there are enemy casters. To me, this makes the game fun in a different way. Chances are you'd need an entirely different approach to the same fight, as well as more careful planning and very good execution to pull it off. It forces you to execute fast and precisely, and this unusually hectic gameplay makes the game exciting to me.
- So the bottom line is, I get that there are different types of players. Some really only play for the story. But honestly, sometimes people complain a game is boring or whatever, yet they can't be bothered to try and find out if there is a way to make the game more fun for them and also can't be bothered to try and get better at the game they're playing, either.
"We make our choices and take what comes and the rest is void."
