Personally, I always thought thought that battle was just stupid cheese - either you have a way to block Imprisonment and a +5 weapon and can beat him, or you don't and might as well not bother trying. That ring is pretty awesome, though.

That was the lich's name I'd forgotten. He's in a house or a crypt somewhere I think. Beating him involved using the Time Stop spell (among others) I seem to remember. I usually play with two mages and the last time I played BG2 I think they both had Time Stop memorised. But Kangaxx uses the same spell himself I think, my memory of the battle is vague though. It's one of the toughest battles in the game for sure.

This thread should really be about favourite moments from the whole BG series. For some reason I have several persistent memories of Baldur's Gate : meeting Drizzt in the wilderness, finding my first pair of Boots of Speed, Poe on the bridge, Cloakwood Forest and all the spiders, and the appearance of the mysterious Koveras. To my shame it took me ages to work out who Koveras really was ...

On that note, I have another one from BG1. It may not sound like much, but the first time I went to the Gnoll Stronghold I was awestruck. First that amazingly atmospheric cutscene, then the tough battle on the bridge, before pile upon pile of bastards stormed at us from seemingly every direction (later I heard saving all the time didn't help, as they would keep spawning). Eventually, after much looking around and headscratching, we found a certain prisoner at the bottom of a well.

Just about everything in Durlag's Tower and Watcher's Keep could be mentioned too. Can't wait to see what Project Eternity brings with its 19 level (or however many it were) dungeon.

But I didn´t knew that at that time :) This encounter forced me to play tactically and use every single resource I had in some meaningful way. Even though it did not help me in this fight, thanks to that I was much more prepared for fights ahead (Irenicus, Bohdi and the ending of ToB itself)- because of that they didn´t seem that hard (except the last one). After I could shape into that aforementioned form, I waltzed in like a boss, without companions, and killed him in one-on-one battle.

Mentioning the ring: because of a rare bug my cousin had two rings - if I remember correctly, one of the characters wearing it was killed, and after she resurrected him and took away the ring from him, it also stayed in the slot. She was afraid that removing the second one would causer it to disappear, so she never removed it from that character, and gave the first one to some other :)

The first time I saw the Slayer I was like, "holy shit! give me the code key Howard!". Seriously though, any confrontation with Irenicus was/is amazing, only because David Warner kicks ass.

Oh yes this. Especially 2 days trying to win him.

And this:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=cjqqRm8bTBw

I'll second the Gnoll Stronghold and rescuing Dynaheir, for BG 1. Just getting *to* the place was a challenge for a low level party, to say nothing of the fights once you *did* get there! :) To say nothing [again] of the fact that she is a great spell caster for a Good aligned party and that getting her mollifies Minsc... ;) At low level, it was very satisfying to accomplish.

For BG 2 it was the first time I got my Blade's Bard Stronghold, the theatre. The combination of meeting and rescuing Haer'Dalis [twice!], going through the quite challenging Planar Prison and then directing and producing a play was priceless. :)

All told, by far the most interesting and challenging Stronghold series of quests in the game, IMHO. Very clever and entertaining. I like the Ranger's Stronghold quest as well [especially the final reward] but it is more linear and more "Hack & Slash" , much like most of the other Stronghold quests, compared to the Bard's series of events....

Great 'Howard the Duck' reference!

:)

Favorite Baldur's Gate II moments? Let's see... where to begin...?

I'm replaying Baldur's Gate II now since the day I picked this amazing Dungeons & Dragons game up since release (more than 12 years ago!)... really... I'd say... revisiting and replaying every available quest with a different character class I've never played before... for example, a Sorcerer.

I think Mazzy the Halfling beating up on Gorf the Squisher has its moments.

Attacking all the various dragons with a well-prepared venture party throughout Faerun has its moments.

So many things that can happen in this game to list them all!

Don't make me pick. Please don't make me pick.

Alright. I will.

Bodhi's lair. First time around. Since I was playing a good character, of course. I'd never had any experience with D&D of any kind until my brother picked up BGII with no precursor. I'd never played the original, but I didn't really need that much backstory. I just leapt in.

Bodhi's lair was the first time things got serious. Everything could level drain me. There were traps everywhere. Vampires lurking around all corners. I HATED vampires. With a passion. When I finally staked all those bloodsuckers, when I finally kicked Bodhi out and went back to Linvail, and he said "okay, it's time to go to Spellhold," I was just absolutely overjoyed. I'd won the disc one finale, I was going to rescue Imoen. When I returned to Athkatla after that, we'd all gained so many levels and were, of course, nigh-indestructible to pretty much every common quest. And that was the moment where the destiny became mine to control.

Yeah, Baldur's Gate pretty much ruined me for all other games. I can't stop comparing the story to anything else I play. The other games never measure up.

Oh man, tell me about it...

A few days ago I tried to play Neverwinter Nights. Started out okay, but then I see we can only have 1 party member. And we can't control anything, not even inventory items. The story looked bad too.

Okay, lets try NWN2, I've heard good things about it. After playing for about 5 hours now, all I'm thinking is...

BG2 didn't have retarded UI
BG2 didn't have retarded AI
BG2 didn't have a lousy story (okay, I haven't learnt much about this tbh, due to the previous two points)
In BG2 you could actually do stuff without going through 12 submenus. All it usually took was one mouseclick
The camera didn't suck in BG2
Why oh WHY doesn't NWN2 have auto-pause? BG2 did.

So.. err, yes, I see what you are talking about. Nothing else compares. Except the other IE games.