The Watcher (Day 170)

I'm not sure Baldur's Gate makes for the most compelling multiplayer experience. Even though I love the game, I have to admit the gameplay is really dated and frustrating--especially early on. You'll sit there and watch as your pixelated characters swipe their weapons futilely at hobgoblins, missing something like 50% of the time. You have little influence on whether or not combat is successful. You may be taken out in one shot or you might kill your opponents on the first hit. It's not really up to you at that point. Most RPGs rely on RNG to a certain extent but it's especially frustrating at level 1 in Baldur's Gate.

Still, I think if I can convince my co-op partner to stick it out, he might start to actually enjoy it. I'm in favor of restricting our party size so that we gain levels more quickly, although it might be a good idea to temporarily recruit Xzar and Montaron to assist in taking down the mage at the entrance of the Friendly Arm. Once we can start legitimately buying supplies and gaining levels, I think the game will pick up steam. A sizable percentage of the experience for me is in the lore and the dialogue--and I fear he might be skimming over that a bit too much. We'll see what happens, though.

If anything, maybe we'll just play it every now and then, making progress slowly. I'm in favor of that since I played through the game somewhat recently. I don't mind taking it slow this time. Truth be told, I'd like to resume our playthrough of Final Fantasy VI, but I'm unsure whether or not he'd like to continue. Our options for co-op games are a tad limited at the moment. We played a little bit of Kirby Super Star, an old favorite of mine. It's a great game, but there's only so much play time you can get out of it. We only played for maybe an hour and a half and managed to complete three or four of the game modes.

We also looked into Secret of Evermore, for which there exists a 2 player hack. It seemed to be working for him, but I couldn't get it to work at all. It's strange, because we were using the exact same version of the ROM and the exact same version of the emulator--but it worked for him and not me. Irritating, to say the least. I'd really like to play that game for the historical perspective if nothing else. I might do it on my own at some point, but. . .who knows when that might happen.

I think we're going to try out netplay on a PlayStation emulator pretty soon. I don't have high hopes but I definitely don't mind giving it a try.