Well I played through BG2 before the original saga, so when i recently went through and beat BG1 i realized that Durlag's Tower and Watcher's Keep were rather similar in many ways... it was almost kind of a disappointment to realize that watcher's keep was really kind of more of the same almost (but with a harder boss). So is it just me or did other people notice this when they played through the BG games

*spoilers*

*I did warn you...*

I don't really think so. Durlag's Tower was an escapade that quickly went horribly, horribly wrong; a journey into the heart of one man's madness and his legacy. I spent hours going through it, trying to avoid getting killed by the endless traps and nasty surprises. It actually tied into another quest, too.

Watcher's Keep, on the other hand, is about jamming as much weirdness and nasty monsters into the smallest possible space, IMO. That, adding an awesome bad guy, and heaps of (over-)powerful items. ToB wasn't exactly thick on plot, at least not in comparison with BG1 or BG2, but it did draw everything together. The only "superfluous" element that didn't advance the storyline was WK... which is why I normally deal with WK in SoA.

To be fair, both are entirely optional and don't really add to the plot of the main game. Then again, you can level that criticism at the Lost Isle quest, Firewine Bridge or a few other non-essential parts of BG1. Both also have a few great little side-elements, as well (like the Warrior's Skull, the Chess Board and the Soultaker).

They have their similarities, but IMO they are both totally different.

Like NonSequitir said, DT is more of one man's madness and his legacy.

WK is an actual prision, in which you find some nasty "guards".

All in all, I like Wathcer's Keep more so than Durlag's Tower...mainly because WK has more enemies, more loot, and more XP to be had. :thumb: :rolling:

Between Durlags tower I got to say. Durlags seemed to have a lot more story to it. Though certain details about it seemed rather contrived.

WK seems to be a lot more varying. Allows you to do it in pieces realistically and seems like they thought it out well even if they didn't tie it all exclusively together and force you to push through it. Sometimes I do WK in pieces. sometimetimes I run it all at once.

Durlag's Tower has a story behind it. WK is just one big dungeon crawl for epic level characters.

I also had the impression they were very similar. Durlag can be played at any point during BG1, and Watcher can be played at any point during BG2 (which is noteworthy since otherwise the two expansions are radically different, since ToB can follows SoA directly). Both are optional, and both are a single multi-level dungeon romp combining lots of fighting with the occasional puzzle-solving. Even the "guardians of the seal" part is similar.

The greatest difference in my opinion is that Durlag is one of the best dungeons in a CRPG, while Watcher's Keep is rather dull and unimaginative. Durlag feels like one whole where everything fits together, while WK is just a disjointed and completely disconnected series of levels. Comabt in WK is far more tedious, and items are overkill (ever noticed how you find +3 arrows in almost every chest?)

I liked Durlag's Tower better for one simple reason: I am so sick of ridiculous prisons! :mad: The idea that the bad guy can be so very close to finally breaking out when it takes you hours just to get in is ludicrous. Why can't you just go in through the exit he's making? He's still working on it and not ready to face anyone, and here comes the good guy blasting through at him when he's only 90% done. Now that would be smart; but no, we've got to do some dungeon crawl through hundreds or thousands of monsters just to get to this big bad guy and stop him from getting to where you were before you even started this whole thing! :rolleyes:

Everyone who's played FPS games knows it's a lot simpler to wait for your opponent to come strolling out and pop them in the head while they're still registering your presence, than it is to blast your way into where they are and have them ready for you because of all the noise you're making.

With Durlag's Tower, you had to go in because he wasn't coming out. You even had a couple reasons to go in: missing kid, dwarf looking for dagger, even revenge for ruining your tour. But WK's reason is pretty stupid: "I have to get how close to the bad guy to lock down the building?" And it's patently obvious that it could have been done from outside because that's one of your options at the end. :rolleyes:

The level three 'maze' in WK is downright stupid, and there's no clue for the torches in level four aside from the floor, which you're discouraged from looking at by all the objects in the previous rooms that are just background. Add to that the fact that it looks like different programmers designed each of the levels (a distinct possibility) and nothing fits together at all. The whole thing is simply arbitrary.

DT had its bad spots too, I'll admit. I mean, a chessboard where you can't move or play chess? :rolleyes: Not to mention all the cheesily hasted monsters. All those books on the floor added to the atmosphere, but I stopped reading them after about the third one, when I realized that they were all going to be just a few cryptic words with no meaning. They would have been better as info triggers that you could read without going into your inventory screen.

But the plot of DT was magnifique! By the end you really felt sorry for old Durlag, and I still do every time I play through BG1. :cry: The only trap that I have ever liked was also in DT; that one at the beginning of the level with the elemental guardians, which has the fireball exploding at regular intervals and hitting the entire room. :thumb: For once in both games, a trap that you can dodge. (Lightning traps BEND if you move. :rolleyes: )

WK had its good points too, but relatively few. The warrior skull thing reminded me of old games like Zork, which was nice for a little reminiscing, but annoying that you couldn't really control the fights. I'm partial to "endless horde" scenarios as well, so the perseverance test was kind of nice. :evil: The other two Helmite Ghost tests wer okay too, but the sphere thing must have been a backup idea or something. Only the first level meets with my total approval; finding tinderbox, slippers, etc. is classic RPG, and the enemies you face at the end are tough but not too tough.

Actually if you talk to that idiot DemonKnight in the bottom of Durlag's right you find out this it is just going to be his base of operations so he can come out and wreak havoc on the countryside. Sure you have the kid to go after. You have the stupid little runestones to collect. But the monsters to get in you have to wait until towards the end of the game unless you've imported your character back into the beginning of the game. You have to be 2/3s the way thorugh the game to get some key items and even find out about the little kid down there. Which if you believe the guy when you first go into the first level of the lower portion of the tower their all dead so you could concievably write the kid off and wait for the stupid Demon Knight to come out to wreak his havoc just like sitting there for DemoGorgon to break free.

Yet Oh no. If you pay attention to Watcher's keep even a little it's not physically breaking out for the Demogorgon. It's breaking through wards and magical barriers which is totally different and your character doesn't have to go through by dungeon crawling his way down a keep that is vaguely disguised as a series of tests and wards that nobody even knows if they are really broken and if the demogorgon even actually is anywhere close to breaking out. And none of this takes into account the fact that if/when Demogorgon is free of the magical wards he can just jump to another plane of existance and back out anywhere he pleases. He's not really going to just physically come out of the tower unless he decides your butt is worth kicking or something.

So waiting is as faulty as going in with Watchers Keep but you get to the bottom of Durlag's and through various choices you actually find out it's an inevitability for the DemonKnight after dragging your butt through a series of traps. Most of which you trigger on yourself just to get through the stupid place because they aren't traditional traps and locks you can pick and just move on.

They both have bonuses. they both have flaws. A bonus to Watchers Keep really seems to be that they designed it not really to be done all at once but instead be done through out SoA and ToB in it's design. As well as Variety to try and give people something more than the same thing over and over again.

Durlag's has story. Though in my opinion like I said sometimes Contrived. Like those Guardian Magic using Dwarves that only seem to be there to be there for a tough monster battle after you give them the items. When they could have easily just vanished and let you through. Also as part of the whole Durlag's thing we can't forget thta you retrieve the dagger and all of a sudden a cult of demon worshippers which is just a series of fights and a dumb demon that keeps reappearing until you kill him like 10 times or slaughter all of his followers. Combined with a cheesy power that he hits you right and he'll pop out of your body after about 2 minutes real time if you don't find a way to fix it.

(I do agree with the first level of WK being the best though. I do wish that more of it had been like that. Mad Lum's level gets close in some respects but not enough.

Also sorry if I offend anybody that's not my attention. this is just one thing I have a strong opinion on.)

[ November 23, 2005, 04:39: Message edited by: starwalker ]

You have to be 2/3s the way thorugh the game to get some key items and even find out about the little kid down there. Which if you believe the guy when you first go into the first level of the lower portion of the tower their all dead so you could concievably write the kid off and wait for the stupid Demon Knight to come out to wreak his havoc just like sitting there for DemoGorgon to break free. The guide leads you there, and the demonknight's malevolent appearance on the entry level gets you the rest of the way. It'd be a different story if he was imprisoned instead of already free to wreak havoc.

The runestones are a ***** though. :grin:

RE: Second paragraph
I'm going to assume you just misread my post and thought I was talking exclusively about WK in the first two paragraphs; that is not the case. If you'll notice, I didn't mention WK until the third paragraph; until then I was talking generically. You'll also notice that in that paragraph I addressed why you shouldn't need to slog through all that ****.

dragging your butt through a series of traps. Most of which you trigger on yourself just to get through the stupid place because they aren't traditional traps and locks you can pick and just move on. :confused: Uh, I don't know what kind of weak thief you had, but I was able to disarm every last one of them in all of the dozen or so times I've been through it. 80 in Find Traps should be able to handle everything, 100 would make sure.

Like those Guardian Magic using Dwarves that only seem to be there to be there for a tough monster battle after you give them the items. When they could have easily just vanished and let you through. Presumably it's a fight for the runestone, but even that's a pretty flimsy excuse when you've already been everywhere in the level fighting stuff to get the items together. They fall into my "cheesily hasted monsters" category (I know for a fact that at least one of them is; can't remember exactly how many).

Also as part of the whole Durlag's thing we can't forget thta you retrieve the dagger and all of a sudden a cult of demon worshippers which is just a series of fights and a dumb demon that keeps reappearing until you kill him like 10 times or slaughter all of his followers. I always found that a bit over the top as well, but that's an Ulgoth's Beard thing rather than a Durlag's Tower thing. A lot of other things in Ulgoth's Beard make me want to vomit too, but now I'm getting a little :yot: .

A bonus to Watchers Keep really seems to be that they designed it not really to be done all at once but instead be done through out SoA and ToB in it's design. Yeah, it's great that you can do different parts of it at different times, but did they really have to make the levels so disparate? It seems like there should be some travel time in between the levels or something. ;)

There is a mod in progress designed to dramatically improve Watcher's Keep. Hopefully that will help to change all of the negative comments here.

I agree that some of the levels seemed heavily out of place. That maze on level 3 was annoying but still fun in its own way. Levels 1, 2, and 5 I had a lot of fun with. I'm a sucker for an old-school dungeon crawl with a lot of puzzles.

I'm sorry if I misunderstood where and what you were tlaking about.

With WK I will admit I wish there was a way to just rip away the protections and let DemoGorgon out. Talk about an Ultimate evil choice. they don't give you that. I think that would be worth the dungeon crawl in and of itself.

The Teleport dungeon is in some ways classic dungeon crawl. I don't know how many of you remember the old Crystal Cave text game or other games where it was a pain going back the same way you went in places. Though I do honestly think it should have had at least a couple more dual or multi-room puzzles to solve. Ups the Frustration yes. But makes you feel far more accomplished to get through it. I like the Level with Mad Lums because it puts some of the puzzles back in. But their pretty straight forward. you don't really have to explore any to find them.


As for Durlags. There are certain traps that some would call features of the Dungeon like Shooting a dummy to open one door or close others on you and things like this that I could never find a way to pick. Even with real high thief abilities. But maybe I did something wrong myself. Though one very important one does disable itself after a fight if your party is positioned right so your not stuck. But I think that's more coding to the game for playability than the door itself.

As for Watchers it depends on my mood. I sometimes do the first couple levels sometime during SoA...But from what I hear you can't have any of the ToB items made until you get to ToB (things such as the Paladin's bracers being upgraded and things like that) and you only have so much space to carry everything you want to put together in SoA and a few other things on top of it. So it just hasn't been in my best interest to do any more over the time of SoA.

My biggest pet peeve with Watcher's is all that dang stuff they make you carry around. I always wait until I've got the Bag of Holding before attempting that place. I mean, the first level alone is boat-loads of slippers, ward stones, books, Lum's notes, etc. To say nothing of the endless stacks of arrows and potions.

Best part is that Warrior Skull bit. Total homage to Zork and the like, where you didn't have any control in fights. You simply typed "attack goblin" and sat back and prayed. Ah, those were the days... :D

I take the best of the arrows if I'm using them and keep myself full. You get too little gold to carry them back and sell them in my opinion. Though you do get the ammo belt inside Watchers Keep and you can at least in my experience pretty endlessly dump the arrows in there. My annoyance was getting them out again. But then I also tend to prefer the couple of bows that tend to make their own arrows. Gesen hits as a plus three if your not using other arrows.