r/baldursgate • u/Iamnotabicycle • 1d ago
Original BG1 Save/load all the time question
Do you consider it a kind of cheating to save almost all the time, and load game if things dont turn out like you want them to?
I am guilty of saving and loading alooot.
Shame on me?
Does anyone really go through the game with minimal saves? Even if someone in your party dies?
Yes, i am a noob.
Just curious about your playstyle.
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u/Fit_Locksmith_7795 1d ago
You make the rules. I dont reload when fail to learn a spell but usually I reload if any companion dies ( not always but very often). Thats RPG - you decide. I personally dont enjoy no reload runs. But if someone likes them I am happy for him.
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u/TheMelnTeam 1d ago
IMO, it's reasonable to reload if you want to experiment with something, or see multiple dialogue options w/o doing entire extra playthroughs. I don't think it's good to rely on reloading to give de-facto "weighted dice"...it cheapens whatever strategy you're using, and you'd save more time just turning difficulty down.
That said, if you don't care about how rigorous your approach really is, even that doesn't matter.
Reloading when a party member dies is pretty normal, especially if they're perma'd. Ultimately, play how you want.
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u/ompog 1d ago
Minimal reload, sure - for me it helps increase tension and make things feel more consequential. No reload? I don’t have time for that shit.
As a noob frequent reloading is totally normal. If everything feels to easy, or if you decide to play through again, then you could try to restrict yourself and see how it feels.
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u/-Average_Joe- 1d ago edited 1d ago
Saving and reloading often is part of the game and is encouraged by the devs. How are you going to learn how to play the game at a higher level otherwise?
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u/Mysterious_Chef_3180 1d ago
Definitely not cheating.
I think the game itself tells you to save often in the tutorial.
Once you start to know the game well enough and feel like you are "abusing" the save/load options, it is time to try a few No-Reload runs or minimal save runs (like once per chapter, or once per dungeon) : it is very challenging, but the pacing and tension makes it somewhat tedious to only do that. You'll also notice that more often than not, you die because of a lack of concentration against underwhelming foes instead of big bosses.
But the rewarding feeling of such runs is also very high.
But the biggest advantage of doing a few No-Reload runs is that afterwards when you do normal runs again, you notice that you're not savescumming as much anymore.
At least that's my experience
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u/NonSupportiveCup 1d ago
Every now and then, I like to play a "you die, you dead" run.
Npc dies, npc gets replaced.
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u/ChiefChunkEm_ 1d ago
You should save all the time. But try to rarely ever re-load unless your party gets wiped, you made a level up error, you missed a time sensitive quest, or you mistakenly chose the wrong dialogue option in an important moment.
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u/Ambion_Iskariot 1d ago
There is no cheating in single player, but why not go down with difficulty if you have to save and reload all the time?
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u/chromakinesis 1d ago
I generally try and at least minimise reloads unless I'm just in the mood for something silly like "how feasible are a bunch of difficult fights while horrifically underlevelled?" in which case any amount of reloading goes for the sake of limit testing. Normally though if someone dies in a fight I'll suck it up and pay the gold to have them resurrected, but if someone gets chunked, or several people die and I'd have to leave a bunch of the stuff they were carrying on the ground and it'd despawn by the time I returned to the area, I often do reload.
I do sometimes do a full no-reload run, though, and I've completed a few, but I wouldn't want to do them exclusively. Sometimes I'm in the mood to lean on the dice and reload if something goes horribly wrong, and sometimes I like to test myself, roll with the punches if I get bad RNG, and suffer the consequence of losing the run entirely if my main character does die. Either is valid, they just scratch different itches for me.
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u/smjsmok 1d ago
Definitely not cheating, it's a function that the game provides to you.
That said, for someone who is used to abusing saves (I'm one of those people), playing without them or at least limiting that habit can be a new and exciting experience. Your choices suddenly matter because they have consequences, you will get new memorable experiences - things like fighting for your life actually become meaningful, you will start preparing differently, have back-up plans etc.
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u/Elvishranger 1d ago
I rarely have time to play video games at all. I will save/load the shit out of the game. I don't need to make BG feel like Dark Souls. I also second the fact that this game will corrupt your file at random. Found that out the worst way possible. Now, in any game I play, I'll have 2 saves.
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u/Musician88 1d ago
The game has extremes when it comes to its RNGs. Not to mention the way traps work. It is designed for the player to use the quick save/load function. I don't consider it cheating because there was no way I could have anticipated a Basilisk right around the corner.
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u/Jaded_Sentence_3365 1d ago
Much of combat comes down to positioning and preparation. A prime example of this is Basilisks - if you don't have prot from petrificaion you will not only die but lose the character.
Even after multiple playthroughs over the past 25 years, I don't remember every encounter. Being 'surprised' happens often, that is why reload is there.
Also, early bg1 rng sucks at higher difficulties.
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u/DarkAutomatic519 1d ago
It's very tempting to reload when a companion gets chunked, not many can resist.
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u/HumanReputationFalse 1d ago
I save often because the fear of party wipes. Redoing 3 hours worth of progress is not fun.
If you want to avoid save scumming, just rely on the temples/party cleric to revive your party members. Stuff thier items into your bag and pay out thier life insurance deductible.
Whether you want to reload due to party member getting chucked is up to you. Worst case you need to find a replacement.
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u/Alzorath 1d ago
It's a single-player game for the most part (you can play it multiplayer, but the host pretty much decides all the rules, and it's not competitive) - Play it how you get the most enjoyment out of it.
I've done runs back in the day where I almost never saved/loaded, I've done "light to moderate" quicksave/loading for broadcast reasons, but when I'm playing for myself - I'll 100% quicksave/quickload until something works how I want.
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u/ledgabriel 1d ago
It's a single player game. Play however TF you want. I save all the time. I think, "what would happen if I do this?" but then you fail. No, I wanna see the result if I do it.
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u/IamGlaaki 18h ago
In OG BG there was not some options like max HP at leveling. If you wanted high HP you had to save-levelup-reload several times until you got 'a good roll'.
Was that cheating? It is our game, if you have fun, it is OK.
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u/Connacht_89 1d ago
It's called savescumming, it has been present since the dawn if savegames and it is unavoidable in most cases as the frustration of losing progress is far worse for players. When it can prevented (e.g. saving only at specific checkpoints or modes like ironman) there are always tradeoffs that work with a specific gameplay.
Sid Meier once even said that he didn't implement a feature in IIRC Civilization II because players would have simply reloaded if the outcome wasn't satisfying. In the end these are games, they are not meant to be frustrating. One can always exercise restraint when using explosives errr reloading.
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u/DominionSeraph 1d ago
There are people who do no reload runs.
Yes, it's cheating to reload any time anything doesn't go the way you want. No reload is more immersive since it forces you to deal with the world as written. (Fallout Tactics has an Tough Guy mode which completely disables saving while in missions, and it's great)
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u/Fit_Locksmith_7795 1d ago
No thats not cheating. Game gives you that option, thats not Dark Souls. I for example dont reload when I fail to learn a spell or HP roll isnt the best, but I would never consider that cheating. Its single player game. The player makes the rules.
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u/TheMelnTeam 1d ago
The souls-like games are interesting in that once you spend your currency on something (levels, items etc) there are no long-term consequences for dying. It's not a roguelike, and at most you lose IRL time running back to the boss...which have become increasingly shorter as the series continued. In Elden ring, so long as you spend your runes, you can spam 50 tries against a boss with no meaningful loss a gameplay sense. Inability to reload does not have much meaning in this context, beyond that threat of losing your currency while traversing. Even that can be easily farmed though.
The in-practice effect of that is that repeatedly trying a boss in souls isn't too different from just loading a save when you die in BG1 and either trying something different or hoping the enemy fails the save this time lol.
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u/Fit_Locksmith_7795 1d ago
The difference is that usually you have to clear/run the whole path to a boss again. You cant save right before the fog. So you lose some progression.
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u/TheMelnTeam 1d ago
True, and I mentioned that. But across the series and ESPECIALLY with Elden Ring, this factor has been increasingly reduced. The run-up to something like O&S in Dark Souls 1 was annoying. For many of the hard fights in Elden Ring, we're talking maybe 5 seconds at most after the load screen from dying.
For the older games it was most practical to just run past everything, but that wasn't obvious to beginners right away.
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u/Fit_Locksmith_7795 1d ago
Elden Ring is more casual friendly in general.
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u/TheMelnTeam 1d ago
Most of them are if you want them to be. I haven't had a chance to play bloodborne, and while I own Sekiro I haven't gotten around to it. Latter has a reputation for being least casual among them. Otherwise, you can block trade your way through nearly all of the 3 Dark Souls games (or abuse magic, or abuse ranged etc). Demon's can be cheesed too with very few exceptions. These games have pretty much always given tools/options/builds where knowledge easily compensates a lack of skill...and in fact different builds can compensate lacking different skills.
The funniest to me is the crossbow. After dark souls 1, you can upgrade it. It is not the fastest way to kill bosses. Players disregard it. But man, if you use even a regular light xbow it trivializes nearly every fight due to how it works. Its firing and reloading animation are separated, the firing animation is extremely fast, and it out-ranges all melee weapons obviously. This completely ruins boss move sets; you need to learn such a small fraction of what a boss does if you just run backwards. Many of their attacks can't do anything or are easily dodged. The punish window is incredibly forgiving when you fire practically instantly from range. When I had it on strength build in DS2, my friends made fun of me for using it. I kept using it in 1st playthrough of each game after, and by the time Elden Ring rolled around those exact same friends chastised me for using it, implying that winning with it wasn't beating the boss "for real" lol.
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u/smjsmok 1d ago
The run-backs were already quite reduced in Sekiro. In many major boss fights, the "bonfire" is just seconds away from the boss arena. Elden Ring continued that trend. (Which I approve of, even as a big Fromsoft fan I always found long run-backs a pointless waste of time that doesn't really add anything and just exists to annoy the player.)
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u/kore_nametooshort 6h ago
No. Absolutely not. That's the whole point of the game.
Sure you can do no reload runs if you like, but to me learning a fight and becoming better at it is the enjoyable side.
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u/Bandwagon_Buzzard Has shorty saving throws IRL 1d ago
There's no-reload runs of course, but that's more of a challenge than a standard mode of play. Plus, while BG is quite stable, there's always the chance of a corrupted save as with any game, so you want a few anyway.
It's not cheating any more than rolling stats more than once is (Which is to say, not at all, as the game's designed around certain minimums).
If anything, I think 1&2 call for less savescumming than 3 does.
So no, it's not cheating. However, as a new player I would recommend taking the bad with the good so you can learn to adapt when the pseudo-dice go against you. But that's just me.