I played quite little over weekend for some reason, but yesterday evening I got some hours into Baldur's Gate 2.

Now I have completed the BG2 base game, + Watcher's Keep. Fighting the big baddie (Irenicus) was quite hard, but it seems that if you are able to summon e.g. a Deva on your side, it helps a lot in keeping him busy. I tried to lower the baddie's magical defenses, but he seemed to just heal himself and cast new defensive spells, making even Carsomyr +5 sword and Crom Faeyr (+5 warhammer) constantly miss him. Apparently he had some total immunity for awhile?

Anyway, apparently that weapon immunity went away after some time, because after awhile especially Crom Faeyr started doing massive damage to him, like close to 50 points damage per successful hit. In no time he was down, just had to make sure the weaker party members (spell casters etc.) were far enough from him so that he wouldn't target them. Keldorn and Minsc did most of the dirty work, as always.

So far the hardest fight I've come by was in Watcher's Keep when you insert and use the Heart Key in the Final Seal room. Damn, six enemies which are pretty hard even one by one, let alone all of them at the same time. I could never hope to survive fighting them all at the same time, so I overcame them like this (not sure if this is considered cheating?):

- Only my hasted Keldorn fighter went to the seal and used the key, others were waiting down in safety, behind gates.

- After Keldorn has opened the seal, he rushes to his team mates, and closes the gate behind him before all the baddies can follow him. Good thing the BG2 enemies are stupid enough not to know how to open gates or doors.

- Let my party sleep, and then Keldorn goes back to open the gate. Fortunately not all the enemies are there. Three (out of six) enemies see Keldorn and follow him down. Fighting three enemies at a time is hard enough, but manageable.

- Then close the gate, again, sleep, and face rest of the three enemies who are farther up. Total winnage!

Now I am on chapter 7, too much talk in the beginning stages...

One thing I've noticed between the first Baldur's Gate and this second one, for some reason all the spells and at least most of the weapons seemed kinda weak in the first BG? Healing spells and health potions were so weak that you had to cast like four or five of them on one fighter character to heal him fully, finding new weapons was usually quite meh, they still did only moderate damage, Magic Missile still felt pretty much the most useful and strongest offensive spell even at the end of BG1, etc.

BG2 though seems to have much more powerful spells and weapons that really seem to matter. And maybe the most important thing, I don't recall if there were any "regenerating health items" in the first BG1. Having a couple of them on your tank fighters who take most of the blows was quite important to me in BG2, so that you didn't have to rely only on health potions, or other team members casting slow healing spells on you, in the heat of an intensive battle. The fighters keep healing at least somewhat all the time during battle.