I always use a tomato to explain dnd stats

Strength is being able to crush a tomato.
Dexterity is being able to dodge a tomato.
Constitution is being able to eat a bad tomato.
Intelligence is knowing a tomato is a fruit.
Wisdom is knowing not to put a tomato in a fruit salad.
Charisma is being able to sell a tomato based fruit salad.

You must gather your party before venturing forth.

umm akshually, jeremy irons doesn't voice irenicus, david warner does!

I'm a big Jeremy Irons fan. I'm happy to see him reprise his role as Jeremy Irons.

How to be a god... Get a helmet and be immune to critical hits.

beserker duelled to mage is even more powerful than kensai duelled to mage

I loved the strategy of walking into a room with a mage and getting him to pop his protection spells, then immediately waking out of the room and just waiting for them to wear off... For really tough guys I'd summon some low level animals and send them in to soak up the damage spells. I even did this on Irenicus himself, I had a random summoned wild dog who resisted a power word: death, some other high level spell I can't remember, who was then mazed. Eventually he came back and soaked up another spell before dying. He was my hero and goodest boy.

Bg2 is one of the best games ever made, but if I'm being honest I do think the game is at its best in the first half before magic gets ridiculous. The opening stages of the game are a perfectly balanced series of encounters where you need all your party members working in unison, utilising all their abilities to win battles. Once you have a decent levelled up mage and understand the spell system, most of your party members become simple bystanders.

The last chunk of the game you're really only playing it for the story, the first part of the game it's the story PLUS wonderful intricate battles.

I've beaten Baldur's Gate 2 about 30 times in the last 15 years.
The most broken team build ever is to have Korgan dual-wield Crom Faeyr+another hammer with improved haste and regeneration on him, going up to 10 attacks / second with the best THAC0 which is basically a constant Whirlwind buff and he hits up to 48 dmg which is 480 dps. And everybody else just buffs Korgan and Debuffs the enemy, clerics/wizards as many as u can get. In the last act, Korgan can kill the Black Dragon in 3 seconds.
In fact, Korgan gets so strong there is no point to have another fighter do like 2 attacks/sec for 20-30...
There are tons of other broken builds but this is the n1.

Nerdfact- the illusionist gnome you kill to free the circus is Charlie Alder.  So
... You just killed Buster Bunny. I really love the voice cast of the infinity engine games. So many classic actors

BG3 did Viconia so dirty.

In Enhanced Edition, the Inquisitor class is a godsend for beating mages. It's a bit cheesy, but it's very fun too.

My favorite character class… half elf fighter/mage/thief. At high levels, you get the “use any item” skill as a thief. Give the fighter/mage/thief two proficiencies in Two handed swords, and even if he is an evil character, you can wield Carsomyr. Put a few other items on you, and your magic resist hits the game limit.

It was so much fun to exploit the game systems and become a god. People keep whining now on how the game is hard and there's even a written manual.
Make a perfect party with 6 custom characters. Make a dual-wield Kensai with Celestial Fury and Crom Faeyr. Make a sorcerer and solo the game. Exploit invisibility, backstab everyone, backstab their mages. Lay in ambush, throw traps everywhere. Cast cloudkill in rooms, close the door.
It's a game where debuffs, buffs and countermagic are actually useful.

Back in high school, a friend gave me this game. It came with a whopping 4 discs. There's a bug that will ask you to insert disc 5 during the install if you selected a slave drive. I remember playing for an hour exploring only to come across a dragon and got owned instantly.

My favorite class is Wild Mage, but I mostly do solo playthroughs.

Post-starting dungeon you can buy a Limited Wish scroll right after you get out when you sell the dungeon loot, at which point you're basically a few quests away from a reliable infinicaster with infinite duration alacracity cast on you, due to how Nahal's Reckless Dweomer works.
There's surges screwing you over sometimes, yeah, but gating in a demon, casting flesh to stone on yourself and a cow falling on ya are trivial, when Protection from Evil is a 1st level spell, you're a wizard with decent saves against petrification and you have a constant stoneskin on ya, because... You're playing an arcane caster and if you don't have constant stoneskin on, you're doing it wrong.

And the best thing - max level Wild Mage feels like a DnD crazed NPC archmage in battle. You pop off several 9th level spells with a 1st level spell slot, there's crazy chaos magic floating about everywhere, butterflies are coming out of your rear while your enemies disintegrate, turn to stone, run around in confusion, turn into squirrels and get eaten by demons you summon by accident. Out of slots? Time to Wish/Limited Wish for more.

And then you decide to cast Imprisonment for the fun of it, get a wild surge of AoE effect and watch as everything on screen, including your sorry self gets yeeted into a magical sphere of suspended animation deep underground.

11/10 gameplay, would break reality again.

YouTube wants engagement, let's give it to 'em.

48:07 The spell he is talking about is Abi-Dalzim’s Horrid Wilting an 8th level spell which is party friendly aoe  so it won’t damage you but deals an incredibly insane amount of damage and to protect yourself from it if an enemy caster was to use it on you is  to have protection from energy buffed on your party. This spell becomes more common to deal with from enemy casters especially if you play BG2 on insane with SCS mod (imo the best difficulty mod for making the game more challenging)

Vanilla monks are so freaking good.
The dragon boss theme is so good.
Lavok casts Abo Dalzhim's, which deals magic damage. Only magic resist works. The demons outside the sphere are actually tougher unless you have the Greenstone amulet.

I love this game with all my heart it made me realize the fun of REALLY roleplaying in an rpg and not just playing it as any old game. I love that this video shows how much you love BG2 by just not telling us any story bits and it'd be a disservice if you did. Keep up the good work friend.