If anyone has played both, please compare and give your impressions of the pros and cons of the Enhanced Edition.

That leaves me out of the discussion!

:)

Well I have played both versions of BG 1 once, and I am currently in my first BG 2 Vanilla (+ToB) playthrough. I have already pre-ordered BG 2 EE and I intend to start a new complete saga play-through from BG EE to BG 2 EE fairly soon. So, I shall offer my objective opinion on the matter, but I don't expect it would be popular here. It's like praising US foreign policy in the streets of Moscow or Tehran.

Anyways... Enhanced Edition really is an "enhancement" of what is already a very good game. It adds some features that removes the most frustrating elements of the BG 1 Vanilla experience for somebody with no experience of the AD&D 2 game system and other D&D video games. For example you can pause the game in Inventory mode, you can use tab to highlight items on the floor and other things you can interact with, you can find out the rough health status of enemies... etc. All in all Enhanced Edition makes Baldur's Gate a much more user friendly and beginner-friendly game.

Critics of Enhanced Edition say that it is paying a lot more money (compared to Vanilla here on GoG, especially when there's a sale) for the same game. You can even replicate a lot of the benefits of the enhancements I mentioned with a few mods that have been around for years.

My reply to that would be... Enhanced Edition does a bit more than just implement the popular mods already available. It does include some extra content (new NPCs and Black Pits mode) and the graphics and user-interface does feel more modern and pleasant than either BG 1 or BG 2 Vanilla. Even if you dismiss the new content as irrelevant, Enhanced Edition allows a newcomer to the franchise to enjoy the benefits of the most popular mods without having to worry about researching which mods to install, how to install them and worry about potential bugs that arise with mods clashing with each other.

So in summary, BG Vanilla is a very good game that you can get for very cheap at GoG. You can achieve the most important enhancements of Enhanced Edition if you spend some time on installing the appropriate mods, but Enhanced Edition goes a bit further than that, and you can also get it pretty cheap when Steam has a sale. For a beginner like me it was a hassle-free, convenient and easy way to 'enhance' my BG experience, which I enjoyed so much that I decided to pre-order BG 2 EE direct from Beamdog as a way of saying thanks to the Overhaul Team for the many hours of fun I derived from their work, which I felt was appropriate since I got BG EE for peanuts price from a Steam sale.

The Enhanced Edition of Baldur's Gate is not Baldur's Gate. It is worse than playing BG with the BG2 engine in TuTu or BGT, if you want to really understand Baldur's Gate. I'm not going to give any pros and cons. Why? Because they are only my opinions. If you really want to know for yourself, first -- and most importantly -- you must play the original Baldur's Gate at least once before any other version. Then, and only then, make up your own mind. Other people's opinions will only colour or cloud your objective opinion of which is best, and why... just like this thread will.

Yes, it also adds tons of bugs. Not really. It contains only the fixpack and widesceen mod, no UB, tweaks, SCS... But don't worry, they added a lot of new bugs so you don't feel like you're missing out on something. But not all, the enhanced price tag and bugspack dlc are still exclusive to EE. Don't compare a product to a service.

Did I mention it's very bugged?:)

Also, EE isn't out yet, it's still in beta...

But to be honest, when (if?) EE becomes fully patched it'll become a worthy product since the list of additional features/fixes is really tempting. The fact they asked tripled price for a hidden beta is leaving a distaste though...

I haven't found it particularly buggy. There are only two quests that I've found that are broken (fixes for this are available on their forum here http://forum.baldursgate.com/discussion/19019/temporary-fixes-for-bugs-present-in-v2014) and in total they account for about 300xp. Dwarves and Halflings aren't fully getting the right stats. I've never had the Wyvern death crash (I suppose I'm lucky in that regard). In any case I really haven't had any problems with the game since probably December and it seems fine to me.

I asked because I am very interested in the new NPC, (the half-elf wild mage and the monk in particular.) I've read that the Enhanced Edition introduced a lot of bugs. Are those bugs getting fixed?

I also don't like that the developer has moved on to Baldur's Gate 2 when the first one (supposedly) still has a lot of bugs.

Well, there's supposed to be a BIG patch in a week or two so they DO fix those bugs (at least some of them)... just very very slowly. And yes, the fact they're releasing BG2 while the first one AFTER A F*****G YEAR is still not finished is another sign of them treating their customers like bags of cash.

BG2 probably too will be patched for a year after the release while vanilla + fixpack is more or less bug free.

Predictably, there's the hostility...

Please understand that this is not a neutral forum to ask your question. If you go to http://forum.baldursgate.com/ and ask the same question, you're gonna get a very different response... but again that'd also be biased cos that forum is hosted by the same guys developing BG EE and BG 2EE.

I will just say that BG EE is NOT a buggy game by any stretch. I played nearly 100 hours and noticed only one significant bug (Firebead Quest), which will be fixed in a patch to be released shortly. The other more important issue is apparently something to do with Intel intergrated graphics cards, which have compatibility issues with the game, but that's not a problem unless you have such a graphics card. Overall BG Vanilla you get from GoG is pretty much bug-free, and so is BG EE.

Regarding Beamdog (the guys responsibility for BG EE), they are no saints, but all game's devs' objective is to make money, and they've behaved no worse than others, and certainly better than Blizzard...

Translation: this is not a toady forum, and people speak as they find things, and is as biased/unbiased as any forum can expect to be. Want only praise? Go the the fan forum/s. Well... duh!

Oh come on. You are being unreasonable here! I have appreciated your advice in the past, but all I have provided here is objective information, pros and cons and access to further information.

The forum I linked is about as biased as this one is, just for different sides of the argument.
http://forum.baldursgate.com is a fan forum for BG EE as much as this forum is a fan forum for BG Vanilla. i.e. It's not.

In fact I found that forum when I was looking for a forum to ask questions about my BG 1 Vanilla when I first got it from GoG, and didn't notice there was an 'inhouse forum'. People answered my questions readily and made no issue of the fact that I was playing Vanilla.

It is the top search result on Google if you type in "Baldur's Gate forum"! Although it is hosted by Beamdog, it is not censored, and the community is made up of mostly just fans of the BG games, some of whom are playing Enhanced Edition, some playing all sorts of mods of the Vanilla. I'd say 95% of the discussions are not specific to Enhanced Edition.

No, on the contrary you are wrong. The baldursgate forum is a fan forum for... guess what? Baldur's Gate games, and the main hangout of all things BG:EE. Of course it is biased. It is absolutely biased. On the other hand, GOG is dedicated to all classic games, not just BG. This forum has it's share of those who hate and love the game. The difference is that you will only get praise for BG:EE if you go to that other forum and ask 'what is it like?' Here, you will get a far fairer view, like it or not.

And of course it is the top search for Google. Why do you think that is? I'll leave you to work it out.

BG:EE is superior to vanilla BG. However BG offers more mods and fixes(more than BG:EE) for free in addition to being much cheaper. The hostility towards BG:EE is mostly based by this, paying for a game that offers almost nothing new, that you can't already get with mods. Since most mods aren't compatible with BG:EE yet, the original game offers more content for half the price. That's not saying BG:EE is mediocre, it's still the same game(!), only twice as expensive and less mod compatible. It does however introduce some new fixes like zooming, a cleaner interface(my subjective opinion) and no loading screens, which for me atleast is why i'll never go back to vanilla. Having a CPU that can handle any game on ultra setting, it's laughable having to wait when loading, saving or changing area location. Since i'm not a huge fan of most mods, and prefer vanilla, i personally prefer BG:EE.

BG:EE Pros: Zooming, no loading!, 3 new npc's and minor content

BG:EE Cons: Less mod friendly, twice as expensive(unless you get it from the Steam sale)

Add DRMed on the cons list aswell