Baldur's Gate: Enhanced Edition

Stay away from this and buy the old version instead. Because developers on this one... well, they basically send us up to our arsenal.

This game came out when I was 11. I bought it a year or two after release, but the huge open world and massive amount of content was too much for me to beat back then, and I forgot about the game. When I saw it pop up on GOG, I decided to give it another shot--especially given how I've read about how great it was. I was disappointed. It's not a BAD game, per se, although it does suffer some from D&D's lack of tactical options at low levels for most characters. Instead, the problem is the writing. I've heard from many people how strong the writing is in this game, but I thought it was, for the most part, laughable. Dialogue was cheesy. If your met an old lady trying to cross the street with groceries, your options would only be, "Let me carry you AND your groceries across the street, and buy you a whole new bag of groceries to go on top of this one!" and "I'm going to push you in front of a bus. Buhnernuerner!" Spastic evil and ludicrous good, and chock full of humor aimed squarely at 14 year olds. To make it worse, many of the story lines are triggered by location rather than quest progress. I was confused at many points of the story because of dialogue options and quest trees that referenced people and places I had not visited or met yet, only to learn after beating the game that I would have met those characters if I'd gone in another order--but I still had all the dialogue options as if I had. Honestly, this is a game that's probably worth a play through. I got about 40 hours out of it for $10 on sale, and I don't feel like I was ripped off. It's okay--but it certainly is not great, though.

I like the new interface and its features, I like many of the fixes, but the main problem is that they didn't just fix some bugs; they went beyond and started to brake things in attempt to make the game "more socialistic". A couple examples: 1. They nerfed the Golems Cave, because in their opinion it was "too cheesy" and broke the balance. What the point? There're still countless ways to quickly gain XP. 2. They tried to nerf and "balance" some mage and priest spells, but the result is even more pathetic. Now when you play a lawful evil mage and cast Find Familiar, you still get an imp with the ability to Polymorph Self, but when it transforms to a bear, it retains the original HP, and you find yourself with a bear, with a bear's strength and damage, which has something like 14 HP. Why even bother and make the stupid "fixes"? 3. They tried to "balance" mind control spells and the result is that now this spells are completely worthless. Mage's Domination, which supposedly do not give a chance to release (ingame's description, by the way), now works like a fist level Charm. Again, why the f*** even bother to do the "fixes"? 4. They consider a player to be an idiot, so now you can't kill many NPCs. Remember Morrowind were you could kill some character and brake the story line? This is the opposite: some characters are simply "immune to death", so you can hurt them, but at a certain point they just ignore your damage and wouldn't die. Again, this only brakes roleplay and makes the game look like a joke. 5. They nerfed pickpocketing, so now there's no point in jesters and "vanilla thieves" roleplaying. You simply cannot shoplift in 95% of shops. 6. Many other similar "socialistic fixes" which destroy several interesting play-styles. 7. In the same time, they didn't fix a lot of real issues. For example, Lycanthrope Island still looks half-finished, you can still throw fireballs into a fog of war, the AI and pathfinder seem to become even more stupid...

I just beat Baldur's Gate for the first time using this Enhanced Edition, and I loved almost every minute of it. I got frustrated here and there, especially at the end, but beating the game was satisfying enough to make up for it. Really difficult when it counts (powerful enemies are appropriately powerful), but easy most of the time. My favorite part was that I could not predict the characters and the way certain events would play out. This game is a well-written Dungeons and Dragons campaign, but more importantly, it's well-written because you as the player can't always determine what 'the good' and 'the bad' options are - quite different from every modern RPG I have played. More importantly, the gameplay is fun because your choice of party members and gear really does make the difference between finishing the game and failing at every turn. Unfortunately, the Enhanced Edition commits a sin in trying to change history by creating new characters that do not fit the tone at all. The good writing I mentioned earlier is strictly tied to the original game; the new characters are predictable and an example of typical modern day writing. Luckily, it's easy to mod them out (just google). Besides that though, the Enhanced Edition made the game much easier to learn and handle for a beginner player like me with little changes to the interface. This is streamlining done right in my opinion! Recommended!

ta chido