Baldur's Gate: Enhanced Edition

It's 2020 and game still have bug that prevent party from traveling. Sigh.

I have played both the original Baldur's Gate and this new Enhanced Edition and I can easily say that this is the way I prefer to play it. I am a new generation gamer that's used to a lot of hand holding and this version, although still pretty old-school, makes this game accessible for people like me.

I have to admit that I never played the original, so my gaming experience with this game begun with the enhanced edition, and what I've got is a very deep and engaging old school RPG that stood the test of time with it's very entertaining and solid gameplay, great story, amazing variety, complex interactions with NPCs and quests approach. I also like the fact that this game follows the classic 2nd edition D&D ruleset (the ones I followed playing D&D when I was young and which I think are perfect for immersive roleplaying) and the Enhanced Edition doesn't mess with that. In fact the EE doesn't mess with anything: it simply adds bugfixes, selectable gameplay tweaks (you can choose if to apply them or not), various enhancements to the GUI, HD resolution and new content; and as for the current version (2.3) it's all rock solid, except for some minor bugs in the new journal (anyway it succeed in making the quests more manageable). I found the new quests and NPC quite good and on par with the original content, and the support from Beam Dog is excellent (they are still supporting this game with bug fixes and improvements after 4 years). I honestly don't know why you would mod the original when this version exists: you'll end up with lots of bugs and instabilities due to using multiple mods and you'll get a similar experience, only worse. So I can recommend this version of the game as the "go to" version.

I just purchased this game but it is unplayable because it won't progress pass the character creation stage. Plus the menu is too small to comprehand. There did not seem to be any options to change the screen size for the menu. It's too bad because it's a classic. Maybe it's a different experience on a PC.

While I played and loved this game when it was initially released, nowadays I struggle to see the fun in micro-managing a party of 6 in real-time. I'd rather play a proper turn-based RPG or a more casual real-time game like Dungeon Siege. While beatable solo with extensive grind, a smaller party in BG1 doesn't lend itself well to casual shorter playthroughs. By the time you finish your first main quest, minutes into the game, you already have 3 extra companions pushed into your party too on top of your starting limit of 6. Balance is absolutely intended for full parties, as trying to go smaller will make every battle a life-or-death (most often death) deal, especially given how fragile low-level characters are by official AD&D rules. The tabletop rules were never meant for full-party management: each player creates their own character, with extensive options, abilities, items... to manage. While this can be eased properly into a video game, having it be real-time ends up being the worst of both worlds. A lot of this could perhaps be mitigated by having smaller parties start at level 2 or 3 but alas, that's not a feature in the game or this enhanced edition. Winning a battle in which the odds are against you won't give you enough experience to level up either, even if you do it multiple times in a row or with the fewer units to divide the experience pool with - which means progress is likely to be woefully slow if you're playing casually (such as sticking to the main quest only). Baldur's Gate is a beautiful game and worth getting at 70% off if you're going to explore all of it, read every paragraph of dialogue and micro-manage each party member for literally 90 hours of gameplay (source: How Long To Beat) but if you've been there and done that already or are looking for a good video game rather than a narrative campaign, you can do a whole lot better in 2022.