Baldur's Gate: Enhanced Edition

The crappy and useless beam dog mods downgrade this masterpiece. Everything added other than their npcs can be done with free online mods which work better. Their NPCs stick out like a sore thumb and are just generally badly written. I only bought this because gog removed the old original page, you can still get the original game added to your account, credit to VADIM_USOVYCH. To do this you go to the game in your shelf and left click on it. Above the big blue gog galaxy download button there are three dropdown tabs, system, language and more. Go into more and there will be an item called SERIAL KEYS, click on this and you will be shown a link. Copy and paste this to a new tab and you can use this code to add the original version of BG1, BG2 and icewind dale to your owned games.

I believe the initial will to enhance Baldur's Gate was genuine. But damn, does it hurt what they ended up doing to one of the best games ever! I don't want to be rude but the sad truth is that the Beamdog team has no talent. They just don't know how to do things right. So they spoiled a great game by injecting a pile of amateur-casual-shovelware level stuff into it. I wouldn't care (I was actually happy that someone was at least trying to do something with the series), if only... If only they didn't bundle – literally obscured – the cult classic with their amateur, poorly rated, overpriced version. But this move... it makes me see red. By seeing the mixed reactions to their products, they should have accepted the fact that they are not the legitimate heirs to BG's legacy.

Beamdog did a supreme job of ruining this classic title with their "enhancements". Forced random encounters, "re-balancing", and lackluster NPCs were the worst examples. The added npcs and areas look, sound and feel incredibly amateur- no, not fair because the die-hard modding community made much better improvements with less resources and no access to the source code. Save your cash and try out some of the numerous fan-made mods. Bg1Tutu upgrades the BG1 interface and fixes many bugs without the frivolous fluff Beamdog added. The copies of BG1 & BG2 Enhanced I payed for got permanently deleted. Seriously, even if it was free it wouldn't be worth owning.

The writing is terrible, doesn't fit with the feel of the game, the mob system is tedious and it just thrown low level enemies at you, gets boring real quick. Multi player is broken. Seriously this isn't worth it even if it was free.

If you want to buy this game, get the GOG edition as you can control patch application. Heard a lot of kerfuffle going on with the add-on, but also noted that my Steam copy of the Enhanced Edition was updated as well. After quickly checking other reviews on numerous bugs, booted up the game to see what had changed to the core game. I only signed in for about 10 minutes, but immediately that every character now appears to have thick, dark outlines. The graphics become more like a browser games than the original; in my own opinion it is rather ugly. Like the characters are sliding along a painting, not walking around. You can scroll in and out to zoom the camera, but that was a poor decision as the backgrounds just end at a point, the engine never made to zoom out to satellite levels. I did not have any of the bugs mentioned by others, but multiplayer is reported to have many problems. Reports are consistent of long waits and crashing. Sadly, I can't recommend what was once of my favorite games anymore, and wanted to pass along the news to other who could be affected.