Baldur's Gate: Enhanced Edition

I don't get the hate. As a veteran of BG and BG2 myself I was honestly surprised at how decent this version is. Running BG on anything more recent than an early 2000's computer required a bunch of mods and tweaks and the result was a playable but somewhat unstable experience (BGTutu and Nvidia degreenifier? No thanks). Yes, the mods were free, and their significance has never been played down by the community. The Enhanced Edition however does more than just package a bunch of "free" mods together: as of this review, this is arguably the best BG & Tales of the Sword Coast experience available. It is smooth, it is sleek, it is stable. Yes, they changed the UI, tweaked some rules, added a bunch of nonsense companions and some new locations. Who cares? Just ignore them! The graphics can be zoomed to look as small or big as you want, and the game looks fantastic even on high resolutions and ultrawide screens. NPCs come pre-scripted to attack and use spells and abilities automatically, but this can be easily customized or turned off (this is why they "cast spells", they are not ignoring commands!). Even as a long time fan I have to admit that at least for modern systems, this is the best BG1 & TotSC experience available despite the changes, and it runs flawlessly in both Linux and Windows. The additions are crappy and should be ignored, but the core game is still as relevant as it was back then. Considering that people still pay $60 for generic 10 hour games I don't think $20 for this is bad, but if you see it on sale it is a no brainer.

I had first played "Baldur's Gate" in the early 2000's and thoroughly enjoyed it. This enhanced re-issue of the first game in the series is simply superb. First, the game itself is super-stable and runs perfectly on Windows 11. The character/team creation class/kit options are deep, limitless in their possibilities and offer immense replay value. I spent hours on the Baldur's Gate wiki learning about all of the different character races and class/kit options, so I could create an interesting and powerful team. The game itself is immersive, satisfying and still hugely fun to play. This game is considered a classic RPG, and, with good reason. The story is great. sound effects and voice-acting are first-rate. Battles can be fought with different tactics. Want to plunge through enemy hordes as a fighter brute? Prefer magical attacks? Or, want to use thief sneak attacks? You can do it all. This is one of the best PC RPG gaming experiences of all time. Buy it, play it and enjoy it.

You get a lot of fantastic playtime out of Baldur's Gate 1+2. With the Enhanced Edition you gain built-in widescreen support and a nifty zoom feature, but it costs you support for hundreds of mods (many adding complete campaigns with solid writing). Why bother paying double for 3 EE characters if you can get a dozen or so mod characters that also bring individual banter dialogues. Save yourself some money and get the non-EE version and get the BIG WORLD installer, it'll run BG1+2 in the BG2 engine and also allow you to add tons of quality mods in one installer. Mod support in EE is just too intransparent :-/ If you hate mods, you can get EE, but you will miss out on much that kept the demand for BG for 15 years.

The Enhanced edition offers a worse experience than the original. Fortunately the original is included in the purchase, so my money wasn't entirely wasted.

i played 1, 2 and siege of dragonspear in one go last year and let me tell you it was simply incredilbe. No issues, no bugs, everything went smooth. You should absolutely buy it since whatever issues existed are fixed