Baldur's Gate: Enhanced Edition

Baldur's Gate is through and through the pinnacle of AD&D based cRPGs of the 90s. It got realtime combat with pausing available, a solid story with multiple options of how to approach it and tons of extra content with little relation to the main plot. The Enhanced addition brings some nice updates and modern conveniences to Baldur's Gate, but unfortunately also brings in several new characters that don't really fit in with some very hamfisted writing. The story follows your own crafted character as they have to come to terms with their heritage and figure out why are they are being hunting by a shadowy organization. You could try to play the stereotypical hero that always does whats right, a greedy sellsword, or a vicious murder hobo out for blood at every turn and still complete the game! While your choices don't always impact other events, your reputation often will and NPCs will sometime attack based purely on a strong Good or Bad reputation and certain quests can be sealed off forever based on your reputation as well. There are two major things that will possibly turn off modern audiences from Baldur's Gate; 1) The game's pathfinding and AI is pretty awful even in the enhanced edition. Characters often decide to pick awful targets take long routes. Your characters will also often decide to B-Line hostile enemies, even if there are traps in the way or a dangerous AOE spell area lingering around. You have to micro manage your characters in combat and it's not easy even if you know all the tricks. 2) The game strongly follows Advanced Dungeons and Dragons 2nd Edition(AD&D 2e) rules and lore. AD&D was crafted in the 80s as a more advanced and complex version of the original Dungeons and Dragons(D&D). It was made before Video Game RPGs were a thing with Paper and Pen gameplay at it's heart. AD&D 2e rules may seem obtuse and non-intuitive to people who never played 80s paper and pen RPGs. There will be a rough learning curve for these type of people.

An amazing journey that started with tough times. With a lot of games restarted and a bit of frustration in time to time, but, my friends... This is an absolute gem that should never be forgotten. Worth to give it a try.

I know it is cool to hate Beamdog, but Baldur's Gate Enhanced Edition is a great game in a great package. The annoying bugs are long gone, the game is fast and polished, the UI is great, especially for a 1998 game. I have spent more than 80 hours playing BGEE, and I honestly haven't as much fun with the originals. I am still trying new classes for my main character, new combinations of party members, still learning something about spells and items in the game. When you make that next step and find the game is getting quite a bit easier, there is always a next difficulty level, or you could always come up with cool personal limitations to the gameplay that fit the story and the world. And when you are running out of ideas, there is always the great community full of advices on how to prolong your fun with BG games.

I own both the Classic edition and the Enhanced editions and I have to say, one you get used to the EE it's difficult to go back to the originals. You can get close to the EE experience in the classic versions if you are OK with taking the time to research the various mods and install them, but if you want to play right out of the gate I'd recommend the EE over the original. The Enhanced Edition isn't flawless however, I've noticed a strange bug in the interface with US Scaling turnd on in which there is a small section of the screen you can't click on. It's only really a problem with the level up screen preventing you from clicking the plus sign next to skills to add points to it. However, this can be worked around by turning off UI scaling when leveling up or just not using it at all. It's a minor thing since leveling only happens so often. Unless you are a die hard purist for the originals I'd say this is the way to go.

This review is based off from using Windows 10 + Laptop with NVIDIA to play this game: So I played this revision of the game with the current patch implemented, and far as I can tell this game runs smooth like butter and I enjoyed it thoroughly when it came to the main original campaign. The new technical stuff offer more options to play with though one of which I really didn't like too much such as the new look for the characters which I automatically turned off. I also recommend mods that restore original content that didn't quite make it into BG1 Enhanced Edition, but adds a couple more hours to the game's overall average playing time. As for any other optional mods I leave it up to the person reading this, but always make sure to research each mod thoroughly before installing it (as some still have some major bugs). The Cons - Though I do like the new content to a certain extent, but I felt a couple of the new scenarios seemed kind of rushed which doesn't quite reflect the same quality to the original game. The areas that are locked behind a alignment check (technically) seems like a major letdown because these areas should as least be given a good-guy route instead of being forcibly evil to participate in it. I had to use the cheat commands just to see what these areas were all about due to my alignment. For now it will probably be up to modders to remedy this as I'm sure Beamdog as moved on since then to work on other projects. The Pros - The game runs smoothly as it can ever be thanks to Beamdog's patches; I understand that coding computer games can be a real challenge whether your a small or big studio and some of these previous reviews seem rather unfair though justified in their experience at the time. I like some of the small extra additions they made with this game that just improves the overall experience.