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 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.

I can't say enough good about this, even though it's old its still supper fun to play. Some might have issues with the D&D 2nd edition rules (which i cut my teeth on), but aside from character creation it should not hinder anyone.

This game is now much better than the original, modding included. I have played both many, many times, and modded both, and I must say that using the EE starts you off with the best foundation, and in conjunction with the Big World Mod, you get everything, and nows so simple to have it modded. The Big World Mod auto installs most mods available, has all the latest patches, updates, and makes sure they work seamlessly together. This all works with the latest patch, and the has an active community of updates. The problem I had with modding the original Baldur's Gate, is that you always had to run around getting new updates, and one incompatible mod that clashed with another mod, would ruin your game entirely, and you would have to re-install and start all over again, being super careful of what mods would glitch out, or completely stop your game. It was a massive amount of time wasted. EE at least starts you off with widescreen, relative combat info, zooming function, easier UI functionality etc. You now only need to download the Big World Mod to have them all, and it makes sure that they all work seamlessly together, so they don't clash- this alone is a life saver. You also don't need BG2EE to run this mod, and can just start with this game first if you want. This is the first time playing, where I have zero glitches, it's modded to the teeth, and the game runs 100% smoothly. There has never been a better time to play Baldur's Gate, and it rivals, if not exceeds Pathfinder: Kingmaker, POE etc.