Baldur's Gate II: Enhanced Edition

http://www.shsforums.net/files/file/1135-disable-enhanced-edition-npcs/ The above link is to a mod by Argent77 which will disable the new companions. Baldur's gate is one of the best CRPGs ever made and the Enhanced edition adds excellent technical improvements. These updates add a range of options for tailoring your experience and, in most ways, improves the experience. The GOG release also includes the original version. If you are at all a fan of RPGs then do yourself the favour of getting this game. Unfortunately Beamdog, the programmers of the enhanced edition, saw fit to not only improve the technical aspects of the game but also add their own characters. These characters should have been offered in a separate content pack DLC, but instead Beamdog made them a permanent part of the game. The new characters are hard to miss and attempt to take a front seat. Gamers new to Baldur's Gate can be forgiven for thinking that these are the primary companions. It seems that Beamdog tried to piggy-back off Baldur's Gate's success by inserting their own creations, which is a fairly hubristic action. Luckily they have learned from their mistake and there are no such intrusive changes made to later Enhanced Edition games; Planescape Torment EE, Icewind Dale EE etc. Unfortunately Beamdog have not decided to remove the new Baldur's Gate characters and put them in a seperate content pack DLC. The above mod is for people who want to enjoy the excellent technical updates without the unwelcome Beamdog companions.

GOG is the only digital store that includes the original version of the game with purchase. Please ignore the 1 star reviews because of the dislike for the enhanced edition. You get BOTH enhanced and original at GOG. Yes it sucks you have to buy the enhanced edition if you only want the original version, but GOG is the only legal option. I myself enjoy the enhanced editions and think they are fantastic. BUT if you purchase on GOG, you still get the original version! Thank you GOG!

From my point of view, a gamer that has played both the original and this one, EE is the better game today. I own the retail versions of BG, BGII and IWD and loved playing them back in 2000ish. I've spent tons of hours on those games exploring everything in an age where walkthroughs and the freedom of forums wasn't that wide spread. A few years ago I wanted to get back to the series for old time sake, and after installing the game, I couldn't get past the interface issues. An old game, on my huge 24" screen looks plain ugly, doesn't matter how you look at it. And I hate playing windowed mode. So I skipped playing the game. When the EE version was announced I was very excited and I even pre-ordered it on beamdog (I own both BG titles there). My expectations were exceeded. I just loved the new look & feel of the game. As much as possible, beamdog managed to bring an epic titles back to the 21st century. So positives: - great look and feel, doesn't lose any of the original flavour. I was excited to battle Dragons and the Illithids :) - there are class kits just as NWN has, yay! - the new added characters manage to bring extra fun to the game. The dialogues are great and lots of fun. (wild mage rocks :)) - UI, did I mention the UI? Big resolution....

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.