Baldur's Gate: Enhanced Edition

gooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooood

The best fantasy action/rpg of all time. Great story, sympathetic characters, semi-open world. The musics are also very thematic and cool. I've played it 5 or 6 times and it's always a real pleasure to do the quests and follow the story with little variations each time. On the negative side of the enhanced edition, the new engine is at my taste a little less better than in the first version of the game. The new non-player characters are for the most part interesting but hard to insert in a group and theirs quests didn't add a new experience on the main story apart from new locations to visit. And last, the new character classes and races fall in two categories: useless (too similar to a core class or with capacities you will use one or two time in the game) or gamebreaking (very high ability bonuses, or capacity who will make some monsters/traps useless and/or create powerfull combinations who will change the game experience). On global side, for the new gamers, the game has rules who are not really clear since the first edition. If you don't have read the instruction manual, or if you don't know the AD&D rules, you will have a rough time to understand the game system. Apart all these critics, I've seen one or two errors or dialog problems in french. In conclusion, I love this game very much and if you like D&D, the Forgotten Realms or a great rpg experience you must have play this game

First of all, I am writing this in July 2017, so some time after the game's launch and probably after a few patches. After spending 15h in game I can say that I haven't noticed any serious mistakes and everything works as it should. As for the game: we're still talking about the same old good Baldur's Gate, but with a few enhancements: easier equipment management, higher resolution support, and more. Of course, the same things I can download for free (mods for original BG) from the network, but in EE everything is integrated and works as it should. Nice additions are new characters, which in my opinion fit well into the game atmosphere. They have some serious and fun moments, are well balanced and have their own quests. I do not know how it looked right after launch, but now it's probably the best version of BG.

I see lots of critiques about this edition of the game in the comments. I've actually not played the original game, but I've watched some family members enjoy it a lot when it was released. The Enhanced Edition doesn't seem very different from what I remember seeing. As for my own experience, I'm at chapter 5 now, I've come through quite a bunch of dungeons and I think I have a good sample of the gameplay. I'm having a very very good time playing, the game is awesome. The game probably has a steeper learning curve than most more modern RPGs (and it's definitely a good idea to read the AD&D docs that are provided with the game before starting), but once you know and accept it it's not a problem. The immersion is very well made, once you've chosen a nice team that fits how you want to play, it makes you really want to care about your characters and see them becoming more powerful over time. About the random encounters between map screens, it's not too much of a hassle and most of them are easy. At worst there's quick load for battles that turn bad, save often and it won't ever be an issue. I can't really talk about the new npcs, I don't think I have any of them in my party, and you can pretty much ignore them if you don't want to play with them. On the technical side, I'm playing on Kubuntu Yakkety Yak. I had to download and install manually the json lib in the requirements, but that was easy (I followed this post : https://askubuntu.com/questions/987760/libjson-c2-and-libjson0-on-ubuntu-17-10 ). The game runs very smoothly and the resolution / UI scale is optimal. No bugs in any way so far, it's solid and stable.

When I was younger I remember people telling me to play Baldur's Gate. I was never interested because I was obsessed with JRPGs like Final Fantasy (to this day, I still feel that FF6 is the best RPG ever made). However, overtime I started to go outside of my "safe zone" and started to experiment with other games outside of the JRPG genre. My first being Morrowind, which to this day I still consider one of the greatest games ever made -- however, too vast for me to want to play all over again. After that, I thought I had had my fill of cRPGs, so I didn't bother. Now I'm older and I finally decided to play Baldur's Gate, and fortunately it was an update Enhanced Edition. I beat it just last night. So what's my take? Spectacular. For being such an old game, it was a wonderfully balanced experience. It had the same atmosphere as Morrowind, but not too vast. It had the same deep story and emotional connection to characters as many jRPGs, but not as linear. That said, I didn't really know how to think of it at first. The first 2 chapters or so are a bit confusing and somewhat shallow, but I now know it was for the sake of building up the story. I had a difficult time getting used to combat at first, but once you understand the system and start to strategize, it really grows on you. Your characters are extremely weak till around 5-6 levels, so don't expect to be battling anything serious till this point. In the meantime, explore with caution. Oul of all the fights I can remember though, the most epic was during Minsc's quest to save his friend. Storming the Gnoll fort was insane. I remember luring a bunch of Gnoll commandos down and having a massive fight on the stairs -- arrows, magic missiles, dead bodies strewn about -- JR Tolkien would be proud. However, exploring was the real treat in Baldur's Gate. I felt that all the sidequests were a game on their own, and every character had a real personality, problem, and adventure behind them. I actually enjoyed taking sidequests because of this. I think I spent more time on sidequests than I did on the main story -- and that's saying something. And unlike many other players, I felt the alignment and reputation system was really interesting. It did annoy me a bit when some of my evil characters wanted to leave because of my high rep, but there are so many other good characters to use that I got over it. And the great thing is, even if you're far into the game, any new characters you pick up automatically goes up to the level of your other party members. You can also focus on their individual quests any time you feel like it (except for those with a time limit, but that's rare). In other words, if you've grown attached to one character and you lose them, don't worry, because most of the companions you pick up are worth knowing. The dialogue is also wonderful and you can tell they put a lot of time into the story, which although doesn't have the biggest jaw dropping moments (like JRPGs), but is intricate, believable, and takes itself seriously. In other words, it's a story for a mature minded audience who appreciate politics, psychology, and the nuance of human nature. My only gripes? Dying is a real pain in this game. Even if I lost one companion in battle I would reload, because the thought of having to pick up all their gear and rush back to a temple to revive them was not on my list of things to do. Also, sometimes if you select all your party members at once and tell them to walk somewhere, one might get stuck behind another NPC. it was always annoying when I was about to move to another location and then realizing one of my characters was still on the other side of the screen because they were stuck behind someone else. Healing was also a difficulty -- the potions were just far too weak between the middle and end of the game. Even healing spells weren't that great. I also experienced some bugs near the end with dialogue not popping up or my journal updating the beginning of special events only after they were completed. And perhaps the biggest let down was the ending. After I beat the last boss, the only thing I was rewarded with was a slowly zoomed in artistic cinematic of the boss laying on the ground dead. While I was happy that I finally beat the game (and this almost impossible to kill boss), I was extremely disappointed that there was nothing to say after. So what happens to our hero? How does the story wrap up? There isn't anything to tell you. The game just ends. Despite these minor issues, the game still deserves major praise. I hope that BG2 is as better as they say, because I have very high expectations after this one.