Baldur's Gate: Enhanced Edition

Once an opinion is canon, no other opinion gets to the surface, but even when I have Baldur's Gate bought several times during my life (two physical, a previous one in GOG) I think this EE totally deserves your investment because it gets rid of so many bugs and glitches and fixes so many broken quests. So. Many. Bugs. I tried to play the original release last year with all the patches and enhancements and the thing crashed, burned and glitched like crazy. Only thing you will miss, and I actually miss, are the EAX enhancements which sounded so great.

While I don't appreciate the removal of the direct purchase of the original version, I have to say that the restoration work is more than good. The "lost" content is quite negligible, the interface improvements all welcome and the additions avoidable if you don't appreciate them. Despite the improvements that have occurred with the post-launch updates there are some things that could have been better tweaked like the balancing of some parts of the Tales of the Sword Coast expansion. In addition, the new Legacy of Bhaal mode is more than playfully difficult at times unnerving due to how unbalanced some fights have been. I liked The Black Pits standalone story, new classes and new options. In particular, the possibility of pressing a key to highlight the elements on the screen with which to interact can be useful. It remains a free choice of the player. The game itself is a very pleasant adventure for low-level heroes. The setting and the rules are quite faithful to the reference Dungeons & Dragons version. While not offering an obvious multitude of approaches, the game is much less limiting than others of the same genre, does not explicit many solutions that it is up to the player to discover and is full of small surprises. Knowing the original rules can help you master it sooner. However, it remains a game that can be played even by those who have never played D&D. For me the greatest value is the atmosphere: music, voices, forest explorations, etc. Recommended above all to fans of the D&D setting and to those looking for a CRPG from a period in which the genre was beginning to be codified as it is seen today in the mainstream which, despite being one of the first to modernize itself, can be fascinating today also precisely for the its older components. Not to be underestimated compared to its more famous sequel.

All Beamdog "Enhanced" editions are garbage. You can't even change the resolution. If you happen to have a 4K screen, the mouse cursor will be tiny. New UI art looks like it has been made by an intern.

While it is very much a product of its time and a prototype for its superior sequel, Baldur's Gate still holds up. Generally speaking, the gameplay has aged rather well, especially when compared to more cumbersome RPGs of its era: the combat and inventory systems are surprisingly straightforward and easy to get a hold of. Since you have up to 6 characters with limited AI to manage (or rather babysit) simultaneously, some fights can get a bit chaotic, but as a DnD game there are largely enough options and combat configurations to make battles strategic and interesting: spells, buffs and debuffs, melee and ranged weapons... You have a lot to work with, and it's solid stuff. Overall, BG nails the feeling of liberty and adventure it's going for. The gameplay largely focuses on exploring cities and forests and stumbling upon unexpected quests and hostile encounters. Not a whole lot of time is spent in dungeons, which, frankly, feels fresh - even if a lot of the areas you get to visit feel a bit empty and make for somewhat repetitive gameplay. And while the game is no literary masterpiece, the story and dialogues are definitely solid and do a great job of making you feel like an adventurer sent unto an epic quest. It helps that the graphics still mostly hold up to this day: the prerendered and painted backgrounds not only ooze charm, they also look legitimately good and have aged pretty damn well! While this “Enhanced Edition” lets you play in HD and offers a new expansion and some neat tweaks, it also makes some unnecessary and inauthentic changes: the “modern” cutscenes look like fanarts and are somewhat jarring, the new characters and quests are kind of sweet but rather out-of-place... And for all these changes that no in-game option lets you revert, it feels like a lot of issues are left uncorrected. It's still a decent way to play BG for the first time, and at least purchasing it lets you retrieve the original game, but it feels like a bit of a missed opportunity.

Играл в оригинальный Baldurs Gate очень давно, да и то было это довольно мимолетное знакомство. Да и начал я его не с первой части, а со второй, от того у меня довольно путанные воспоминания о сюжете и завязке игры. Но даже тогда я понимал, что прикасаюсь к чему-то огромному и глубокому. Прошло время, о серии Baldurs Gate я где только не слышал, и всегда эти слухи были сугубо положительными, но технологический прогресс и привыкание к качеству современных игр всегда отговаривало меня от идеи заново запустить первую, а потом и вторую часть, чтобы наконец осознанно понять сюжет и магию этих игр. И вот переиздание первой игры наконец помогло мне это сделать. При запуске я готов был увидеть пиксельную картину, непрорисованные задники, еле читаемый текст и картинку 4 на 3, но был приятно удивлен, когда увидел приятно оформленный интерфейс, нормально напечатанный и переведенный текст, перерендеренные задники и шикороформаную картинку. Да, игра по прежнему двухмерная и недетализированная при близком приближении, но тут нужно понимать основу движка, на котором она создана. И данный ремастер - это действительно максимум, который выжали из старого движка, сохранив при этом лицо того самого Baldurs Gate. И в игру меня засосало с головой, мне стало плевать на разницу графики и прочие современные удобства. Игра до сих пор способна увлечь своей историей и механикой квестов, за что спасибо разработчикам оригинальной игры, а данное переиздание - это просто способ сделать это наименее безболезненно, за что спасибо уже студии переиздания. Теперь я точно смогу осилить обе части и гордиться тем, что точно знаком с этой нетленной классикой. Прошел уже больше половины - доволен, как слон, а игра и не думает заканчиваться. Посему минусы искать не хочу, так как данная покупка полностью для меня оправдана.