The Good: * Mechanics - The improvements to the combat are simple and effective - limiting resting means that you can't spam it after every single fight (slightly undermined by the fact that there seems to be at least one camping kit to find in every area, but whatever) and by preventing the player from gaining an unfair advantage by buffing with spells and potions pre-combat. Also, they made Bards actually useful by letting them hit stuff while they're singing. * Graphics - They might not be the most important thing in a game but this is certainly a beautiful looking one, both the environments and the character models. * Loot - It seems petty to say that I didn't like Shadowrun:Returns because I couldn't loot the corpses - because it is - but it's at least partially true. I like loot, even if it does makes you stupidly rich relatively early on. * Real-Time with Pause is so much more enjoyable (and quick) than turn-based combat. (Take note, InXile) * Granular settings for difficulty and immersion. * Rangers with guns. The Bad: * Your Companions - This isn't a criticism of their abilities or anything, but I didn't find any of the eight characters who can join you remotely interesting or likeable . There's no one as eccentric and memorable as Minsc or Tiax, or as likeable as Imoen. There isn't even an Anomen - someone I'll remember for a long time simply because of how insufferably unpleasant they are. I had no compunction about starting the game again and Icewind Dale-ing with six custom characters. * The Plot - Without revealing a lot of spoilers I'll just say that it left me slightly disappointed - it seemed lacking in personal motivation for the protagonist and keeps key characters hidden until too late in the game. Better than Icewind Dale & NWN, yes, but not BG or Planescape. * The Level Cap - I hit Level 12 with three or four hours left to play, leaving me with little motivation to complete the sidequests in the last town area.
Baldur's Gate 2 is my favourite game of all time, so with that being said, the only question is: is it worth buying the enhanced edition over the regular, far cheaper version? New Content: BG2EE adds a handful of new companions with personal quests, including a single class thief, a wild mage, a monk and an evil paladin. With the exception of the evil paladin none of these are going to make your party on merit, and the writing isn't good enough to make you want to use them for role playing reasons. The single class thief will also have an extremely tepid romance(?) with a female protagonist. All in all, nothing that hasn't been done better by the mod community. Speaking of mods, not every one has been updated to support EE yet (Item revisions/spell revisions are the ones I'm missing most at the time of writing) so check before buying if you've got favourites. BG2EE comes with widescreen support out of the box as well as a trick that you can't replicate with the basic game and the widescreen mod - customisable font sizes and interface scaling. Having properly sized sidebars is a good thing. No reason to buy this over the standard version other than better widescreen support? That would be true except for one small detail - the standard version doesn't run properly on my laptop. This does. Enough reason for me to buy it - but I still waited for a heavy sale (elsewhere) before buying. As for the bugs the other reviewers have mentioned: haven't noticed any myself, but I'm mostly holding off playing more than a quick run through the campaign while I wait for more mods to become compatible.
