Yeah, I know it's golden classic, I remember the hype when it was released back in 1998. I respect Beamdog efforts to make it playable on modern computers. But by any modern standards this game is tedious and full of bad design. Huge square maps without any interesting encounters or useful loot, repetitive combat which is either "ready your bows and kill five gnolls to get astounding 100XP" (99% of encounters) or "reload the encounter where you've been pwned before, precast anything you've got and pray to the God of Random Saving Throws". Most classes are useless; until the BG2: SoA had been released everybody played Fighter dual-classed to Mage. Most NPCs are weak, some can be recruited as an inseparable couple only, evil NPCs leave if the party reputation is too high (yeah, criminals prefer to be known as such and love to be attacked on sight, right?). The eponymous city consisted of 9 square maps, and some of those maps are divided into two parts by city wall, just because designers were too lazy to place the city wall between maps, not across them (and to reach the other part of the same map you have to leave the map and approach it from another side). I played the BG: EE once as a part of EE Trilogy and would hate to do it again. Play BG2: EE instead, it's much better in every aspect. If you miss those stat-increasing tomes from the first game, use EE Keeper to add those 8 points. If you want more and better combat, play Icewind Dale instead. If you want to roleplay, play Planescape: Torment. This game is like some movies everybody calls GOAT and nobody watches.
