First I'll point out some differences between the original BG1 and this (BGEE): -Some new bugs have been in BGEE since day one, for a long while it was a buggy mess for some. -OTOH, most (or all) of these bugs are gone now. I played through the game about a year ago and didn't hit any major bugs. -A lot of stuff in BGEE can be achieved with mods to BG1. -OTOH, a lot of it can't, and installing a bunch of mods is not easy. -Multiplayer is still rough so long after release (or was when I tried about a year ago). -OTOH, it's better than the original from what I hear and post-release support from Beamdog is easily the best I've ever seen. They continue to work on all issues until they are resolved. -Widescreen support and bugs from the original have been fixed. -New quests in new areas tied to new NPCs. Some new areas were a bit artistically jarring, but you can judge for yourself; the 1st, 4th, and 11th screenshots on this page are of new areas while the rest are old areas. These are new areas with new quests that you can play when you take along new NPCs. That's a bunch of new game content available if you want it. -The Black Pits is a battle arena with a light story. I'm looking forward to doing some co-op in The Black Pits at some point. Again, even if it's not your cup of tea, it's another big addition to the game. -Apart from bug fixes, there are many other improvements. As for the game itself: -Great story with memorable characters and countless hours of fun await. -The tried and tested 2nd Edition AD&D system serves as a solid backbone for this game. -Isometric perspective, party-based, RTwP strategic and tactical combat. -Beautiful 2D art. This game and its sequel are the epitome of western RPG goodness, and I consider these EEs to be improvements that are easily worth the extra ten or so dollars. As the original gets an easy five stars from me, I'd give BG:EE six stars if I could for managing to add something worthwhile to a great, classic game.
I really enjoyed this game. The controls were more than satisfactory, the character customization was varied enough to allow many ways to play through the game, and the bosses were enjoyable and required thought to find an ideal approach to defeating them. The only things that I could think of to improve this game would be a bit less over-the-top immaturity in the humor, and more subtlety in the references. I definitely recommend this game to anyone who likes platformers and/or role playing games, and I'm hoping that the developer releases something new sometime soon.
