Baldur's Gate: Enhanced Edition

BG1 is one of the most important games in Video gaming history - a title that launched an entire genre, something that went on to define the games that came after. It was a landmark that things invariably moved around, as they changed and evolved, and a lot of games that came after can trace their history back to this one. That's why I wanted to experience it for myself, to be a part of a legacy that has spanned most of gaming history. Unfortunately for me, while BG1's legacy is incredible, the actual game itself is, honestly, extremely boring. A lot of people describe BG1's story as a "slow burn", and I'd agree, but when you actually find the fire there's really not all that much going on. It didn't get hooks in me when I started out, and by the mid point of the game I still wasn't engaged or interested. Not even at the very end, when everything was apparent and available. Companions don't fare any better - often being either extremely shallow and not notable, or barely interactive - It feels often like companions were designed to spawn in and be replaced just as quickly, perhaps in anticipation of their pending doom, and that makes them not only hard to be interested in, but also hard to actually care about in regards to whether or not they die. BG1's combat is a faithful in many ways recreation of 2E DND, and I think that is where a lot of the problems stem from. DND's early game is hilariously bad, and BG1 is no exception - constantly being one shot while you are almost always missing (compounded by low level's lack of tools and the defaulting on cosmetic attack option) wears down player morale incredibly fast. Once you get past the starting levels (which is made even harder due to XP being split across the party, meaning that all the endless companions thrown your way at the beginning makes it *harder* to get going), combat becomes largely uninteresting as you either nuke the enemy before they can hurt you, or they do the same and you just try again until you win. I'd talk about other mechanics, but that's basically where they end. Lastly, exploration is almost always a joke. A lot of people who like BG1 praise the exploration, but honestly, I just don't see it. 90% of any given map is either empty space or almost empty buildings with nothing of note in them. Unnamed NPC's are frequent in towns, and only occasionally add flavor, meaning the bulk of this game's exploration is running into the fog of war and finding nothing, rinse and repeat. It gets better in some areas, sure, but the vast majority of this game is empty and lifeless. What little spark exists is not enough light to cast a meaningful shadow. I don't hate BG1, and I don't love it. Playing it just made me incredibly, incredibly bored. I respect BG1 and it's incredibly important prescence in the genre - how it led to so many games I've come to love, and how revolutionary it was for it's time. But that time was 30 years ago now, almost older than I am, and it honestly shows a lot more than I was hoping. So many other games now exist that do what BG1 was trying to do so much better, that it makes the original feel... dull and drab by comparison. I'm glad I got to experience the original, to see where it all began, but it's not something I think i'll ever have cause to experience again. BG1's legacy far outshines itself, and that's still a good fate to have in my eyes.

ok so, ill get right to the point on this one: if you are coming here looking for a nostalgic old dungeons and dragons game with an engaging story and fun characters, you have come to the right place! HOWEVER, if you are coming here just after playing baldurs gate 3 then chances are that i would NOT recommend this game. this game is to old and clunky by today's standards and doesn't even make sense sometimes (ie: saving throws). considering all this i guess its a little bit silly that i played and 100% this game because i actually DON'T like old d&d.

What an amazing game. Sure it is old. But there is so many things happening it can sometimes feel overwhelming. The story is great too. From what I understand it varies from playthrough to playthrough...decisions and all the different choices and all that. I lost a playthrough because 4 members of my party just decided to kill each other...leaving me and one more to stand there like idiots. I will replay this awesome game sometime in the future. I know I could probably hire new members for my party....but the loss of those companions was emotional for me. Next time.

说真的，打力竭了，各种设定和操作真的牢中之牢。剧情和队友真的是支撑我玩下去的动力了，听说二代全方面都比一代好很多，待我通关后品鉴

Ho, there reader. Stay thy course a moment to indulge an old...."ish" man. Ah, the one that started it all...a gem of a game. My brother first introduced me to it in what must have been 1998 or so. He'd been struggling to get this 6-disc monster to run on a Midwest Micro PC. Often, he'd end up with a "blue screen of death" from a sudden crash because the machine was meant to run basic office programs and maybe Minesweeper. When it did manage to run Baldur's Gate, the game seemed...intimidating. I remember watching him manage these big battles on these beautifully crafted maps, issuing commands to his 6 characters, all of whom had their own voices and personalities. Suddenly, the screen began to darken and a thunderstorm rolled in, rain and all....and then a massive lightning bolt struck one of the enemies, killing him. I think it was the first time either of us had seen such a thing happen. Not from a command he'd issued to a party member, simply mother nature in this game's world, deciding that these arrogant clowns had overstayed their welcome. Magical arrows imbued with ice flying. A swarm of insects unleased upon an enemy spell caster. Fighters swinging their weapons at each other with battle cries and the sounds of metal on metal. It was awesome. Had I not been 17 with a fast car and more interested in driving around and partying instead games, I may have gotten around to learning how everything worked sooner. Who is your protagonist? Well, it can be just about what ever you want. You have a basic backstory, sure but beyond that, it's totally up to you. Sarevok might be a layer cake of evil but you're about to show him what a 6 course meal looks like. Or not. Here we are, almost 30 years later and every few years that go by, I find myself playing through this epic adventure and still to this day, finding things I hadn't before. All while thoroughly enjoying the experience. Baldur's Gate has a certain indelible charm to it, unmatched even by it's unforgettable sequels. With all my praise out of the way, allow me to provide you with an account of my feelings toward Siege Of Dragonspear, or as I prefer to call it, "Dragon Tears". In this Enhanced Edition, Beamdog introduced 4 new joinable NPC's, to my mind, the last thing this game needed. They're annoying, poorly-voiced and amateurishly written. Some lines sound like they were recorded in a public bathroom. But WAIT...there's more. Dragon Tears opens up after you and your friends have defeated Sarevok. Canonically, this would be Imoen, Khalid & Jaheira, Minsc & Dynaheir. Sooo.....what's Safana doing here? See, in order to have those two pairs of NPCs, you had to be something above straight up evil in your alignment or they won't stick with you. BUT since somebody was soaked for the evil, slutty thief who tries to feed you to a pack of werewolves in BG2, we are locked out of Imoen for the ENTIRE game for a stupidly contrived reason. She's studying magic. Huh? You could have dual classed her without---SHHH...we've only just begun. It's a pain having to navigate dungeons without a thief, so here we are. Credit where it's due, Imoen, Minsc, Khalid, Dynaheir and yes, Safana all have brand new voice lines provided by most of the original cast. David Warner for Irenicus (Oh, sorry the Hooded Man) was just icing on the cake. At least it would have been. Could have been. But...someone wasn't given any new voice lines at all. A goblin, some stupid gnome, single mom guard captain, gender-neutral storekeep, a dull antagonist, the alliterative drow. Who's missing? Edwin, Viconia, Beamdog's other cringey NPCs. The list goes on buuut....Oh no. What happened to Jaheira? How can this be? Must be some kind of bug, right? Sure was. Was a big ol bug up the butt of the woman tasked with writing a lot of this tripe and drivel. You see, she apparently didn't like our vaguely Slavic sounding druid. So strong was her disdain, it would seem finding anyone to provide Jaheira's voice was too big an ask. To her way of thinking, this important character was too much "nagging wife" and not enough "strong woman who don't need no man". Thus we're essentially forced to endure Safana's putrid thirst. I have to ask...did this lady even PLAY the games? We're supposed to accept this premise that BG didn't have enough tough women. So she took it upon herself to retcon Safana into such. Somehow Shar-Teel, Branwen, Dynaheir, Viconia and YES, Jaheira didn't cut the mustard. Now to be fair, if Jaheira isn't your cup of tea, that's perfectly fine. You don't HAVE to have her along. You don't have to have ANYONE. Yet somehow, for those of us who can at least acknowledge how she fits in the canonical story, she is left voiceless. Speaking of who joins us on our quest to fight a self insert yeast infection with glowing eyes and then the bad guy from IWD, perhaps the biggest sin Dragon Tears commits is preventing you from building a party as you wish. Some didn't get along and might eventually come to blows but the games never prevented them from joining. Minsc and Dynaheir can't stand Edwin but he would still join if you asked and they'd grumpily go along with it. Nah. Give the player a CHOICE? What do you think this is, some kind of role playing....thing or something? And that character combination is only one example. Back to characters this game attempts to rui---I mean retcon...did you ever wonder why Sarevok didn't hunt you down after he dealt with Gorion? He was a busy guy and we were on the move a lot but still. Well, it would seem the writers pondered this question and they concluded that your murderous half-brother, prone to fits of laughter whilst a' murderin'...loved you. That's right. Sarevok. Sarevok Anchev, who desired more than anything to become the GOD OF MURDER and would let nothing stand in the way of that had spared you. Out of love. A kinder, gentler Sarevok. Had he somehow been retconned into a joinable NPC, maybe his character portrait would have had him holding a basket of kittens. Why not? I mean somebody's gotta hold them while you're being "tricked" into murdering Skie by NOTIrenicus. Her father, Duke Silvershield even makes a cameo appearance. Huh? He died? Never you mind that, he's right as rain. The late great Mr. David Warner. The legendary Jim Cummins. The endlessly versatile Kevin Michael Richardson. The silver and silk voice of Grey Delisle. Beamdog got these voice artists to return, along with many others to voice these characters, in some cases for the last time. One last chance to capture lightning in a bottle....and this is what they wrote for them. Click on Minsc. Listen to how much dumber he sounds. Read the text as you do. "Huh?" "What?" "You want....Boo?" So what does any of this mean for Baldur's Gate's story going forward? Nothin'. The Shining Lady, all the dopes you could have recruited, the actual "siege" itself, the demon Bellyfat and his Crunchycinnamonbun, Sarevok and his kittens, you being framed for murder and breaking out of prison...NOTHIN'. Irenicus who? Nah, he doesn't sound anything like that hooded guy. For a game meant to serve as a sort of bridge between the original and BG2, what we ended up with was a ramshackle rubber raft, filled with all the farts that some hack writer hadn't already sniffed herself. What Dragon Tears really feels like is an ambitious, yet poorly-written, nonsensical, halfway spiteful, pseudo-feminist power fantasy fan mod. Y'know, the ones folks used to make back in the 2000's and post for free download on Sorcerer's Place and other fan sites devoted to these Infinity Engine gems. If this game was intended for old school fans of these games to get excited for a new entry in the series, it surely succeeded in doing that. As for replay value or relevance within the narrative of the sequels? Swing and a miss. Big time. Skip the raft. Bioware knew what it was doing and thankfully so did Larian.

Played this in the late 90s and never finished due to being a pot head teenager. Wish I hadn't waited so long to come back to it. I am a big fan of the Pillars of Eternity & Pathfinder games on PC. There is so much the BGEE does that feels awkward at first, but just slow down and get your bearings. The starting area has tutors that I felt explained things pretty damn well. Tons and tons of videos and forums explaining things differently as well. THAC0 is not scary. I wish YouTubers and reviewers wouldn't trash it so much, it's just a system where the math is a little different. It's still basic arithmetic. Modern games like WH40K: Rogue Trader are way more complicated and people are doing fine there too. If anyone tells you it's awful, they're just being dramatic. The story is pretty straight forward. The only timed quests are companion quests, but they're super easy and they'll warn you if you're taking too long. Difficulty - If you raise the difficulty, I recommend turning off increased damage with higher difficulty. It's a fantastic option to keep it both challenging and fun. This is a game where you should not feel bad reloading if a companion dies. It's going to happen a lot, and resurrection fees can be rough in the early game. Anyway, I started on Core difficulty for my first playthrough. I started over and raised it to Insanity and still had a blast. I normally don't do that, especially on my first full run. The game also has story mode to prevent you from dying. Totally recommend that as well. There's something to be said about just kicking back and exploring all the maps. They have so many little stories tucked away with cool rewards.

It holds up surprisingly well in almost every aspect to this day. I was skeptical about going back to old DnD versions, but this game reminded me that the newer DnD versions just kept losing the "charm" with complexity and unique stuff to the point I like this old version more than 5e and not by a little bit either.

Hello everybody, PurplePike here. After dipping my toes into the CRPG genre with games such as Baldur's Gate 3: The Thirdening, the original Fallout, and Divinity: Original Sin II, I was curious to experience more games in the genre and find out what dastardly war crimes awaited me within. Suffice it to say, Baldur's Gate: Enhanced HD Remastered Remake GOTY Tarnished Bhaalspawn Collector's Edition: The One'ening, was quite the delicious treat. Despite being a game that is OLD AS ♥♥♥♥, this game has a wide variety of quests, companions, weaponry, stats, and other mechanics that I'm sure can be abused and messed with. For example, my team consisted of 2 mages that could cast only basic spells, 3 dudes who were melee and couldn't hit for ♥♥♥♥, and a third sniper that could hit some of the time. How did I beat the game then, you may ask? Well, whenever I saw a group of boss enemies, I would send in my sniper, tease them with arrows, leave to the bottom room, and then gank them with my 6v1 until they all were dead. Some may call that cowardly, I all that a "skill issue" on the enemies' parts. I also had a motley of potions and other concoctions that my main guy could take that would actually allow him to hit enemies that could kill them in a few hits, so that was useful too when I was in a pinch. Sometimes my mages would even do something themselves, such as trapping the enemies (and my team members) in spider webs that take MINUTES to free myself from or cast a magical fireball that explodes - and also damages my team members! They were quite useful whenever I didn't know what to do against an enemy and decided to implement the "♥♥♥♥ it" strategy against my foes. This is all to say that in Baldur's Gate, you have the choice to approach situations as you wish. Sure you can play a build that makes sense and is rational, or you can hope your squad of goons can out-goon the enemy goons with trickery and nefarious tactics. I do not think in the later acts I beat any of the boss enemies "normally" and I love that because I beat them with such foul and dubious tactics that were my own plan of deviousness. I applied this ideology to all my quests, NPC's I talked to, everything, all in an effort to beat the game in my own Baldur's Gate: Enhanced Edition way. Besides that I hear the cutscenes are worse in this version and yeah I'd agree. In summary, the warcrimes I committed in this game were quite swell, 10/10 would fart on the final boss and kill him without him noticing again.