Baldur's Gate: Enhanced Edition

Baldur's Gate is a game that I want to love, but at present I can only just barely like. [i]Disclaimer: I did use some mods for this game, notably the classic cutscenes mod, and the cdtweaks mod. I highly recommend them, but they may have impacted my experience in either a positive or negative way.[/i] The vibes are great, and I think the story is good, if a bit cliché (then again, this is a D&D game from '98, so I'm giving it some slack here). I do think this game is harmed by the way it handled companions, since they are treated more like hirelings than actual characters. They don't really interact with the player outside of their recruitment and personal quest if they have one, with the exceptions of the ones added in the enhanced edition. You can absolutely tell which ones were not in the original game due to the way they are voiced and the way they will sometimes start dialogue with the player on their own. Still, what is here in terms of writing is generally good. I think Sarevok is a fun villain, though I wish we would have gotten more time to interact with him. The story has some twists and turns, and there is quite a bit of stuff happening in the background while playing. The game is more focused on the combat, so the writing, while good, will get a bit sparse by the second half of the game. It runs on the AD&D2e ruleset, which means you have a bunch of convoluted systems like THAC0, different ACs against melee and ranged weapons, and the way class levels work. Thankfully the only thing you really need to care about when it comes to equipment (at lower difficulties) is "if number turns green, then equip". I can definitely imagine the fun you could have putting together builds at higher difficulties. If you're like me and basically only had D&D5e as a reference before starting this game, trust me when I say that that will harm your experience more than you might think. This game was frustrating to figure out for me, and I felt like I was playing against a very antagonistic DM by the end of it (and I've played with a DM that decided to nerf the 5e Ranger. The Ranger!). Granted, this difficulty was probably more of a me issue rather than the game. I, in my eternal wisdom, decided to play a dex-based thief, in melee, and dump strength, while I wanted to use dual longswords. I had read in the manual that dex did add to your "to hit" roll, if it was higher than strength but it didn't contribute to damage. I thought that I could get away with it because I was playing on Normal difficulty. After I'd figured out the system, I realized what a terrible idea it was even on Normal which is lower than the "intended" difficulty. But I had come too far to restart by then, so I powered through until I got to Durlag's Tower, an endgame megadungeon that will rock your ♥♥♥♥ if you don't have a decent build. This is where I turned down the difficulty to easy. Yes, I did it at basically the end of the game. It didn't help that I had seen the achievement you get if you get through the main game without any party member dying, so I had made it infinitely more difficult for me by changing my "failstate" from "PC dies" to "anyone gets downed", for my first playthrough of the game. The game is definitely built around the idea that party members will die and you can resurrect them. (Yes, this was [b]my[/b] mistake, and that's not the game's fault). I can still see what this game could be if you know what you're doing. Edit: Actually, SoD made me realize how unlucky I was with my attack rolls, because the characters got new voicelines that plays when they get a critical miss. This made me remember that I did see the words "critical miss" come up quite often in the main game, and SoD just made this much more obvious. It seems like every other attack any of my party members made was a critical miss, so maybe it wasn't a skill issue as much as a rng issue. Another issue I had, but it's an actual issue with the game this time was the journal. I like the journal, I think it gives you just enough information where you know what you're supposed to be doing, but not so much that it becomes mindless (no quest markers here). My actual issue is that it gets completely wiped every time you finish a main quest (or chapter). This includes finished quests, open quests that you can still finish even if it isn't in your journal, and any other information that you may have saved in it. So, if you're going for 100% completion, I'd suggest a notebook, or just follow a guide. Despite the negativity here, I did enjoy most of the time I spent with this game. It just sucks that it was just the first half of the game, and the last hour of the game. By the time the base game ended, I was ready to just hang in the towel and quit. However, it leads straight into Siege of Dragonspear, and the vibes were immediately different from the first cutscene (and not just because it was animated in a different way to the original). The way the characters were voice acted felt different in a good way, and the vibes of the first area was just immaculate, like I felt similarly to when I first started the base game, and I was hooked and ready to jump in again. At the time of writing, I have not completed SoD, but I will probably write my thoughts on it as well.

Not as good as the second one, but still great

My all time favorite childhood game.

El mejor juego de roll de la historia

Baldur's Gate is a, no "the", classic crpg. You have to play it at least once in your life. I don't like everything in the Enhanced Edition, for example I like the old movie sequences more. But Baldur's Gate EE is the most convinient way to play the game on a modern pc.

Best Game ever.

death to tieflings