Baldur’s Gate Enhanced Edition Review

Baldur’s Gate Enhanced Edition includes an enhanced version of the first two Baldur’s Gate games. Baldur’s Gate is a fantasy RPG that first saw the light of day in 1998 by the hands of BioWare (Mass Effect, Dragon Age) and was published by now-defunct publisher Interplay Entertainment. The game saw subsequent release on PC, Linux, Android, iOS devices between 2012 and 2014. In 1999, BioWare released an expansion pack dubbed Baldur’s Gate: Tales of the Sword Coast which added 20 to 30 hours of additional content. Baldur’s Gate II quickly followed suit with a 2000 release for PC and MAC. Still taking place in the Forgotten Realms, the sequel to the 1999 point & click game let player controls a party of up to six characters; one being player created and the rest being recruited across the adventure. Both Baldur’s Gate and Baldur’s Gate II were received with high praises and scored in the high 90’s on Metacritic. So does the Baldur’s Gate games stand the test of time? Let’s take a look at Baldur’s Gate Enhanced Edition.

Baldur’s Gate is set in Ed Greenwood’s the Forgotten Realms during the year of 1368DR (Dale Reckoning) in the midst of an apparent iron shortage, where items made with iron inexplicably rot and break. As a young and orphaned ward of the mage Gorion, players are ordered to leave with their parental figure overnight; with no explanation as to why. As they try to escape, Gorion comes face to face with a shadowy figure to handover their orphan. The mage refuses and pays the ultimate price. The ward escapes safely and meets Imoen; a childhood friend and a fellow orphan. Seeing as Candlekeep is no longer an option due to Gorion’s untimely passing, it’s up to the players as the Ward to solve the mysterious iron crisis.

The sequel, Baldur’s Gate II: Shadows of Amn, is set in Amn during the year 1369 DR, a country on the subcontinent of Faerûn; still in the fantasy world of the Forgotten Realms. Shortly after the events of the first game, the hero is taken captive and players awaken in a cage. Our fearless hero is then experimented on by a wizard, who’s fully aware of his “untapped power”. The Shadow Thieves ambush the wizard allowing the protagonist to escape thanks to their companion from the first game; Imoen. It’s up to our Hero to save the day.

The Baldur’s Gate games are a mix of point & click and real-time movement adventures mixed with a bit of strategy. It means you don’t always have direct control of your characters. You need to move the cursor around on the desired action and press the Action button in order to proceed. As you roam around the games’ various levels, you’ll come across a nice variety of NPCs that are either inoffensive townsfolk or enemies who want to tear you limb from limb.

In order to determine who’s who, hovering the cursor over the NPC will display a red or blue circle underneath them. Blue meaning is someone you can simply try to chat with while Red one means get ready for a fight. It’s a nice way to figure out what’s gonna happen, but again, there could’ve better, more obvious ways to establish this. It can be disabled for a more seamless experience, but whenever the game’s paused, you’ll always see the circle. Once you’re face to face with an NPC with a red circle, you’ll be getting ready for battle. In order to proceed to combat, you’ll be thrust into the game’s Pause menu which will allow you to plan your attacks carefully.

While the point & click genre is ideal for PCs as the mouse makes for quick and efficient movement, the genre doesn’t bode so well console as using a joystick to move around makes things a bit cumbersome and lacks the precision of the mouse. On consoles, it feels clunky, cumbersome and counterintuitive.

Another issue I have with this game is the amount of dedication and time it requires. It’s an exhaustive and extensive package that each game requires your full attention due to so many things/concepts to grasp depending on your party members and so much menu management that it can sometimes full like there’s too much info. While once it sinks its teeth into you, you’re in it for the long run, but skipping a few days, weeks, and you’ll find yourself lost because you might have forgotten how to interact with characters or create magic spells. There’s so much to process and remember, it can feel daunting and exhausting. The tutorial itself can take about an hour if you’re looking to grasp the game’s various concepts.

Considering this is an RPG, while getting off to a painfully long and tedious hour-long tutorial, the game expands quickly and thankfully you aren’t limited to a linear path. When getting confused as to where to go next, your journal becomes a vital part of the adventure thanks to its important events section as it displays all quests available as you progress through the game. Unfortunately, the deeper you get into the adventure, the more cumbersome it becomes to navigate through the plethora of available quests. Additionally, while the game offers a decent variety character creation wise, finding a class and party that suits your playstyle can take some patience. While some will find things that click instinctively, others maybe have pluck down a few hours before being able to jump into the game.

Besides being a quite extensive game, another problem that’s quite baffling with this is bundle is that it requires a constant internet connection; now why would a remaster of a 20-year-old game require constant online access is beyond me. So if you have a power outage or Xbox Live is down, you can forget about scavenging the lands of the Forgotten Realms.

On the presentation side of things, it’s fine. There’s nothing really wowing here. The visuals, while a nostalgia act, are most likely to please old school gamers who want to go down a trip down nostalgia lane. Obviously, playing on a TV is different than a PC screen as you’re (most of the time) much farther from the tv than you are from a PC screen making it sometimes hard to see little details or even darker enemies in dark dungeons. On the audio side of things, the soundtrack feels majestic and does make you feel like you’re about to go kick royal ass, unfortunately, it doesn’t match the slow beat of the game. Voice acting is ok at best. It comes from a period of gaming where emotional performances weren’t really available, so each line is delivered well, but it sounds monotone and boring.

So is Baldur’s Gate Enhanced Edition worth your money? Only if you have the time and patience. The games rely heavily on nostalgia and can be a great reason to bring back classic games, but these should’ve stayed where it once was. The PC centric controls don’t apply well to controllers as it makes the simplest things cumbersome, the presentation is dated and it requires a lot of time and dedication. It’s easy to be overwhelmed with the number of things to manage/remember. If you stop playing, it’s easy to forget not only where you left off, but how to play the game. Unless you were a fan of the original a fan of nostalgia, save your money.