Baldur's Gate: Enchanced Edition Review

The 2000's were a dismal time for PC gaming. The focus of developers and publishers had shifted firmly towards the console market, and it seemed like no genre had it worse than that of the CRPG. We went from the heights of Baldur's Gate, Icewind Dale, Planescape: Torment, and Fallout to the depths of mediocrity, where the prevailing attitude among developers was that shooters and action/adventure titles were the only thing worth making, and that RPGs that actually played like RPGs were outdated and archaic. You had the occasional flawed gem such as Dragon Age: Origins, but for the most part it was a time when the best you could hope for was something like Oblivion, a game so lacking in quality that the fans' rallying cry was, "The modders will fix it!"




The new decade brought us a few good titles, like Fallout: New Vegas, but it also brought us dreck like Dragon Age 2 and Mass Effect 3. But just when things seemed hopeless, a glimmer of hope emerged. Severla RPG projects sprung up, InExile's Wasteland 2, Obsidian Entertainment's Project Eternity, and in addition to all this was a curious project called Baldur's Gate: Enhanced Edition, an updated re-release of BioWare's classic CRPG (back when uttering the words "BioWare" didn't make me laugh uncontrollably), developed by Overhaul Games, a small studio made up of several former BioWare employees. That the BG:EE website was hit with so much traffic at its unveiling (to the point where their servers interpreted it as a DDoS attack) ought to be a clear sign of how demand for "old school RPGs" is still very much alive.

BG:EE features three new characters, a new standalone arena-style campaign called "The Black Pits," and a large number of miscellaneous improvements and bugfixes. It also runs the game on the Baldur's Gate 2 engine, allowing all the kits and classes in that game to be backported into the Baldur's Gate 1 campaign. BG:EE also introduces the Blackguard class, bringing the 3e prestige class to a AD&D 2e game. As for the core game itself, it has remained largely unchanged, which as it should be. The last thing anyone wanted was for Overhaul to pull a George Lucas and change things that had no need of change. But if you're expecting a complete rework of the game's graphics, you'll be disappointed. Nearly all of the original source art was lost, meaning that the game looks largely identical to the original, save for a higher resolution and improved spell effects. Contract limitations also prevented them from substantially altering the dialogue of NPCs, so don't expect any more talk or banter from the existing party members a la Baldur's Gate 2.

At this point, you might be wondering what the point of all this is, considering that there are number of freely available mods dedicated to bugfixes along with a mod called BGTutu that runs BG1 on the BG2 engine. And that's the rub, really - whether or not BG:EE is worth your money depends on how much the new content interests you.

As I said, the core of the game hasn't changed - it's a still an isometric, real-time-with-pause RPG based on the 2nd Edition Advanced Dungeons & Dragons rules. Playing it alongside more recent games is a study in contrasts: Baldur's Gate is from a time when games didn't hold your hand, assumed you were smart enough to figure out things on your own, and weren't afraid to let you fail. The AD&D system, with its somewhat counter-intuitive concepts such as THAC0 and Armour Class, will likely throw newcomers for a loop, but those who stick with it will find an RPG with a level of depth and tactical play that is hard to find elsewhere. The experience isn't quite the same in BG:EE, however, since the game runs on the BG2 engine, the player will have access to classes and kits that weren't available in the original Baldur's Gate. This has the effect of occasionally unbalancing the game; there were times when certain kits (such as the Inquisitor or Cavalier) can be rather unbalanced and trivialise certain encounters.

The new NPCs are a curious bunch. One thing about the first Baldur's Gate was that the NPCs usually had very little say and very little dialogue; it wasn't until the sequel that they started getting any real character development. That the Enhanced Edition NPCs are relatively chattier is a bit jarring, as is the fact that they each have their own individual quest line.

The first NPC that the player will likely encounter is Dorn Il-Khan, a half-orc Blackguard. With the power of his kit (which isn't even technically supposed to be usable by anyone but humans) and his whopping 19 strength, he's simply a beast in melee. The second NPC you'll find is Neera, a half-elf wild mage. Wild mages get the additional spells of other specialist wizards, but without losing any spells of the opposition school. Unfortunately, they have a chance with every spell they cast that a wild mage will experience a "Wild Surge" which can either be helpful or hazardous, depending on a dice roll. During my first playthrough of BG:EE, Neera had a wild surge that resulted in a demon being gated in, which promptly went on a rampage through Beregost, killing everything in its path. GREAT FUN.

The last of the new NPCs is Rasaad, a monk. Unfortunately, monks are absolutely terrible at low, being unable to wear armour, and with Rasaad's middling constitution stat he fall easily to enemies. Personally, I find him rather useless. Of course, he is voiced by Mark Meer, who did the voice of Commander Shepard in BioWare's Mass Effect series. This means that Rasaad is even less likeable, simply for reminding me of the travesty that is Mass Effect 3.

"In the face of lies, we offer Context and Closure. In the face of hatred, we offer SPACE MAGIC."

The UI has received significant updates as well, though it's here that some of the cracks start to show. While the new UI has some nice new features (such as windows displaying exactly how a character's THAC0, AC, and damage output is calculated, and a journal that actually organises entries under headings, unlike the original Baldur's Gate) it also has several annoying bugs, from the mouse cursor occasionally disappearing to certain derived statistics being displayed incorrectly. There are aesthetic quibbles as well, such as pixelated, low-res spell icons and certain UI elements that are misaligned. While not a game-breaking issue, it does show a noticeable lack of polish.

And on the matter of bugs, I must point out BG:EE shipped with a fair number of them, from certain quests being impossible to complete to NPCs who would get stuck in never-ending dialogue loops. The game had been delayed two months from its initial release date since the developers did not feel it was in any shape to be released, and I think it probably needed another few months in the shop to work out all the kinks. But given how another delay would have been received by customers, it was clearly a case of "damned if you do, damned if you don't" for the developers. And to their credit, Overhaul has been very quick in addressing the issues of BG:EE and getting patches out; one of the benefits of being a small team, apparently. At the time of writing, most of the initial bugs have been fixed, and Overhaul has expressed its intent to continue to support their product with continued updates and additional content.

So to reiterate my earlier point, whether or not BG:EE is worth buying depends entirely on how interesting the new content is, and how satisfied you are with the existing mods Baldur's Gate, many of which offer the same sort of features that BG:EE offers. At a price of $19.99, BG:EE will be a hard sell for many, given that for the same price one can get both from GOG.com along with a number of freely-available mods. But with all that said, I can't fault the developers for wanting to update a classic CPRG for a new audience who will, with any luck, discover what a true CPRG is supposed to be like (and here's a hint: it's nothing like what BioWare and Bethesda have been churning out lately).