Imagine a world with nearly infinite possibilities. Imagine that it includes complex characters with meaningful relationships. You can be anything you want, although it’s up to you to live a life that will cause it to happen. Now imagine being thrown into that world as a full-grown adult with no context for any of that infinite possibility and being required to have that learning process whether you lived through it or not. All of a sudden, being able to be anything might not be such a good thing. This was my experience with Baldur’s Gate II: Enhanced Edition. I didn’t play the original Baldur’s Gate I or II, and I have never had the opportunity to play tabletop RPGs, so although I’m certainly aware of the ways in which the D&D ruleset has influenced video game RPGs, there’s an awful lot that I don’t know. When I rolled up my dwarf, did I give him good stats for the way I want to play him? Should I have dropped his charisma from 11 to 10 because that extra 1 point doesn’t do anything for him? I had no idea, but my success over the next few hundred hours of gameplay hinged on my having gotten it right. Sadly, my experience when creating my character was not the end of the problem. Once I started playing, I found loot, but I didn’t know how to prioritize it. When I ran out of inventory space, was it a good plan to drop my third extra short sword in order to pick up that book, or did I just throw away some cash? Could I sell gems, or would I need them for crafting later on? Having watched the included tutorials, I knew that my mage needed to memorize spells and rest before she could use them, but why couldn’t she identify this item in her inventory even though she had the Identify spell memorized for the day? Once new party members became available to me, should I have changed to them or stuck with my current team? There were no answers to be found, and so it was that my every moment playing this legendary game became a frustrating chore. Fortunately, the news is not all bad, even for those of us who struggle with the complexity of the gameplay. Combat, inventory management, and other such elements are easy to work with thanks to a control system that should be easy enough for any PC gamer to work out. Keyboard and mouse are required, and most things can be accomplished using either. Combat can be paused at any time to issue new commands to your party members, and since fights move quickly, this becomes very useful. The Enhanced Edition’s version of BG2’s story remains intact. It begins some time after the story of the first Baldur’s Gate, and you play as a party of characters from that game. You begin the game with a childhood friend named Imoen as well as Jaheira and Minsc… and a hamster named Boo who lives in Minsc’s pocket. You start out as captives of an evil wizard, but the real story begins once you escape his clutches. The developers claim that there are 60 hours of gameplay in the main quest, plus 300 hours’ worth of sidequests, and I have no reason to call them liars. If you’re able to get past the game’s cliff-like learning “curve,” there is almost no end to the story available to you. The sound is likewise just as good as it always was, and high-quality music combines with great voice acting to provide an excellent aural experience. Unfortunately, the graphics are something of a mixed bag to the modern eye. BG2 employs a fog of war effect that only allows you to see enemies if your party members can see them, and this effect works well. The characters and environments are detailed, but despite the increase in resolution over the original, they still appear grainy, and characters can be difficult to find on certain backgrounds. It hurts me to give a mediocre score to the updated version of a game widely considered one of the all-time greats. I can absolutely see that it has merit. It has a great story and sound, and although the graphics and controls aren’t quite up to that same standard, they do successfully support the game’s star elements. Unfortunately, Baldur’s Gate 2: Enhanced Edition is a game targeted at a few very specific audiences: those who played the original, those who have significant experience with tabletop role-playing games, and those who love diving headfirst into a complex system without a net. If you are not among one of those groups, playing this game will leave you tired, frustrated, and perhaps wondering what other gamers love so much about it. It's a great chance for all the fans out there to relive history of western RPG. Enhanced graphics and interface make this a great remaster of an immortal classic. The original game is a classic. The “Enhanced Edition” is a near-clone, with some additional content. If you haven't played it before, or would like a deep RPG to put on your tablet, this is a good buy. This long awaited game is great. So nice to finally have a new game release that is playable and works on day one. I actually feel the game itself is an 8. Very enjoyable, no bugs that I noticed and a freedom of choice you don't find elsewhere. I'm giving it a 10 because the way Larian went about this game is the least-scumbag thing I've seen in the gaming industry in at least a decade. Thank you for this game and your moral compass. Baldur's Gate II: Enhanced Edition captures the essence of what makes fantasy RPGs so beloved. Baldur's Gate II: Enhanced Edition is a well-executed restored piece, unlocking tens of hours of great fun to the new generation of gamers, while making it possible to remind the best game by BioWare to those, who remember it, in a comfortable way. Although it doesn't feel as "enhanced" as it should, it still is one of the best video games ever made, and if you've never played it, this could be a great option to do so. The enhancements aren't quite ready for prime-time, but Baldur's Gate II remains one of the greatest RPGs of all time and an unsurpassed D&D experience. The improvements to the interface are fantastic, and if the new content gets the final wax-and-polish it deserves, it will be too. I said it before on the first game and I'll say it again here. There is nothing to recommend this version of Baldur's Gate II over the original version available on GOG.com. Esse é simplesmente o jogo da minha vida, tudo que faço é pensando em voltar pro game. The story, characters, and locations in this sequel are more interesting and exotic than those in the first Baldur's Gate game. Indeed, this game excels in these regards. Unfortunately, the combat and inventory management components of the game are burdensome, with an excessive amount of time devoted to necessary pre-combat buffs and mid-combat pauses. Furthermore, there are some game balance problems because some spells and advanced abilities (such as Greater Whirlwind) are so powerful that they utterly invalidate other strategies. I think this is a pretty good rpg and I recognize it to be an influential game that has also impacted so many rpgs after this. However, I would think that the enhanced edition would at least kink out some of the bugs that plagued this wonderful game. I am not going to criticize anything with the gameplay or it's story because there is nothing to criticize over. It maintains its own style that elevate the rpg style it tries to imitate. However, the bugs were just horrendous with making this gameplay as awsome as it should be. Good Luck and Merry Adventures!! [SPOILER ALERT: This review contains spoilers.] The original is superb, but this re-release does little to expand or improve. The good news is the graphics are slightly improved. Better inventory screens and paper dolls, and you can zoom in/out more. There's also widescreen support. Some new content, 4 NPCs come included with the PC version. The bad news: The game itself is buggy, and the new content is simply not worth the price. This is a $25 game, and is not worth that value. I found the game crashing periodically, which simply did not happen with the original. An example of the rather slipshod work, the import/export characters option is broken, every time I import my character, the game re-calculates the bonuses each character gets due to strength, dexterity, etc. So if my character should start with +2 to hit, becomes +4 if I import it since the game re-does the calculations. It becomes +8 if for some reason I need to import her again! Unlike the original game, the Enhanced edition does not allow you to "Pre-Generate" characters and import them, I suspect that they knew that importing a character into an existing game was broken.. The new NPCs are pretty atrocious and the dialogue that my character has been given sounds like a comedy routine. When I was chatting with Hexxat, my character was given dialogue option A) "I"ll help you without question" or option B) "Some jerky 3-line comeback that was out of place in this game" or option C) "Too bad for you. Goodbye". Pathetic choices. And the voice acting was amateurish for most of the new characters. Go get the **** version, take some time to mod it if you want (you would have to do this anyway to the Exhanced version if you wanted tougher enemies or more challenge), and enjoy the game at a much lower price. The GOG version is often on sale too, for 50-75% off, you can't go wrong! And the original version is compatible with more mods, and with more custom portraits, that the enhanced is not able to use. Summary You have been kidnapped, imprisoned, and tortured. The wizard Irenicus holds you captive in his stronghold, attempting to strip you of the powers that are your birthright. Can you resist the evil within you, forge a legend of heroic proportions, and ultimately destroy the dark essence that haunts your dreams? |
