Putting aside nostalgia, and putting aside a genuine longing for more games in this vein - yes, Baldur's Gate really is that good. The enhanced edition is simply a overpriced rerelase of a vintage game that provided no significant new content to justify such cost, and while it is solid its nothing someone who already owns the game OR can get it cheaper bundled with its sequel should bother with.

Bad overhaul games.… Expand

The last time I played Baldur

I wouldve given the game 8 in its current state, but gave it 10 to offset the rediculous "0" reviews... Bassically this is the same old game you know and love, if youve played BG1. The core game is largely untouched and the only things changed are the interface, better high res support, bug fixes (get to this one in a minute), and a much better, gutted code base.

First of all the code base basically means the game loads quicker with no load screens at all and should be much smoother. I think it will hopefully make it easier to mod in the end as well, so expect alot of mods to star popping up come the new year. The changing of the code has also introduced new bugs, so while they have fixed old bugs they ve introduced a fair few in their cleaning of the code. Alot of people dont seem to understand that messing with a 12 year old code base for a game is a messy business, difficult to do and in some ways probably more difficult than building a game from scratch in 2012. So basically they resort to calling overhaul "inept, "incompetant", and all sorts of other insults for managing to introduce bugs that werent in the game before. Which is of course extremely unfair. They are a small team though I am confident they can fix all the bugs they have introduced with the EE.

Im not going to say a huge amount more about the game seeing as most of you already know the story, characters and how it plays, I just wanted to talk about overhauls efforts so far since the game released.

Over the span of a just over a week, overhaul has released 4 patches of fixes and even new features.

Ive heard people say on the forums: "I cant set my fps above 30! This game is rubbish because of this!" They included this in the 3rd patch, so everyone can set their FPS to 60 if they want.

"I dont like the look of the game, widescreen mod + tutu looks way better and sharper!" so trent (director of overhaul games) posted a tweet giving gamers a .ini modification which will essentially make the game very similar to look at compared to the widescreen mod+ tutu. He stated if people liked it, they would tweak it to make it work even better.

"The spawns are too small (e.g 1 Xvart spawning and lone gibberlings) making the game too easy!" - Fixed in latest patch (apparantly, I havent tested it yet though).

All the above are valid remarks and feedback from the community, but they have fixed that much, as well as working on crashes and other hardware/software conflicts that customers are having, fixing minor bugs here and there AND working on the iPad version which was released recently... Not bad for a 13 man company in my opinion.

Im not delusional though, the release wasnt brilliant, bugs still remain and there is still alot of work to be done. But saying Overhaul arent listening at all to their community (they will only delete posts on forums if they offensive and non-constructive. In fact it is likely moderators deleting them, not overhaul employees) and dont give a s**t is complete rubbish.

Since the release which I was quite dissapointed in as well, I have seen overhaul respond in a way which you dont see many companies doing these days. They responded with an appology to people whos game wasnt working, and then have put in lots of effort trying to get it fixed. My confidence in them has grown, and to me, BG is in good hands for the future.… Expand

Loving this game! I've probably got 30+ hours put into it already and have encountered no bugs at all. The only reason I give it a 9 instead of a 10 is the lack of certain modern features in its quest tracking journal. Baldur's Gate 2 was one of my favorite RPGs ever, and I never finished BG1 so this release is very welcome indeed.

So then, got the game and felt like a kid again. Its frikkin' Baldur's Gate right?
Well yes and no, on one hand you will find all the butt kicking for goodness and space hamster action you may fondly remember from the original, but unfortunately most of the time the game WONT WORK.

Seriously, even their day one dlc characters that constitute for sole new content are so broken they even damage quest lines not related to their own. I will just point out that one of those thrilling quests is "completed" with you teleported to a cave and stuck behind a indestructible door..

Don't know how to use the console? Bad luck man, enjoy your cave. Just dust your own copy or perhaps wait for the complete edition to come out on steam and get it cheap during a sale, and if you're that desperate for playing in higher resolution there are mods available for years now that do the same thing, do it better and do it for free.… Expand

Gave it a 9/10. On the basis of nostalgia alone this game has some very good advantages. It's fully moddable, has a strong community and the content is all properly there. While there is some minor bugs with the release, it's nothing that will stop a person from playing after a driver fix or two.

Most of all the important thing is that the game is ready to be introduced to a new generation, and it does well with meshing all of what the community integrated over the last ten+ years from the original release.

New content and voice overs are excellent, the black pit was rather challenging and required good tactical knowledge of D&D. (It's not hurting the golem! What's that sword enhancement rating?)

Mostly I like the new characters, the Djinni, and the new party NPC's both of which have certain shall we say, romance elements. All in all I applaud Overhaul games on a job well done and look forward to Baldur's Gate 2.… Expand

At first glance I'd stay with the old version and some mods; there is almost nothing the "Enhanced Edition" does better than BG1Tutu. Almost all graphical new additions are downgrades (except the higher resolutions and the zoom function). The new UI is uglier due to weird artwork and coloring (blue is some really awkward color choice) making the game breathe less quality. They would have been much better off if they just copied the Baldur's Gate 2-UI. The other new artwork (for example the new portraits that look very much like the art seen in Icewind Dale and some of the cutscenes look more like something you'd see in Torchlight than in Baldur's Gate) does not suit the old artwork, removing immersion and the classical "Baldur's Gate"-feeling; even though the art is not bad, some of it does not suit the game. Also, the option in Baldur's Gate 2 where you could increase the game clock, making the movement seem more fluid and the animations look better is non-existent, why? So what is good about the new release other than the obvious higher resolutions? The new voice acting is brilliant and some of the smaller cutscenes look splendid; I also like all the features taken from Baldur's Gate 2. I will update this review as I play on. Had some minor bugs and issues with compatibility this far but the issues were quite easy to solve with Google as help (if the game wont start due to "missing openal.dll" try googling "creativelabs openal.dll").… Expand

Gave it 3/10
The original game is a legend, no scratch that it beyond legend.
BUT dont look at this as the golden BG we all know and love this is a half baked version so filled with bugs that I actually wanted to cry. Its also overpriced, has day one dlc and the dev's attidute is smugness with them treating paying customers as beta testers. And lets face it they can - the game is sold thru their own launcher and was denied steam acess so good luck trying to get your money back.… Expand

This game is really nothing more than a cheap BG1 clone. It really has no originality and the new story is virtually non existent. Perhaps what I was most disappointed in was the skills. They all seem so boring and bland its just taken squarely from BG2 with no balancing done! Even my imp familliar can butcher half the game due to his HP/AC and when I tried playing figther it was even worse, five skill points on level one lol I hacked everything solo to the Big Bad. I played the character with the duel axes and found it irritating having to respec to a longsword due to virtualy no good magical axes appear in the game. Also many times my character would go running towards the target or being stuck in terrain due to pathfinding not being written properly. In a nutshell this game is a downgraded version of BG1 with lamer skills and treasure oh yeah and for 20$ too. This is one of only few games I've bought that I was extremely disappointed in. How this game receves such high official grades is beyond me.… Expand

I will give this a 10 just because they are bring the best game series of all time back to life. It's freaking Baldur's Gate. The best game I've ever played! I can't wait for the following releases especially BG2 and finally BG3. I feel like a kid again :)

This review contains spoilers, click expand to view. This is the old Baldur's Gate, updated to run on your current machine with a minimum of headaches. I have found zero bugs in a full playthrough already (a few crashes, but with the frequency of auto-saves, quicksaves, etc., not really too bad a problem, and they have been fixed with the updates coming out). The new characters are all right, not great, but all right. To those saying, oh, you can get a mod: this release was obviously intended for those of us not into that sort of thing. Many adults would rather pay an extra $10 and not worry with finding the right version, putting it in the right folder, etc. Ability to be on tablets, etc. My 10 score is also to offset some of the ridiculous 0 rankings on here. One zero ranking even reviewed the WRONG GAME. He quoted it as being 40 dollars and talked of rts style armies. Others complained of it not being able to run; may I point out that beamdog did tell people straight up it would have issues on intel graphic chipsets, yet some of those people bought it anyway and then complained. Another guy gave it a 0 rank because it had bg2 weapon profenciences, and he claimed bg had no katanas (don't know what game he played, I had a +1 katana sitting in my inventory at the end of the game; but simple answer: DON'T PICK THAT WEAPON IF YOU DON'T WANT TO USE IT. All in all I thought the BG2 style kits and profenciences were a good pickup; now, if BG2 EE ever gets made, your character from BG1 would go over, with not a single thing changing)

All in all, this is a great game, the new package makes it convienent for the older gamer wanting to relive the glory days without the hassle of mods, etc. It scales it to modern widescreen and hd. The BG series does hold up btw, still kicks the crap out of modern "rpgs".… Expand

Okay, first. Stuff the negative reviews lol.

While the game isn't as improved as I would have hoped it would have been, it remains an exceptionally good game. And the extra's (like the new NPCs) and new styling Overhaul gave the game fits brilliantly.

WotC put the kybosh on making more wide sweeping changes (like a new engine, 3d graphics etc) sadly, and gave Overhaul a fairly short Dev Cycle. And taking that into consideration what they did do with the game was decent.

Also going forward Overhaul are continuing to patch in fairly major features that didn't make the initial release, on pretty much every platform. So being released as it was was not a "money grab" as some have intimated.

Given the ridiculousness of the 0 reviews (not helpful guys) I feel compelled to give this game a higher score than I would have ordinarily.

The remake is not as extensive as I could have liked, but its fricking Baldur's Gate. You simply can not be sad about getting more BG. **** about paying a tenner for new BG stuff is probably the stupidest thing I have ever seen.

It would have been a 7 out of 10 for me as it stands. But giving higher to offset.… Expand

I bought this game, like most of you did, for nostalgia's sake and I was NOT disappointed. For $19.99 you get the original classic Baldur's Gate 1 with the upgraded engine from BG2, new high resolutions, the ability to zoom in and out, new characters, new areas, new classes, working multi-player, ability to play it on your tablet and continuous free updates from Overhaul. I see several people complaining that you can just simply buy the original game from somewhere else for $10 and mod it yourself. This is true, you can... but I say good luck to you sir/madam and may the odds be ever in your favor. Coming from a guy who has done just that, I can tell you that this Baldur's Gate: Enhanced Edition game, brought to you by Overhaul, has taken the arse pain out of installing those mods. They have created, with near flawless execution, a truly enhanced edition.

Along with the future release of BG2:EE comes the prospect of the long anticipated Baldur's Gate 3. I commend Trent Oster and all the guys at Overhaul for reviving this magnificent game. I will support you for as long as you continue to revive/make great games.… Expand

I initially purchased the game upon release and was fairly disappointed to find that the frame rate was capped out, among other bugs and whatnot. However, I'm glad I saved my final judgement for a couple of weeks later. Constant patching from Overhaul along with community based mods make playing this game a real treat. Every time I launch it and see the newly re-added Nietzsche quote I'm greeted with that nostalgic feeling of how games used to be. The new content is fairly sparse, but not bad by any means... Just be glad that Overhaul didn't dilute or ruin that past experience. Re-immerse yourself in the golden years of gaming and patiently wait for the mods to shine through... Until then, I'm back to my brain numbingly painful hardcore playthrough ;) ...… Expand

Although this version costs $10 more than GoG's, I personally think it's a good deal. It runs much better than original game with super fast save/loading which keeps the gameplay very fluent. Additional features such as interface tweak, journal entries, camera zooming etc. are all well-done and make the game even more enjoyable to play. the new contents such black pits are also a very fun dungeon crawling experience. However, I would say if you already had the gog version and knew how to mod the game well then you probably should pass on this version, since the new contents are not worth the cost.… Expand

Baldur's Gate needs no introduction. Setting the bar for what crpg's should be for the next decade, the Baldur's Gate released in the late 90's have gone down in the history books as the golden standard. THIS game however does little to improve on that. In fact, it does worse. There is nothing offered here that one cannot already find by means of mods for the originals. No hi-def resolution. No graphics settings of any kind. SLOW loading and stuttering gameplay put a blemish on the original. I cannot see this as anything but a cash grab by the developers. Shame on them for that. This is the equivalent of giving the Mona Lisa a facelift using spraypaint. I'm all for supporting indie developers, but this isn't a charity. I will NOT be buying the subsequent releases. I will be returning this game via credit card chargeback.… Expand

I daresay that Overhaul Games has revived a classic RPG. This game takes me back to my childhood fond memories. While it is true that it is possible to install the older game onto new operating systems, I found the process long and boring. Now, I can just log into the internet, download, and play this game. I haven't ran into any bugs although I know others have. Truly I cannot wait until Overhaul does BG2- Enhanced Edition as well. Thanks Overhaul!… Expand

My first impression is that this is the Baldur's Gate I know and love. Only buggier. In just under two hours of gameplay i've had no less than five crashes, something that would be quite unheard of if I were playing the non "enhanced" BG. On the plus side, there are some new elements added to the mix including a handful of original NPCs which are very well written and voiced, as well as a new musical score by Sam Hulick. The gameplay that made Baldur's Gate so amazing remains intact, and has been enhanced in several places. In others, it has actually become worse. The UI for example, is a serious step backward. My overall feeling is that you could have just as good an experience playing the original Baldur's Gate as buying this so called "Enhanced edition".… Expand

Those who vote "0" are morons - they vote the lowest possible rating to make the biggest difference. Utterly pathetic.

I, however, give it a 10. The reason? This is Baldur's Gate - they can release it a million more times and I will "10" it a million more times.

That is all.

Well, I'm not going to review Baldur's Gate here. The game is a timeless classic, one of my all-time favourites and about as good as roleplaying for the PC ever was. Nothing about that has changed. So I AM going to review the "enhancements", the things that they charged me 20 additional bucks for.
The technical part of the enhancement is a bit of a letdown actually. Almost everything good is simply a continuation of fan made mods that have been there, done that, years before. Everyone who (like me) has played BG 1 in the BG 2 engine by BGtutu, downloaded the Weidu mods or numerous fan fixes will not really notice anything groundbreakingly new. The zoom-in option is nice, at least one step above the already availbale high-res mods. Nothing really special here.
None of my personal pet peeves and actual technical shortcomings have been addressed, though. The pathfinding AI is still abysmally bad (Firewine dungeon is still the same old unnerving headless chicken dance, when all that would be required is to change the scripts to allow player characters to pass through each other). The pRNG (pseudo random number generator) is still broken - things with a probability of 1/20 keep happening 3 times in a row (probability of 1 in 8000) way too often to be random whenever the pRNG gets stuck on a bad seed. All in all, underwhelming on the technical aspects.
What about the additional content?
Well, I would rate that way higher, if the two new NPCs I'm currently running with were not built either on full purpose to annoy the player or with such an amount of ineptitude it hurts.
Neera the wild mage is a character, completely unable to do her only job. At level 1, with 4 hitpoints, she better NOT cast any spells (her only use), as there's a 1 in 20 chance for a mishap that might (and very often WILL) kill her outright. Countless reload saved games later you recruit Rasaad the monk, who, as a front line melee fighter (the only thing a monk is really there for...) also has way too bad stats and few hit points for his intended role. Combined with the inability to protect himself from critical hits (aka wear a helmet) he just keeps dying time and again so FAST, not even auto-pause and a ton of potions will help. Really, the constant accidents and reloads are so frustrating and annoying, I almost overlooked their admittedly excellent voice work and decent background stories...
All in all, it's ok, but for an ease-of-use package that basically saves me 3 hours of downloading mods , installation and tweaking when wanting to Play BG on my new computer, the price is a bit steep.… Expand

They killed it, the game is broken beyond playing.. Think Sword of the stars 2 release was bad? This is worse by a Texan mile, the textures glitch out, the cinematics awful or not often crash the game, the weapon balance is even worse then bg2 - here's a hint ANYTHING but longsword is a false choice..
Their dlc characters are worse then those in 24 hour challenge mods. But the worse is their attitude, they censor and delete any and all posts who question that their game might be indeed broken..
Overhaul games my left foot, overpriced garbage more like it.… Expand

I had great hopes, becausei absolutely loved and adored baldur's gate 2.. and having never played BG1, i was very excited..turns out, it did not hold up for me.. you would have a better experience with the game when using the Gog edition.. with all the community content..

Here's my thoughts about the game by notes while I played it. - Great engaging music. - Zoom and hear soldiers marching, creating a great atmosphere. - Maps to explore hiding treasures and monsters. - Customization on character. - Lots of items and well organized for you to pick. - Items match you character looks (cloth, armor, weapons). -- Stunning graphics for an old school rpg feel. - Advanced interface on character skill/magic casting, very easy to use. - Mix of RTS and RPG seamless. - Characters join hero party, balancing all round skills. - Skill/magic tree to build character for all companions. - Interesting story adding new and creative lore on fantasy worlds (not just orcs vs humans stereotype). - Various game modes. - Cutscenes are joined weirdly. Beginning of the story jumps straigh to a dialogue hard to pick up (needs to be corrected by devs). - Unit animation is well done, with fluid moves . - Day and night provide different atmosphere. - A great game to create a DOTA style of play map. - Few games of nowadays that actually kept lan mode to play at home with friends. - Unit animation when hit by enemies. - Not for COD & Battlefield players: you can't have a game with those graphics in a RTS game, so don't wine about it. It's better than most mmo's around anyway (I've seen the graphics argument on youtube and it's ridiculous, pure gratuitous bashing). - Allows to be played on older pcs since its graphical detail can be easely modified. - You can choose either to be nasty and devious or kind hearted and righteous in the outcomes of small quests (lie, help for example) - Unique sets to equip characters with bonuses found throughout the game. All in all it's a fundamental "must have" on rts based games ownership. There isn't much of this kind of quality games anymore and if you're a fan already of the series, it can be easily purchased on steam for example. Look for gameplay videos on youtube and check the site out and decide for yourself if it's worth or not, at least it's not a hyped game and from big corps advertising it everywhere and promising what they don't deliver. This is just my recommendation. Cheers!… Expand

In short, if you liked the first one, avoid this hacked together, amateur mess. Even if we are kind and ignore the plague of technical issues that this game shipped with (I only experienced the mouse issue and enabling vsync fixed it for me) this is still a terrible game. The graphics are simply dire: no shadows, no reflections, muddy textures and extremely low detail all throughout - it loks like a DX4 game. Running this at max details I get a very high frame rate (though it constantly bombs up and down for no reason) and it looks like a game from more then 20 years ago. It is a flat, boring, featureless world. The controls are vague and fairly unresponsive and generally you never really feel as though you are in control of the (utterly hateful and idiotic) protagonist. He is happy to bomb around, doing as he pleases, attacking what he wants, jumping where he fancies and generally ignoring the hell out of you while you miss target after target, normally as arbitrary and pointless countdowns expire meaning you fail the quest. The one thing I could have noted as a good point for this game is the ability to save whenever you like, rather than the usual auto-save nonsense, but even that is broken. Saving produces a pointless replica of the previous save, utterly ignoring anything you did since. Even if all the technical issues are fixed, the graphics will remain far below par (even for an overhauled game), the port will remain horrible and utterly bereft of care and attention and the story line will be pallid and uninteresting. Do yourself a favour and install the first game - you'll be a lot happier.… Expand

It's fair to say, I'm very disappointed - I've spent money to purchase and play the game, and I'm not able to play at all, which for me is a bit of a major. I think it's very unreasonable to be expected to pay money now and then wait weeks/months to get a patch to fix the game so that I can play... I'd much rather spend my money on something else now, enjoy that game, and then spend my money on Baldurs Gate "Enhanced Edition" in a few months time (assuming its been fixed). Attempts to contact Overhaul Games support have gone unanswered, which is even more disappointing since I expect more from a reputable game dev. house.… Expand

As a fan of the BG series, I was enthusiastic about the release of this game and the boasting of his in depth gameplay. I was immediately smacked in the face with reality upon loading this game for the first time. First, the opening cinematics wouldn't display and the PC would just hang a black screen. This turned out to be because the game couldn't handle 1900x1200 graphics, so I had to edit the config file to disable the cinematics just to get the game to load. Upon starting the game for the first time, I was filled with nostalgia as the games graphics and feel reminded me of the original BG1 game from the late 90's. The graphics aren't much more up to date than that. Ignoring the look of it though, I pressed on through a bit of the campaign hoping that the game play would reflect something more meaningful. Unfortunately, it did not. The "political intrigue" that was promised is nothing more than an annoying game of cat and mouse between your Fighter, Mage, Rogue, and Assassin characters. The entire political/underhanded sub plot to the game isn't anything new or exciting, it's just a tedious boredom. The "armies" are made up of generic looking units who follow the typical rock paper scissors approach to combat, and the combat itself doesn't feel very satisfying. Even after a massive battle between multiple units I was left feeling disappointed. Games such as Warcraft were able to capture the frenetic pace and feel of a large scale fight, while BGEE was barely able to capture my attention to them. My love for the book and the game series drove me to continue playing, in hopes of finding a bright spot in the game. In the end though, I realized I had simply wasted $40 and a whole lot of time on a game that should have been relegated to the top shelves of Wal-Mart alongside the old $10 games. Don't waste your money or your time on this. The game is an injustice to the world that Bioware built, and a sadly outdated addition to the RPG world.… Expand

People are as whiny and quick to grab the pitchforks as ever. The bugs are overstated. They mostly pertain to intel integrated graphics and multiplayer lobbies. All issues have been acknowledged and diligently worked on since the game was launched (4 patches out within the span of two weeks), and the dev team shows great humility and dedication judging from their statements on the official forum. Just the fact that they maintain a direct line of communication with the fans speaks volumes about their attitude -- and let's face it, in the long run, nothing is more important than that. I think a lot of people don't even realize how small the EE team is at the moment (only 12 people), and that they have to deal with things that large companies with big budgets simply don't have to worry about.

Buying this game was a no-brainer for me, if only for the continued support (in the form of patches and DLCs) and prospects of BG2EE (and other infinity engine titles, both old and brand new). All the important mods are already being ported over, and very soon BGEE will be the definitive way to play the Baldur's Gate saga, with all of the advantages and none of the flaws of the (brilliant, but outdated and stagnant) original release.

I couldn't be happier with the purchase, and I must say that my personal experience has been 100% bug-free. Even if it wasn't, I wholeheartedly support anyone who dedicates their time to producing Infinity Engine content in 2012, regardless of any potential oversights (which, as we've already seen, are being corrected in real time with great dedication).… Expand

The game had a very buggy release, but within a month Overhaul games had released 5 comprehensive updates that fixed most (if not all) of the bugs. Plus they fixed some old bugs that were present in the original release that had never been fixed.

Now you get to experience the original game in all it's glory, with the kits and new weapon specialities from BGII, plus 3 new (very well done) characters. The game is EXTREMELY challenging by today's standards, even on the normal difficulty. But you can raise the difficulty to the max setting for a truly challenging experience that few modern games can rival. And you will get engrossed in the world of Faerun!!!

I think the review scores for this game are much lower than they should be due to the admittedly very buggy release. But now after 5 comprehensive updates, the game in a masterpiece.… Expand