izigame.me

It has taken me a decade to finally manage a single finished playthrough of roundabout 35-ish hours of this game. With the CRPG genre having experienced a revival as of recent years, beginning with Pillars of Eternity through Disco Elysium and now Pathfinder; Baldur’s Gate still stands out as this juggernaut of a game and while I have never played the original version, I can kind of see where a lot of the nostalgia seems to be coming from, but likewise it’s a pretty rough game compared to what players of modern games of the genre may be used to.
On a technical side, the game ran largely fine. I did not experience any major bugs, glitches or similar. Abilities and whatnot seemed to be working fine as well. Although I did experience two crashes within only a few hours of trying the Multiplayer. There are a plethora of frustrating gameplay quirks too, which may very well be attributed to how old the game is but nevertheless are worth mentioning: Most notably, the horrendous pathing causing parties of any size to regularly get stuck on map geometry. This is particularly an issue on harder difficulties – and also during the later stages of the game, when more precise actions and managing your party is required to overcome harder fights, although given the relatively low level cap of BG 1, this will present a larger critique for Baldur’s Gate 2.
Aside from that, this Enhanced Edition of the game has been in the center of a fair bit of controversy, ranging from UI changes to the inclusion of new party members that are often mentioned as feeling somewhat out-of-place. While I haven’t bought Siege of Dragonspear, which seems to be generally accepted as the worst offender, I did not feel like this was the case and reasonably enjoyed playing around with E.E. content.
Gameplay-wise, BG doesn’t feel like the hardest game to get into. Despite concepts like THAC0 being often mentioned as roadblocks for new players, BG also makes a solid effort of simplifying your character management – from very simple UI design of color-coding positive/negative changes in your attributes like AC, to managing your different spellbooks; Essentially, BG does not feel any harder to grasp than any of its modern contemporaries. Spells do have a tendency to become fairly complicated in their descriptions but as with the pathing, this does not really become an issue until the very late stages of the game.
Where BG does feel different, however, is in the way the game’s story is structured; And is likely the biggest factor in the decision of whether it is worth trying today. This is a twofold problem as well: Firstly, BG 1 is not in itself a thoroughly finished story and instead has an open end that directly leads into BG 2. Secondly, the game is incredibly tonally inconsistent. This latter point can be either incredibly charming or immersion breaking depending on your experience with DnD as a tabletop. Without spoiling any specific quests, what BG often does is flip-flop between humorously written sidequests while also trying to lead the player through a campaign that may have them commit mass-murder within the first third of the story.
This often ends up feeling a little odd, even amateurish from a storytelling perspective, but does capture this very human impression of regular DnD campaigns. Seeing the staff having modeled for the original character portraits, or sneaking in some snarky jokes into the PC’s possible responses and also the voice acting being overly dramatic heavily leans against modern trends of featuring stricter and consistent storytelling.
This tone, together with comparatively extremely large maps and combat encounters almost on a minute-to-minute basis has the first half of the game, or about twenty-hours of content at times feeling more than an ARPG akin to Diablo rather than what people may have grown to expect from the genre. BG 2 is fairly similar in this, doubling down on earlier and more grandiose dungeon crawls, while also becoming more sophisticated and consistently serious in its writing.
Another notable difference to both BG 2 and other genre contemporaries is how companions are handled. BG 1 features a fairly large cast of almost thirty characters. Naturally, one result of having such a sizable selection is that this game only features very lukewarm interactions with said characters, like extremely short quests that are often tied to their permanent recruitment / availability, or party banter. However, what is interesting and I have not seen any other game try to thoroughly attempt, is to create cross-companion conflict. Usually these kinds of games tend to tie the contentedness of the PC’s companions only to the player’s own actions – rather than their choice of whom to travel with. Here, however, if you take companions that have personal conflict with one another, either due to their alignment, or actual personality, companions may actively turn on each other. I do like this kind of interaction and coupled with the more in-depth writing of companions in Baldur’s Gate 2, think that it made roleplaying my characters a lot more interesting, albeit also more dependent on my own creativity / head-canon.
TL;DR
+ Generally stable; No outstanding bugs, or glitches.
+ Competent and beginner friendly UI; Although somewhat lacking in in-game help during character creation.
+ Active community; Easy-to-access modding tools.
+/- 30-40 hour long campaign
+/- Pacing may alienate players; Little connection to the larger plot until the last chapters of the game.
+/- Large map design and over-reliance on enemy encounters may make certain stretches of the game a slog and contrast the heavier text-focus during the later chapters.
+/- Cliffhanger ending that requires continued play through Baldur’s Gate 2 and onward to properly appreciate the story.
+/- Companion interactions (Aside from E.E. additions) may feel lackluster under modern RPG expectations.
+/- Tonal inconsistencies that may turn certain players off of the already thinly stretched story.
- Horrendous pathing issues that are exasperated by prominent dungeon-design decisions; i.e. extremely claustrophobic corridors prohibiting proper party control.
- Difficulties in Multiplayer connectivity / crashes.
- Gameplay suffers heavily during the latter stages of the game due to the inability to control the flow of combat over pausing; No distinct overview over turn/round-order;
- Inability to experience the rule of Tiax’s duke of manure as an Ending.
I am not sure whether I enjoyed Baldur’s Gate. It’s certainly a unique experience and it’s worth a playthrough just to see how the CRPG genre has developed, but it’s also an absolute slog to actually play through and I am not willing to believe that this is entirely down to personal preference rather than actual design flaws. Large maps and frequent combat encounters lend the game a Diablo-esque feeling and leans well into the adventuring fantasy of the DnD tabletop. The writing is equally ambitious as it is charmingly stupid; depending on the player to know when to take it seriously and when to just roll with the snappy remarks of a what often feels like a middling DM. Beware that you’re not buying the kind of immersive experience that you may have come to expect from modern titles, and that Baldur’s Gate 1 is not a complete experience without it’s sequel and, with a bit of patience, it can be a pretty good experience even today.