Baldur's Gate: Enhanced Edition Review (jungle.james)
In the early '00s a friend of mine lent me all of the compact disks including the expansion. To date, I do not believe I ever returned those disks -- I was that friend, but unintentionally so. Foolishly, I thought "Baldur's Gate" was a hack and slash from the "Dark Alliance" series and was not much of a 'reader.' Loading up hacks and giving myself various, seemingly high level items and experience, I found that I could not just go around killing and getting more loot which measurably increased my ability to slay whomever I liked, as in, the RPG experience most are accustomed to.
In the latter half of that decade, I'd quit "World of Warcraft" with more than a year of my life "/played" looking for titles that would capture the immersion and roleplaying aspects of that addiction but something locally administrated and quickly decided that "Baldur's Gate" needed another fair chance. I was in that transitional phase, living with my parents. I believe I was in between two summer courses of conversational Spanish and epistemology, and my parents were going to Hawaii, so watching the house was my task. That week, all I did was play this very game, occasionally catching movies on television -- remembering in particular "Dante's Peak" -- eat frozen pizza, and sleep. Nothing else.
While most of its dungeons are lackluster, save for the often reviled "Durlag's Tower" (that is an excellent dungeon) the wilds and exploring of them is unparalleled. That week formally introduced me to Dungeons & Dragons, Ed Greenwood's "Forgotten Realms" and how it might have felt to play D&D in the early '90s and late '80s with its "2nd Edition" ruleset implementation. n.b. Read a brief on THAC0 before you play if you want to conquer "Core" difficulty.
Beamdog's treatment at times can detract from the original experience for some. If you have never played the originals as they were published, one would not be able to isolate anything amiss unless performing a careful examination of writing style and voice acting. Even then, it poses a challenge at times as the original version had an odd cast.
10/10 RPG; classic. Incredibly addictive, and immersive. If that is not enough, you may also export your character into "Baldur's Gate 2" and continue the journey.