Game Review No. 1

Baldur’s Gate: Enhanced Edition

Non-Spoilers

Baldur’s Gate was a top-down CRPG using the AD&D2e ruleset. Originally released in December of 1998 and released as Enhanced Edition in November of 2012. The original game was developed by Bioware, and It was Enhanced  in 2012 by Beamdog, using the Dungeons and Dragons licence and is an official product.

I’ve nearly finished this game at normal difficulty now, and I have 69.1 hours of playtime in it. I also want to point out something about the sequel to this game, Baldur’s Gate II: Enhanced Edition, It is very important to play the first game before you play the second, because the first game is the only game of the two that has a tutorial, and it’s not very helpful for players that are new to the game. The second game also has important details of the story that only make sense if you have played the first game, giving small details on what happened towards the end of the first game. 

This game is amazing, with so many unique quests, NPCs, including ones that join your party. The area maps and storyline are amazing and feel tailored as a personal campaign as I play, since you can do the quests In somewhat of your own order. Each chapter takes roughly ten hours to complete, maybe a little longer, according to my normal-mode playthrough. 

This game has an expansion called Siege of Dragonspear, which occurs In-between Baldur’s Gate I and II, adding another campaign entirely to the game. There is also another campaign included in the base game called: The Black Pits, which is a sequence of arena battles using the same system as the main campaign, this also has its own storyline.

During Chapter 6, (the final chapter of the game) I made my own custom controller configuration for this game, which I played with for an hour or two, which I intend to play more with during my playthrough of Siege of Dragonspear.

I would recommend turning Steam cloud saves on through the Options > Gameplay tab, seeing as It is turned off by default. Always have the “Show Details” feature on, (you can find it at the bottom-right corner of your game screen It’s essential for playing the game. I also suggest binding the rest action to the “S” Key, which you can find under Options > Gameplay > Assign Keys > Miscellaneous .

I had The opportunity to play multiplayer for Baldur’s Gate: Enhanced Edition on Steam, which is included in the base game, and It worked well, except for the fact what each time another player talks to an NPC, you will be forced in the other player’s view with no ability to interact with the NPC, this also, of course included a chat box window in the top-right of the screen. Playing like this is fun if you have others to play with, but will add more hours to your playtime, and you have to work together, but you can just play it as a single-player campaign if only you are playing.

It’s sad to think that we’ll never get another game this good, and seeing as it came out in late 1998, I’d say that this is one of my favourite games of all time. Overall, It’s an amazing game well worth your many hours of playtime and your money.

1/23/23 5:43 PM, Note: I recently found out the average completion time for Baldur's Gate: Enhanced Edition is about 45-50 hours, and I was wondering why my stated time was a little longer. Well, I did spend a lot of time doing sidequests and, authough I do not have anywhere near full completion, the hours spent doing those, will have taken a considerable ammount of time to progress through. I have also played some of the black pits, which is included in the base game on steam, and since steam calculates the time played on the game itself and not individual modules, this could have also contributed towards a longer playtime.