Baldur's Gate: Enhanced Edition review: classic reborn
Baldur's Gate: Enhanced Edition has modified a great RPG with new content and characters that hold true to the spirit and style of the original. Throw in the continued replayability to an already massive game, dropping $20 on this should be a no-brainer for those wanted to relive the classic days of the isometric RPG.
The Black Pits
This Baldur's Gate: Enhanced Edition review was based on a digital PC press build provided by the publisher. Direct IP multiplayer could not be tested because of limited distribution of the press build. Cross-platform play also could not be tested as the iOS version has been delayed pending Apple's approval. The game launches today on PC.
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replyJohn Keefer posted a new article, Baldur's Gate: Enhanced Edition review: classic reborn.
Baldur's Gate: Enhanced Edition has modified a great RPG with new content and characters that hold true to the spirit and style of the original. Throw in the continued replayability to an already massive game, dropping $20 on this should be a no-brainer for those wanted to relive the classic days of the isometric RPG.-
Since there is so much interest here, I'll answer any other questions I can. The review isn't longer because so much of the game is unchanged. It's more for people who know the game and the series.
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Not a review question but do you know if they've ever said anything about doing a remake for Planescape?
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No, not now. They are too focused on BGEE and BG2EE for which they have contractual obligations, then DLC. Planescape is a whole different can of worms from a contract standpoint.
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Direct IP connect. Beamdog's own MP service will come in a later patch. As for cross-platform, Oster said they had it working well in the office, but Apple nuked the first submission for a crash bug. Probably another week for something other than PC.
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When is the iOS version coming?
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Hmm. Dunno, seems rather thing on improvements :(
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+thin
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The new content alone is worth the price, as well as being able to play at higher resolutions and zoom in. If you were expecting major graphics enhancements, they aren't there. But I do like a lot of the BG2/TOB enhancements lumped into this, especially with the kits.
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Yeah, that does sound awesome to be honest. Wonder what mods are compatible with it..
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One of the most important things going on is behind the scenes, where they rewrote a LOT of UI and systems code that breaks out the gameplay bits that were previously hard-coded. This will allow modders -- yes, this game is STILL being actively modded by the community -- to change even more, and more reliably. I expect that had they not needed to rewrite all that busted, coupled code that the Overhaul team could have really done some amazing things. I really hope that what they've done will make BG2 EE a much more ambitious undertaking, because that's my favorite of this series.
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Oster already said that BG2EE will be much easier after all the heavy lifting was done for this one. It will be interesting to see if they push for a quicker turnaround or go for more content.
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I mean, I like that they added some new stuff for BGEE, but honestly I'm not sure BG2 needs any extra content. There's so much more in BG2, and when you add ToB, it's just kinda fucking crazy.
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True. But if they sell it again for $20, they need to offer more than just an updated graphics engine and bug fixes. What synic0 said about behind the scenes is very true, and I'm sure some of that will carry through to BG2/TOB. So they do have a lot of work
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True, I mean, I'm an idiot and would just buy the same game again with updated UI and nothing else, but I guess more content and new characters wouldn't hurt.
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I think it's worth keeping in mind that there are community patches for BG2 that fix an enormous number of bugs. If they do BG2, they're going to have to fix all those bugs, and they'll probably find more in the course of squashing those.
I'm sure their work on BG:EE will help things move along smoothly, but a much bigger game will require more work. I would guess it will take them at least as long as it took to get BG:EE together.
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Do it. This is the version to do it with, especially with the BG2 functionality included in the original.
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stupid wolves. >:C
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As always
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Supposed to activate 5 mins ago, no dice :(
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Yeah, launcher isn't displaying news or anything now :(
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503 service unavailable
TAKE MY MONEY-
Oster said the servers are very slow in responding.
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Very slow is an understatement. Immobile is more accurate.
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Follow Trent Oster on Twitter. He's real good about communicating with the fans.
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I just don't understand why this happens with EVERY game release. They say they'll release, then theres a "server problem" or they're "overloaded"...ffs.
If you want a smooth launch, buy MORE servers than you'll realistically need and then bring them offline with a redundancy system. Instead the SOP seems to be having too few servers then going "whoops, we needed more servers".
What a crock of shit. Just let me play the fooking game.-
Because spending more money than you can afford to support a sales demand that you are unsure of is bad business, and if the demand is very high, then the customers will accept the apology for a slow gearup. They want what you have.
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I'm fairly sure you would have a good idea of the sales numbers BEFORE launch. It's bad business to piss off customers.
Ah well, I don't know why I'm moaning, I fully expected this to happen. Just once I'd like to see a game launch on time, with no issues.-
Based on what historical business model?
Kinda hard to project how many copies people are gonna buy in this particular case.
It's a remodel and update of a game that people can get through other sources. I mean I have the CDs sitting less than five feet from me.
OLD CDs.
There really isn't a business model for this sort of thing.-
At the very least, they knew how many people had pre-ordered and then pre-loaded, yes?
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The amount of money it costs to make sure everything runs 100% on day one (or in the case of something as big as Diablo III - the first few weeks) is so high... it is actually worth it to buy what you can afford and let the customers suffer in the short term... because eventually demand will smooth out and everybody will be fine. It basically doesn't make sense to build a platform which can withstand the load of that initial burst.. because that burst is temporary and after a short time you have more hardware / bandwidth than you really need (waste of money). People eventually forget the launch issues if the game they are getting is good once they finally get it.
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this, there's a reason everyone has the problem, even devs with effectively infinite money (ie Blizzard). Until there's some dynamic provisioning cloud service suitable games you'll continue to have this problem.
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I really wish they just released it on Steam. I get why they didn't but it's still annoying.
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Fuck it, evening will be ruining if I wait for this bullcrap.
Going to watch The Walking Dead instead.-
Ruined*
Man, why doesn't Shack have an EDIT button?-
So that terrible excellent posts are preserved for all time.
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Anyone wanna co-op tonight? Serious bizness of course.
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why you no like steam Beamdog :(
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Why should they give money to Steam when most of the people interested in this game have already played and would buy it anyway? Maybe after they make their money it'll go up on Steam but it seems like they are doing quite well on their own.
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Looks like I might have to turn off nvidia surround because there's no place for me to select the resolution and it slaps the game onto the leftmost screen and it sorta overlaps into the middle one.
Might have to dig around and see if there's a config file so I can set it to 1080. -
fuuuu my computer went to sleep during the download, wanted to play a little before work. Guess I'll be playing it tonight.
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The nostalgia factor is great. And playing on a large monitor is even better.
Has anyone tried The Black Pits yet?-
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It's standalone. There is no option to use you SP character or group in the Pits (at least that I have found). You have to create one from scratch or use the default group.
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welp, going in! tried to play these when they came out, but i was way too twitchy. Hopefully i can handle the awesomeness in my old age :)
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I thought the first few hours of BG2 were great. That mage battle when you exit the dungeon was amazing for the time.
And BG1 I kind of like starting a new character that isn't already built up. It's that usual humble beginnings story you see in every other fantasy novel but I think that works in the framework of a game where you start on level 1.
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most annoying d/l ever.
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Is it still being a pain in the ass to download?
They really should have just released it on Steam and avoided this shit, ugh.
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Have a look at the google play store sanewave. GemRB is the name of the app.
You have to mod the files on your PC 1st to get the resolution right but I have ALL of BG1/BG2 and addons running in the BG2 engine on my asus transformer. I think Gog.com has a great article about all the mods to use to get it all working.
It took me a bit time to get it working but it was worth it. Most of the time was spent copying it across to the tablet.
https://play.google.com/store/apps/details?id=net.sourceforge.gemrb&hl=en
Personally I feel the modded version of the original game looks better UI wise than BGEE. But great effort none the less -
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I just want Jon Irenicus back in BG:II !
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