Baldur's Gate II: Enhanced Edition Reviews

This is such an awesome game from a really classic period of CRPG's. Definitely a must have.

I will only comment on the Enhanced Edition and the work of Beamdog, the original game from Bioware was discussed more than enough. The single player version of the enhanced edition was alright in my opinion, it has some bugs and does not look pretty and rather clumsy by modern standards, but it was playable and enjoyable to a certain degree, I still would recommend it if it was the only possible way to play the game. The multiplayer mode however, is very bugged close to unplayable. This is known for years and while Beamdog allows Neverwinter Nights to be patched by volunteers, this game has not been once patched in this decade. Playing multiplayer means permanent discounections, crashes and disappearing items all the time. And no we didn't use mods or any other thrid party applications. The original game was far more stable in multiplayer mode and that was coded about 20 years ago. To make it quick, I can't recommend this game because Beamdog has plain and simple fucked it up and gives a damn about it since years. I would suggest get the original version if you can and play it on an emulator. And don't buy anything from Beamdog ever again! The Baldur's Gate series has deserved better treatment by far.

It's NOT nice to see how much rpg games have changed in nearly 30 years. I strongly recommend first Baldur's Gate games for younger generations. Even these are not easy games to play.

My only regret is not playing it sooner. The game knows how to be funny, how to break your heart a little, and how to make you care for your character. [spoiler][i]"I will see you made whole, one way or another. I will see that which has been stolen returned, or die in the attempt. And I will do so happily, because I do it for you."[/i][/spoiler]

Fun old school crpg. recommend only having one character and have the npc's join you. You can use EE keeper to change their class info if you want to run with a different party. I.e. make a fighter/cleric dual into a fighter/cleric multi. The personalities and their respective quests are fun. Add a lot of flavor.

I had an absolute blast with this game. I enjoyed the first one, but this one just blows it out of the water in terms of story and characters. BG3 still has the deepest characterisation and arcs of the three IMO, but I feel this one has a stronger plot and central villain, with a great performance by David Warner. Lots of funny moments throughout, some great locations, puzzles, enemies, etc., and the companions actually feel fleshed out this time. Well worth playing if you're a fan of RPGs. The Throne of Bhaal expansion was also very enjoyable, if short, and I especially loved what they did with a certain character from the first game (and am now disappointed that BG3 ignores the potential character development they can have, because reconciling with said character was a highlight of the game for me).

A favorite pasttime game of mine. Although the rules are outdated, once you learn the system, the game offers a vast narrative, engaging story, a great cast of characters, and giant miniature space hamsters for all.

Great title. Played it back in the days as a kid ( still fondly remember the Polish localization, with professional tier 1 actors doing voice-overs). Came back to give it a spin on Steam deck as my 'before-going-to-sleep' treat. Holds really well. I really do think that You can't call Yourself a true cRPG fan if You didn't at least once give it a try. The bittersweet part is, as I finished it today, I've read the same day that the infamous senior writer responsible for Dragon Age: Crapguard might actually be involved in BG4 creation...all rumors at this point of course...still made me kind of sad :(

A fantastic sequel! So next up in my CRPG marathon is Baldur’s Gate 2, a classic among many, and something I finally got to play through for the first time. But what did I think? Starting off, I did play this game on story difficulty as I was mainly just interested in seeing the story through, but I will do higher difficulties when I replay this game one day. Combat is real time with pause, and it based on 2.5 edition of DnD I believe, so a little old school but I was more accustomed to the systems after playing the first game. All that said though, don’t take my thoughts on combat too seriously as like I said, I mainly played this game for the story and characters. Visually the game looks okay but it definitely hasn’t aged that well. Obviously the graphics are going to age over time, but for me it was more just the artstyle as it’s lot of browns, greys and blacks. I say that mainly after playing through Icewind Dale, which was made on the same engine, yet it’s aged better imo in just how they used colors to vary up the locations you visited. One cool aspect is that you get a stronghold in this game, with which stronghold you get being unique based on what class you play, which I thought was cool. That said, it's very basic and there isn’t that much stronghold management as there was in something like say Pillars of Eternity with Caed Nua. You can raise taxes to get more money, and you are supposed to get visitors but I only got 1 visitor in my whole playthrough. It was some merchant complaining about his caravans being raided by bandits, which I thought might lead to a cool quest, but no you just do the rich guy solution, which is throw gold at the problem until it goes away. One of my main complaints from the first game was the party management, and there were just way too many companions and you realistically couldn’t recruit them all. Well they do address that here to a degree, it's not perfect but it's better then the first game for sure. For starters when you dismiss companions they will tell you where to find them, with most of them going to a specific tavern in the main city, which was a big improvement on the first game. When you get them you will get a companion quest which is timed and you do want to complete it quickly otherwise they leave your party permanently. The companion quests are very good though I must say and a big step up from the first. Some of my favorites being Jaheria’s and Nalia’s. Also if you want to go evil in a playthrough, do Dorn’s quest as it will make up for all the modern RPGs these days that DON’T let you be the bad guy. That said, this game still uses the alignment system on whether your lawful good, chaotic evil etc… This is important with companions, as I infamously found out the hard way in my BG1 playthrough where in the middle of an important story mission, 4 of my companions broke out into a fight and killed each other which still shocked me even to this day. So whenever I met a new potential companion, I had to go search them up on the BG wiki, and cross reference to see which party members they conflicted with. It got very tedious after a while and made me feel like some HR manager at a company. Also a little mini rant about Neera. Now I had Neera in my party for most of the first game and I think she’s a fun character. She has a pretty big recruitment quest which I was going to go do, only for me to soon realize that because she’s a wild mage, she has a spell that randomly goes off in combat that literally nukes the gold out of your inventory. I had like 40k gold and after a few combat encounters, I was penniless which definitely had me steaming. Especially since you need gold for the first half of the game in order to progress the main story. You could chuck that up to old game design, but no Neera is a new companion that was added by Beamdog in this remaster, so it was just some random dev with a sick sense of humor who thought it’d be funny which I definitely don’t appreciate. Anyway, rant over. Quests are also really good with many of them presenting tons of choice and consequences which I enjoyed. Especially in chapter 5 where you get to see one of the drow (dark elves) cities and see races like mind flayers and githyanki which obviously play a big role in BG3, so it was cool to see them here. Now onto the story, which is easily the best part of this game. The main reason being the bad guy, Irenicus, who is now up there for me as one of the best villains in all of gaming next to Handsome Jack. He’s just so evil and selfish that you hate him but also his voice actor did such a great job with a commanding voice that made you interested in hearing what he has to say. He’s also present throughout the story and will appear multiple times unlike some final bosses in other CRPGs. And this man has been messing with me ever since the Siege of Dragonspear expansion (if you played it) from the first game, so revenge on him is all that much sweeter by the end. And while the story is very serious, there are some humorous moments in the writing which had me genuinely laughing. Like one time, where I had to get an item in a chest that was being guarded by a big-eyed monster called a beholder. So I went up and spoke to it, and it had a lot of opinions about what’s going on in the city and those annoying imps around the corner and their stupid riddle quest they try to get people to do. And when you ask what’s in the chest they're just like “I don’t know, I was just told to stand here and guard it.”. Definitely had me chuckling as I played. But overall, a great sequel to an already fantastic RPG in the first game. I look forward to the Throne of Baal expansion next.

It's Baldur's Gate 2. This game needs no recommendation. One of the best (if not THE BEST) RPGs of all time. I've played original versions for hundreds of hours. I finished the whole campaing (BG1+BG2) more than 40 times. Even though it's almost 30 years old, it's still beautiful and very fun to play. Enhanced editions refreshed this old title and gave it some modern features, fixed some bugs and exploits.