Baldur's Gate: Enhanced Edition Review

Rasaad is a more tempting addition to your party, although monks are so weak in their starting levels that it is difficult to keep him alive without burying him in your party formation for many hours. The trio at least comes with quests that flavor the game, which are decent additions, particularly Dorn's quest for revenge. Still, you won't miss anything memorable if you skip them, and some of the new art assets are terrible. The area added for Neera's quest to become a better wild mage, for example, features water that looks like old-fashioned television static.

As always, you can expect a visit from some of the Forgotten Realms' biggest celebrities over the course of the story.

Another totally new feature is the Black Pits, a gladiatorial arena run by a sadistic charmer of a drow named Baeleoth who seems to be channeling Killian from The Running Man. This mode stands apart from the story-based campaign and is launched separately from the main menu screen. It is an interesting way to try out battle tactics and play with items and spells that might not be available in the main game for many hours, or maybe even at all, but in the end it turns into a battle grind loaded with repetition. There's no great context for this mode: You select characters from a pre-rolled list and have at it. Baeleoth and his sidekick djinn are nifty antagonists with some good dialogue, and the market for gear is staffed by a colorful collection of weirdos, including a myconid and a mind flayer. But that's about it for story and setting.

The arena's one plus is how fast the action moves moves. Battles fly by, even when you're taking on large numbers of foes and powerful mages, and you level up very quickly. So even if everything seems monotonous, the action speeds along fast enough to hook you for a good few hours of trying to win the competition.

The original's visuals have been improved to support high resolutions that give you a more panoramic view of the still-attractive 2D backgrounds, most notably the autumn-tinged leaves of the forests that cover the Sword Coast. You can now zoom in on the map with the mousewheel, but those old sprites and character models lack detail at the default viewing scale and turn into fuzzy messes if you look too closely. Zooming in is suitable only in the midst of tough combat where you absolutely need to see who's laying a warhammer on whom. Otherwise, it's best to leave that mousewheel alone.

If it keeps coming down like this, they're gonna have to postpone the battle.

There are other graphical problems. Cinematics have all been redone, but in a rough graphic-novel style that is almost as dated as the videos that they replace. Much of the text has been roughly blown up to a higher resolution, so it often looks blurry. Rain and spell effects can combine to cause slowdown, and flickering is an occasional issue. Some new character portraits are available, although all are done in a different, grungier art style than those in the original game. The user interface is also disappointing. While it comes with some welcome adjustments to inventory management like an increase in the number of arrows that can be held in a quiver and gem bags and scroll cases to make it easier to store ill-gotten gains, the UI is as big and clunky as that in the original game. You can't even access significant graphical options within the game to adjust settings like resolution.

The audio has weathered the years better than the video. The haunting musical score returns intact and has been bolstered by some new tunes that fit in well with the old ones. If you haven't played the original for a while, chances are good that you won't be able to tell where the old stops and the new begins. Weapon and spell sound effects carry weight, too, although death still comes with such a quiet whimper that you can sometimes reach the end of battles and quick-save before realizing that someone was sent to an early dirt nap. There is also no audio notification of big character changes, like a paladin doing one too many evil deeds and falling to the status of a regular fighter (which is irreversible here).

Character voices remain as distinctive and loaded with individuality as always. The new voice samples for the three new characters fit in pretty well for the most part. Not one is as irritating as some of the cast from the original game. There is a fair amount of repetition, however, so lines like Neera's combat rant about baddies getting ready for a "frosty--or maybe flaming--death!" go from cute to maddening after hearing them a couple of thousand times. Most of the new romance dialogue is horrific, although the worst lines--your responses, which include banter like "Give me some sugar, baby"--go thankfully unvoiced. There are also some new character voice sets for the protagonist, although not enough to offer much in the way of real choice.

Werewolves and orcs living together, mass hysteria!

Performance is another issue. Stability problems are gradually clearing as patches are released, but issues are still widespread. Initial problems getting the game to run at all have been mostly addressed, but other bugs linger. One of the more irritating glitches involves former party members wigging out after being dropped from the gang and constantly asking to be let back in until you finally make it off the map and escape them in a new location. Conversations with new characters are also off-kilter. Get tight with someone like Dorn or Neera, for instance, and you regularly trigger the exact same chats over and over again, sometimes three or four or five times in a row, which halts the game because you can't ignore them.

Being negative about anything relating to Baldur's Gate is tough given lingering fond memories and how good the original game remains. Still, you can't view this remake in a fully positive light. Additions and enhancements are of questionable merit and are already largely available with very comprehensive, very stable mod packages for the original game, and major bugs have caused a lot of frustration. Even though replaying Baldur's Gate is a worthwhile trip down memory lane for anyone who appreciates a deep RPG, the lack of notable improvements and new features throws more than a few roadblocks in your way.