I was bouncing around on the WotC site and I noticed that Baldur's Gate 2 now has an "Enhanced Edition". Just thinking about it brings back memories of gaming on my laptop with BG, BG2 and Icewind Dale, trying to keep my table top RPG experiences moving forward even after the true gaming had stopped.
February of '96 was my last true RPG experience for about a dozen years. Sure, there were MMOs - Everquest, Anarchy Online, Everquest 2, Warhammer, Meridian 59, Sierra's The Realm, Ultima Online, Dungeons & Dragons Online and many, many more. None however, were D&D like I had last experienced it.
The Baldur's Gate series kept that fire burning for many a year. It WAS AD&D 2e, or as close to it as I was getting in those days. "Go for the eyes Boo!" became my rallying cry. It was good. It was fun. It wasn't as good as the real thing, but it didn't need to be, as I didn't have access to the real thing.
I'm tempted to buy the new enhanced Baldur's Gate 2 to relive some of those memories, not because I need to these days - I get my gaming in regularly now - but because the memories are good memories. It was a good game for the time, and I've yet to see anything in the days since that came close the the D&D tabletop experience as I knew it. Well, maybe Temple of Elemental Evil, but that was a buggy mess, and I never got into the temple itself.
Hmmm, wonder if they could enhance ToEE next?
I jumped straight from B/X to 3E. So, from that perspective, there was a lot of strangeness in Baldur's Gate. I loved the look of it, and it had great sound effects and such... the thing that ultimately turned me off playing it was the fact I had to comb every inch of the wilderness and slaughter everything to have enough experience to survive advancing the plot. Also, it seemed every conversation tree terminated in being attacked. Still, I imagine both of those things may have been something like 2E game play...
ReplyDeleteMy wife still plays the games from time to time. One thing she likes about the new version is there is no CD swapping!
I would suggest checking out ToEE on Good Old Games (gog.com). You can get it for about $6.00. Then add in one of the Circle of 8 Mod Packs (Free Download) and you'll get a good extended (i.e. new areas and quests), less buggy play by all accounts. I'm running it vanilla now and started playing it while I was playing the video game version of ToEE the same time I was running a game of ToEE for Castles & Crusades using Google+ with a group. Gave me a lot ideas for the group and a better grasp on the NPCs.
ReplyDeleteMy advice would be to skip the so-called "enhanced" edition and just get BG 1 and 2 off of GOG.com and install the community made mods that are floating around out there. BGTutu is particularly good. The EE was a major letdown for me and there's plenty of bugs that irritated me to no end ... unforgivable for a game of this type IMO.
ReplyDeleteThe Circle of 8 Mod Pack fixes a lot of bugs in ToEE. Unfortunately I made it through three levels of the temple at which point every load screen crashed the game. Your mileage may vary.
ReplyDeleteBGTutu is quite good. I recommend the Indira companion, Xan Friendship and Party banter <a href="http://www.pocketplane.net/mambo/index.php?option=content&task=blogcategory&id=134&Itemid=94>mods. </a>
I found the enhanced versions of BG and BG2 to be quite good, so my impression is very different than that expressed by N. A. Jones (I use a mac, which may have something to do with it). BGEE and BG2EE are great games, and have recreated some of the original magic for me.
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