I'll be reviewing the Enhanced Edition of Baldur's Gate 1 here, as well as a copy-pasta of my review of the Siege of Dragonspear expansion.

Baldur's Gate 1:

I love this game.

Its a low level campaign based on a very good interpretation of Advanced Dungeons and Dragons 2nd Edition. Turns out a really well developed pen and paper role playing game also lays the ground work for a really excellent game engine.

The combat is "real time with pause". There are turns happening as in D&D, but they are all happening at the same time and taking place in real time. That's where the pause comes in. You can just let the combat play out in real time, but at any time you may pause the game to give out more specific commands to your party members. This allows for easy encounters to not become a chore and hard encounters can be micro-managed as much as needed.

The game is set on the Sword Coast of Faerun in the Forgotten Realms, a setting that will be familiar to D&D veterans. The story is straightforward but fun.

Baldur's Gate has a great balance between exploration, combat and story/dialogue. You'll want to explore each area you come across because you never know if you'll encounter a mad priest, a band of rouge adventurers looking for a fight, a mother looking for some one to save her son, or just some random crazy NPC that will make you laugh.

The combat can seem hard to grasp if you've not played before or even boring at level 1 if you can't hit anything, but there is a lot of depth to it, especially in the magic system from wizards and priests. There are a lot of awesome combat encounters in this game. There is also a nice progression of loot you get for your characters which is one reason that compels you to keep exploring - you never know what awesome loot you may get!

Although there is a lot of great dialogue in the game and a lot of opportunity for role-playing, the npc companions do not offer a lot of dialogue. Many have "quests" but they are short and underwhelming. There is some banter between NPCs but not a great deal so don't expect much out of it. BG2's companions are much better in this regard.

As for the enhanced edition, its supports higher resolutions which is great. If anyone ever played BG1 with the Tutu mod installed, the Enhanced Edition will feel very similar - basically its BG1 in the BG2 engine, including all the class kits and the ability to dual wield.

The enhanced edition also adds four new NPC companions - a monk, wild mage, a blackguard (an evil paladin) and a sorcerer. These companions all have a legitimate quest for you and in general are more fleshed out than the original npcs. The community is divided as to whether these companions are a welcome addition to the game. I like all but the monk.

Overall, more than 20 years later, I still think Baldur's Gate is worth a playthrough (or severl) to this day.

Recommended.

Siege of Dragonspear:

I really enjoyed this expansion.

Although it is much more linear than BG1 or 2, it's not the straightforward dungeon crawl some people make it out to me.

In the story you are following an army as they advance across the Sword Coast on their campaign. Thus, once you proceed with the army to a new area, you cannoy backtrack. But in each area there are a ton of side quests to do. Some of them are really great.

The game features many higher level enemies than BG1, and in many ways feels like a warmup for BG2, in regards to to the enemies you face and environments you'll encounter. In one chapter there is even a huge underground sections that reminds of the Underdark from BG2.

The game is beautiful. There are many incredible and colorful settings. The game also has some really fun large scale battles, which were a lot of fun.

I liked the story. Is it necessary for BG2? Obviously not, we'd been playing BG2 for more than 15 years before this released. But it's fun, and it does take you right into BG2.

The companions are very good. They have side quests and a lot more lines than the original Baldur's Gate. Also, they did an excellent job with the cannon party members, in terms of voice acting and scripting.

Also worthy of note, the experience cap in SoD is 500k xp, perfect for dual classing. You can now start BG2 with your fully dualed fighter mage!

Overall I think it's worth experiencing, at least once if not on each playthrough of the trilogy. People will say that it's not necessary, and again, of course it's not BG2 has been just fine without it since it's release. But Tales of the Sword coast was equally unnecessary in terms of BG2 - this game at least feels like a continuation of Charname's story rather than a total side quest.

Recommended.