(This is a review of the original release with the expansion, not the Enhanced Edition)
It's impressive how dedicated a young and inexperienced Bioware was to faithfully recreating the low level D&D experience. This unfortunately includes all the not-so fun parts of it like random oneshots from low level enemies and mages who can't do shit. Unfortunately for Baldur's Gate it lacks all the cool ancillary elements that help you forget about this like eating pizza while joking around with your pals and a cognizant DM to paper over the rough patches of the game.
If you can get past this early-game roughness though you'll find that slowly but surely the game opens up and starts to become something really interesting. I think it was around the Nashkel Mines that it finally began to win me over. With some levels under our belts battles finally felt a little more like I was winning by strategy rather than luck and exploration became feasible. A whole lot of your time for the first half of the game is going to be spent wandering around random woodlands and chopping through hobgoblins and wolves, praying you don't get ambushed by a clearly unwinnable battle on map transition. Baldur's Gate is roughest when you begin and only grows better the more you play.
By the time you reach the titular city proper you'll finally be in a level range that you'll feel competent just in time for the game to open up and give you the opportunity to take on more or less any sidequests you want. There's a ridiculous amount of optional stuff going on here and I didn't even come close to doing all of it, probably not even half if I had to guess.
The Real Time With Pause combat the game uses has become contentious over the years. For many players the need to frequently interrupt the action by pausing to issue commands sort of defeats the benefits of real time. The only occasions you get to enjoy seeing your characters actually chop through enemies unimpeded is during fights with mindless trash mobs. Outside of that you'll be tapping that space bar every few seconds to issue commands. The hybrid gameplay fails to fully capitalize on the tension and finesse of a full time system or the relaxed planning of a turn based one.
Despite my issues with the system and even with its faults there are genuinely fun and engaging encounters to be found across the game. There were plenty of times I came up against a tough battle that I had to really think, strategize and plan my party around to tackle without any losses. The game is also really good at distributing fun tools like wands, potions and spells that give you creative opportunities for how you want to tackle each encounter. I was always finding cool ways to use these to help in fights that seemed insurmountable otherwise.
Pathfinding in this game is a pain in the ass. When you click on a location your characters will frequently take the most roundabout path possible or start to go in the completely opposite direction cause they bumped into another npc or minor obstacle. It requires you to babysit them a lot and is just annoying. They also have a frustrating tendency to break formation meaning you'll often end up with your squishy mages and thieves standing in the front lines if you aren't constantly engineering for them to sit in the back. It just adds a whole lot of busywork without real value to the simple act of moving around. This is exacerbated by the dungeon designs which use tabletop-style narrow corridors that your party is going to constantly get stuck moving through.
I also found the attempt to simulate rest and travel ambushes to just be annoying. The fatigue mechanic makes it clear that playing without resting wasn't the developer's intent. But getting ambushed early on can be a death sentence, especially if you really needed to recharge your spells, and having it happen in the late game is nothing more than a minor nuisance. It really feels awkwardly implemented and like they just never found a satisfying way to balance the system.
The story in Baldur's Gate does as much as possible to stay out of the player's way for as long as possible. The majority of the game is going to be whatever you make of it, adventuring and doing random odd jobs for NPCs like getting their items back from some monsters who stole it or the like. Companions are likewise very barebones, most consisting of just an introductory recruitment and possibly a single questline. There's only occasional party banter and no one has much of anything to say. There are a ton of different NPCs to recruit though meaning you'll have a lot of freedom in how you want to build out your party.
It's only in the final third of the game or so that the plot that has been slowly building up starts to come together. Ultimately there's not much to be said about it unfortunately save for the fact that the antagonist's methods are surprisingly well thought out and there are some interesting revelations that are built up to well. But really this isn't a game that puts much emphasis on its major plot. Baldur's Gate seems more interested in letting the player make it the kind of story they want to.
Of the expansion content I only engaged seriously with Durlag's Tower and found it to be a really fun experience. It was easily the best dungeon in the entire game and full of interesting encounters, traps, puzzles and some surprisingly effective storytelling, with Durlag's story serving almost as a sort of cautionary tale toward the potential fate of our would-be hero. Absolutely worth playing through.
If you can get past the rough opening and the cumbersome nature of the pathfinding you'll find a game that I think is well worth experiencing and enjoying. At the very least it's worthwhile to get to the city of Baldur's Gate so you can enjoy the full sandbox experience the game has to offer of traveling and adventuring.
It's impressive how dedicated a young and inexperienced Bioware was to faithfully recreating the low level D&D experience. This unfortunately includes all the not-so fun parts of it like random oneshots from low level enemies and mages who can't do shit. Unfortunately for Baldur's Gate it lacks all the cool ancillary elements that help you forget about this like eating pizza while joking around with your pals and a cognizant DM to paper over the rough patches of the game.
If you can get past this early-game roughness though you'll find that slowly but surely the game opens up and starts to become something really interesting. I think it was around the Nashkel Mines that it finally began to win me over. With some levels under our belts battles finally felt a little more like I was winning by strategy rather than luck and exploration became feasible. A whole lot of your time for the first half of the game is going to be spent wandering around random woodlands and chopping through hobgoblins and wolves, praying you don't get ambushed by a clearly unwinnable battle on map transition. Baldur's Gate is roughest when you begin and only grows better the more you play.
By the time you reach the titular city proper you'll finally be in a level range that you'll feel competent just in time for the game to open up and give you the opportunity to take on more or less any sidequests you want. There's a ridiculous amount of optional stuff going on here and I didn't even come close to doing all of it, probably not even half if I had to guess.
The Real Time With Pause combat the game uses has become contentious over the years. For many players the need to frequently interrupt the action by pausing to issue commands sort of defeats the benefits of real time. The only occasions you get to enjoy seeing your characters actually chop through enemies unimpeded is during fights with mindless trash mobs. Outside of that you'll be tapping that space bar every few seconds to issue commands. The hybrid gameplay fails to fully capitalize on the tension and finesse of a full time system or the relaxed planning of a turn based one.
Despite my issues with the system and even with its faults there are genuinely fun and engaging encounters to be found across the game. There were plenty of times I came up against a tough battle that I had to really think, strategize and plan my party around to tackle without any losses. The game is also really good at distributing fun tools like wands, potions and spells that give you creative opportunities for how you want to tackle each encounter. I was always finding cool ways to use these to help in fights that seemed insurmountable otherwise.
Pathfinding in this game is a pain in the ass. When you click on a location your characters will frequently take the most roundabout path possible or start to go in the completely opposite direction cause they bumped into another npc or minor obstacle. It requires you to babysit them a lot and is just annoying. They also have a frustrating tendency to break formation meaning you'll often end up with your squishy mages and thieves standing in the front lines if you aren't constantly engineering for them to sit in the back. It just adds a whole lot of busywork without real value to the simple act of moving around. This is exacerbated by the dungeon designs which use tabletop-style narrow corridors that your party is going to constantly get stuck moving through.
I also found the attempt to simulate rest and travel ambushes to just be annoying. The fatigue mechanic makes it clear that playing without resting wasn't the developer's intent. But getting ambushed early on can be a death sentence, especially if you really needed to recharge your spells, and having it happen in the late game is nothing more than a minor nuisance. It really feels awkwardly implemented and like they just never found a satisfying way to balance the system.
The story in Baldur's Gate does as much as possible to stay out of the player's way for as long as possible. The majority of the game is going to be whatever you make of it, adventuring and doing random odd jobs for NPCs like getting their items back from some monsters who stole it or the like. Companions are likewise very barebones, most consisting of just an introductory recruitment and possibly a single questline. There's only occasional party banter and no one has much of anything to say. There are a ton of different NPCs to recruit though meaning you'll have a lot of freedom in how you want to build out your party.
It's only in the final third of the game or so that the plot that has been slowly building up starts to come together. Ultimately there's not much to be said about it unfortunately save for the fact that the antagonist's methods are surprisingly well thought out and there are some interesting revelations that are built up to well. But really this isn't a game that puts much emphasis on its major plot. Baldur's Gate seems more interested in letting the player make it the kind of story they want to.
Of the expansion content I only engaged seriously with Durlag's Tower and found it to be a really fun experience. It was easily the best dungeon in the entire game and full of interesting encounters, traps, puzzles and some surprisingly effective storytelling, with Durlag's story serving almost as a sort of cautionary tale toward the potential fate of our would-be hero. Absolutely worth playing through.
If you can get past the rough opening and the cumbersome nature of the pathfinding you'll find a game that I think is well worth experiencing and enjoying. At the very least it's worthwhile to get to the city of Baldur's Gate so you can enjoy the full sandbox experience the game has to offer of traveling and adventuring.