Baldur’s Gate: Enhanced Edition

Weirdly, I only recommend this game if you've played it before, preferably when it was released. If I played it now, without being there at the end of the 90s, and being completely blown away by it, I'd probably play this for an hour or so before going on to do something more fun. However!!! ........ However, I was probably about 26 when I played it, so half a lifetime ago for me, and it is nice to explore the open world maps again, and enjoy what these guys built. It's a comforting, retro experience. I still love the artwork and the music. But there are plenty of frustrating aspects to this game that I wouldn't forgive if the game was new.... so (again), only recommended - by me - if you're revisiting it :)

One of the all-time greats. A word of advice, even if you heed nothing else: the lack of direction in the early game is a feature, not a flaw. Explore each map, engage with quests and unmarked events, and reach at least level 2 or 3 before engaging with the main quest. Keep a varied party in mind: an archer (particularly equipped with arrows of biting), a thief, a warrior, and a mage of some description will make your life easier. But most of all, make your own character and commit to roleplaying. Baldur's Gate rewards that kind of engagement.

This review comes from someone who gave up on this game, only to come back to try again and absolutely falling in love.
As many "normies" nowadays, I come from Baldur's Gate 3 yearning more from this world and having a immense curiosity as to what birthed the illustrious BG3.
Originally I gave this game about 2-3 hours of my time about a year ago; I just couldn't get into the game at all. It felt dated, very easy to die making it feel like a drag, and is an RTS vs a TBS (BG3) which pushed me even further back.
From influence of a good friend playing through this series, I decided to give the game another chance... I may have judged face value way too early.
I ended up doing a full on evil playthrough and also ended up throwing in some good people in the mix to stir the pot and ensue chaos (as I tend to love doing in games). An evil playthrough was fun in a stance where it truly felt I was evil and people did hate me; it reminded me that today's evil standards really have been skewed to the point where it's all just a "softcore lawful evil". In this game I truly felt the punishing factors of being Chaotic Evil (hardly any exp gain, barely any gold, people wouldn't bother with me, etc) and it made me reconsider to neutral evil to lawful evil throughout my playthrough to be able to catch up and not make the game feel any harder than it is starting off.
The wide variety of companions in this game is so vast, I can confidently say I've only experienced 15% of them and I ran through a good 10 companions; if you couldn't find someone you love in a game, I'm sure in the plethora of people you run through, you will find your perfect companion somewhere in this game. Without spoiler territory, I will name drop names that I thoroughly enjoyed in my playthrough: Viconia, Dorn, Edwin, Baeloth, Khalid, Neera, and Corwin. Since companions permanently die in this game: you have to go through the tedious task of picking all of their equipment whilst managing weight capacity and going through 90% of the game without the ability to resurrect on the spot, I highly recommend Quick saving almost every time you expect an encounter/after an encounter to save you countless minutes of your time.
Combat can be rough around the edges as you will notice you will miss... A LOT. Your early game spells suck and also can be easily disrupted. Rangers feel like Gabi from Attack on Titan where they will just absolutely never miss and OBLITERATE YOU from existence. What helped me a lot was relating it to other games I have played and loved; OSRS (Runescape), Morrowind, Dungeon of the Endless, and Dragon Age Origins. You may miss, land your hits, or land a juicy critical hit, You may cast your spell or you may have it cancel/fail. There is no "turns" since its real time strategy, but you can most definitely "see" when "turns" occur in combat and get used to timing. What also helped was learning to strafe attacks and to pause to strategize and grasp the whole scenario.
Overall the story including Siege of Dragonspear I found very enjoyable and an absolute journey. Graphics, voice acting, and other obvious noteables aside, Baldur's Gate 1 holds its own very well for today's present time against many triple A RPG's currently out. The music is memorable and ascending. The dialogue between companions and NPCs are something to look forward to. The challenge this game brought me was very fun and kept me on my toes every fight. I can truly go on.
TLDR:
- Former hater turned lover
- Combat is easy to get into when comparing it to games like Runescape, DA: Origins, Morrowind, etc.
- BG3 fans looking for lore, story, companions, expanding the lore and love of BG3 GIVE THIS GAME A SHOT PLEASE
- Here's New Modern take review that might also help you get into the game that I highly recommend watching/listening to:
Now on to Baldur's Gate II :)

Are you pushing 50 and feeling nostalgia for those days when you used to play D&D with all your friends? Do you like weird side quests and byzantine rules? Do you really really, really really, like killing Kobolds? Then girl, I have just the game for you!

10/10
I've been coming back to this game Since 1999 when it came with 6 separate discs. It absolutely still holds up 26 years later.

Pros:-
- The added Enhanced edition characters bring some great dialogue. (Purists hate them)
- Great Class and race variety.
- Hundreds of weapons, armours, wands and other items to use.
- intricate tactical combat.
- Beginner friendly with a plethora of guides and youtube videos to help you plan and gear up.
- You can Import your main character straight into Fall of Dragonspear then/or Baldurs Gate 2 to continue your characters story.

Cons:-
- Character models haven't aged well.
- A lot of reading required to understand the story fully.
- Character stats and abilities not explained very well and will probably require third party guides.

If you like Role playing games then this is a must!

Absolute classic. In which way?
Let's take Dracula by Bram Stoker for example. Absolute horror classic that layed the basis of every single vampire story that came after. Does it mean it was one of a kind? Not really... Other vampire books were written before (Carmilla), but it was this one that stuck to people. When you're reading Dracula, you can sense just how much it has influenced pop culture and literature for the next century and a half.
Similarly, playing Baldurs Gate makes you recognise mechanics that games 30 years after are still using.
For example, the morale system. It wasn't the first one to use it, mind you, but the impact it has on some interactions is definetly groundbreaking, and so is the pacing of the story.
You never feel like you're dragging or digressing when you're completing a side-quest, for two reasons. First, the quality of the side material is just as good as the main story, so you're not feeling the abrupt downgrade in writing quality that characterizes "filler episodes" in TV or literature. Secondly, sometimes they're written into the story so well that you don't realize you're sidequesting. You're gonna run into a town in your travels that tell you of a super powered magic tower, and your journal (absoltue banger mechanic that let's you organically keep track of everything that's happened) tells you it'll be important. In that same town you have a passage to a dungeon, and a mission about freeing the naive halfling residents of the town from a underground secret cult that kidnaps their people in the night (you can even help the organization and kidnap the kids yourself!!). All of this happens in a throwaway town in the middle of nowhere that you just... run into. And you're compelled to explore it because the main story organically incorporates the town in the journey, and doesn't pressure the player into completing it, instead it just points into a direction, letting you craft your own adventure as you see fit.
Sound familiar? Fallout New Vegas, the critically overlooked-fan favourite-cult object- incomplete masterpiece of a game, uses an identical format in their narrative, twelve years after the release of BG1.
It is also crucial to talk about other aspects of the game like the visual design (I've only played the Enhanced edition), killer soundtrack, amazing sound design, and the companion system. I've heard this last one was kind of an afterthought...? It's amazing nonetheless, and a fucking statement about how to make a rag-tag gang of adventurers feel like real people with so little dialogue . They interact with each other and have their own personality outside of the player's choice: they complain, laugh and critisize the player's decisions, and will leave your party if you do something they didn't like. The way a character is so fundamentally linked to another (because they're married/are best friends/etc), that you need to have them both or neither in your party is a testament of how to design a character with practically no tools.
Like cinema, gaming used to be an art of "smoke and mirrors", where they used certain mechanics, visual or sound cues to make the player feel something or understand something without explicity showing it. Also like cinema, in recent years the capital game developers and distribuitors are willing to invest in a project has grown astronomically. That increase in budget, in RPGs, has been translated into companion NPCs having fully animated, expresive bodies and faces that express their personalities, but more often than not they lack the dramatic or narrative basis that makes a compelling character. The problem has been shifted from the 90s: then, it was compelling characters made of smoke and mirrors, now, they're very pretty animatronics with nothing inside 'em. Companions nowadays make the game. Just take a look at Youtube Channels like Fluffyninjallama, that based their entire career into showing you different reactions companions have to your choices or random banter in games like Mass Effect, Fallout 4, or the recent masterpiece that is Baldurs Gate 3.
I loved Baldurs Gate 1, but I would only recommend it to people who are willing to spend time and sweat into understanding the game and playing by its rules. Not to say it's clunky (it is), but rather demanding. You need to understand its complicated, unexplained, bulls**t 90's Dungeons and Dragons mechanics to play the game (or you can play in story mode difficulty, completely valid). I don't wish to drag too much on this, but I love when a game forces you to master it, rather than rounden up its edges to result in an insipid experience. When a game has tact, taste and its own characteristic flavour, you develop a special relationship (stockholm syndrom, that is) with it, imbuing itself in your brain.
Before playing this game, I'd recommend a new player to experience newer Classic RPGs (CRPGs) like Divinity 2, Baldurs Gate 3 or even Dragon Age Origins. If you're interested in this game, playing the others will not make this one feel like such a big step.
Best case scenario, you're left craving for more. Worst, you're filtered off.
Just don't start by IceWind Dale like my poor cousin did, got it?

Coming to this game in 2025 as a BG3 (and general DnD 5e) player, it uses an ancient and super obtuse version of DnD that can only have been designed by a sadist or a madman. The combat mixes real-time and turn-based and gets the worst of both worlds. Even after finishing the game I still have no idea when turns begin or end. There are far too many enemies, they are all dumb as bricks, and they respawn way too fast.

That said, the foundation of this game is really interesting. It's got a huge open world before that was a common thing, there are tonnes of recruitable characters and loads of classes to play as, meaning that you can really make each run unique, and I just really love the Forgotten Realms as a setting.

I would definitely recommend giving it a shot, but watch some YouTube videos first to teach yourself the basics. I would love if they did a modern remake using more current design sensibilities but as the chances of that are basically 0, this version is probably as good a version of BG1 as you'll get.