Baldur’s Gate II: Enhanced Edition
The Classic Adventure ContinuesBaldur’s Gate II: Enhanced Edition is the beloved RPG classic, enhanced for modern adventurers.
Continue a journey started in Baldur’s Gate: Enhanced Edition, or customize a new hero to forge your path.Campaign ContentThe Enhanced Edition includes the original Shadows of Amn campaign, the Throne of Bhaal expansion, plus brand new challenges in the Black Pits II arena!
- Classic Campaign: The Original Shadows of Amn Adventure
- Expansion: Throne of Bhaal
- New Challenges: The Black Pits II: Gladiators of Thay, arena style battles
- New Difficulty Setting: Story Mode allows players to focus on story and exploration, rather than combat and survival
Epic Characters
- 11 Playable Classes plus dozens of subclasses
- Recruit Classic Characters like Minsc and his brave hamster, Boo!
- 5 New NPCs: Neera the Wild Mage, Dorn Il-Khan the Blackguard, Rasaad yn Bashir the Monk, Hexxat the Thief, and Wilson the Bear
- New player voice sets to customize your hero
- Upload Characters from Baldur’s Gate: Enhanced Edition, or forge ahead with a brand new hero
Classic Gameplay
- 2-D isometric graphics
- Real-time-with-pause combat
- Adapts 2nd Edition Dungeons & Dragons Rules
Enhanced for Modern Platforms
- Hundreds of bug fixes and improvements to the original game
- Native support for high-resolution widescreen displays
- Cross-play multiplayer support for Windows, Linux, and macOS
A Story-Rich RPG
Kidnapped. Imprisoned. Tortured. The wizard Irenicus holds you captive in his stronghold, attempting to strip you of the powers that are your birthright.
Can you resist the evil in your blood and forsake the dark destiny that awaits you? Or will you embrace your monstrous nature and ascend to godhood as the new Lord of Murder?
Steam User 306
Took me 30 minutes to create my character and 11 minutes to get him killed, I am ready for Baldur's Gate III.
Steam User 194
Many of you probably played Baldur's Gate 3 and wonder about the two previous games. This review is for you.
Similar to BG3:
- Rich storytelling. I'd say it's even better than BG3 as it is a bit more personal on some levels, and also because there weren't many games like that before this one came out. There are great twists throughout. Your journey will make you travel across many different lands.
- Deep, complex companion characters with different opinions, motives and backgrounds. Sometimes the good answer isn't the good answer. Sometimes you may argue with your companions, you may have to shake them up a bit at times, maybe sometimes you may have to lie to them or be blunt and honest a few days later, sometimes you may have to be more gentle and understanding and sometimes not. Pay attention to their personalities and adapt your answers accordingly. You may have to deal with party conflicts or else they may harm each other!
- Fantastic romances with many layers. Some have a shell you need to crack open. Some hide their true nature for a long time before they trust you enough. This is the game that truly introduced the concept romances in RPG video games and it became a benchmark for the Dragon Age and Mass Effect franchises. Unfortunately the number of characters you can romance is small, especially for females ( there's only one guy you can romance ). However, there are mods that can remedy that of course!
- The DnD universe is the same, albeit slightly different since some character appearances and attributes may have changed over time. There are some races and classes that are missing, of course, because they hadn't been invented back then! But there is enough diversity within the game for you to forget about that.
- Challenging and fun dungeons and encounters. Great bosses. Classic dungeons and more ethereal ones are waiting for you.
- Breathtaking sceneries. Arguably, the game has aged, but visually it's a game that's very difficult to forget for those who are fans of isometric RPGs. There are many areas that have you stop and just look at them for a while and you admire the time spent to create them - both lore-wise and game development-wise. You will visit beaches, ruins, the underdark, mindflayer, dragon and beholder lairs and many more visually stimulating areas.
- Engaging and atmospheric music. BG2, just like BG3, has some of the catchiest battle music ever made. The music in this game is very visual - it accompanies the areas you visit really well. Some are more cinematic than others, depending on the setting.
- Top tier antagonists, I'd say iconic even for the DnD franchise. Irenicus is literally your party's Magneto and make BG1's Sarevok so unidimensional and simple in comparison. There are many other great evil characters for you to clash with. Dragon battles are super exciting and epic, clearly a high point in anyone's campaign when they are encountered. BG2 will unleash some of the most powerful foes the DnD universe has to offer.
- Choices matter. If you make a decision, it will have an impact on the area and may have an impact on your companions or even in the main quest. You can be good, neutral or evil when making decisions.
Not similar to BG3:
- Combat. Combat uses older DnD rules. Some aspects may feel familiar, other aspects may be totally alien to you. However, if you have moderate knowledge of the 5th edition, you are halfway there. Not gonna lie, learning how DnD works with this game with no prior knowledge of DnD is going to be difficult. It's not really turn-based although you can make it somewhat like that through settings and in the background the games does roll dice everytime you make actions. It's more chaotic, but in a good way I believe, and when it gets too chaotic you hit the pause button and reorganize your strategy. It's a lot of pause-and-play, but it gives you more control on the fight and also makes its pace faster than in BG3. You'll get used to it.
- Interactions. There are less things you can pick up, no candles to light, no crates you can destroy or move. However there are containers, secret areas and secret treasures, traps - including traps you can set yourself - and a few other things.
- No camp. In this game, if you want a party member to take some time away from your group, they will go to a given location. You will have to go and find them there if you want them back. Do not let them alone in the underdark or some other perilous area because you may never see them again! However, you will get a camp-like area in Throne of Bhaal, so there's that.
Overall this game is a cornerstone in the fantasy RPG genre. I highly recommend it, even if you haven't played the first Baldur's Gate - there is enough of it told to you for you to pick up right from the second installment and understand the entire story without playing the first game, and BG2 is by far the better of the two games.
Steam User 156
You're here because you beat BG3, right?
I watched my dad play this when I was 5 years old. I kept telling him to use Stinking Cloud against Irenicus. No clue why he didn't follow my instructions.
This was my first big-boy game. 24 years later, it remains my favorite of all time.
You owe it to yourself to experience this piece of CRPG history.
Steam User 115
I have been playing this game almost 20 yrs before it's released on Steam. It's a very good game.
Steam User 98
GO FOR THE EYES BOO GO FOR THE EYES
Steam User 110
replaying these games before the bg3 release... what a wonderful series. going to be hard to top this one. the characters are incredible and the story is just *chef's kiss* i hope that bg3 urges people to play the first two games
Steam User 68
Out of all classic crpg's of so called "golden era" that I have played, this one is definitely the one I would call the ruler of them all.
Bladurs gate 2 strikes the perfect balance between adventuring, world building, combat and character progression.
I used it to fulfill the itching desire of experiencing true power fantasy within the home privacy and I was exhaustively satisfied!
Its a journey you start naked and weak, trapped in unknown maze, intimidated by the scope of expected experience, comforted only a little by meeting known comanions from prequel.
You finish it as demigod, stacked with magical relics, overflowing with gold, owning properties and single handedly evaporating armies from existance.
But it is a long journey, and starting it was so daunting for me that I was actually putting it off for, literally, years...
And I still find it understandable because its world is so rich, so abundant in places, characters, quests, items, monsters, spells, mechanics, puzzles...
Playing through it really feels epic, like experiencing homer odyssey yourself, including not only greatness but also its brutality, and my first playthrough, taking 120 hours was indeed, momentary, truly brutal...
I was already familiar with general combat and spellcasting mechanics when descending into the underdark, I tought
completing Baldurs Gate and Icewind Dale prepared me for upcoming challanges, but boy was I wrong...
Sheer difficulty of fighting flocks of beholders and mind flayers brought my patience to its limits!
Countless party wipes consuming hours of my time almost led me to quit.
Getting through on core rules was a struggle!
But with struggle comes growth, and nothing can compare to satisfaction I felt, when on a second playthrough I breeze through the area clearing everything with single character!
Experiencing real growth, thats what really captivates me about this game!
But there is also another thing that truly fascinates me, and that are characters!
In no other game I have ever met such interesting, compelling and thought provoking antagonist as Joneleth Irenicus!
Starting the game I tought not much of him, idea of mysterius, sadistic, deviant (dryads concubines) kidnapper was off putting for me, but throughout the game I grow to simply adore him!
Companions are also nothing less than impressive, I will never forget Anomen knighting, using Minsc to enter asylum or romancing Neera as berserker/mage, and her making my jaw drop when she said exactly what I was thinking, that it makes sense we are together, because we are both mages of questionable reputation, or making me laugh at loud by dropping a cow on Jan head in fatal wild surge!
Baldurs Gate 2 companions honestly made me curious, not only I wanted to complete their quests, I wanted to know them! Not like in any other title where I treated companions simply as mules and meat shields.
Graphics of this masterpiece is obviously dated, and enhanced edition didnt really changed much, playing for long hours become tiresome, mostly I find, because of mellow color palette, altho artstyle in general is very peculiar and hypnotizing.
For example, very detailed and charming locations are intertwined with very simplistic or outright odd ones, like slums and planar sphere, making you feel this weird but appealing dissonance...
When you look at screens alone, some places look gross, but when you actually play, somehow you feel real atmosphere in every place, and everything no matter how odd, just fits perfectly and enriches the world.
As for the sound, I find plenty of little effects like droping items, drinking potions, flipping through scrolls very pleasent and addicting but what impresses me the most are mesmerizing voices and lines of voice actors! Irenicus, Bodhi, Ellesime, Minsc, Imoen, Lilarcor and many others, they are just phenomenal! And oh my... how sexy are some of them!
Here, mousey mousey...
Althou the game is old, a little hard to get into and takes an enormous amount of time to complete, I sincerly recommend it as the best crpg, and one of the best video games in general that I have ever played.