Sadly, I can't fairly review it yet, since I'm running Intel chipsets for both my laptop and office computer. The office computer crashes (not the game--the computer) when I try to run BG:EE. And the laptop lags something fierce.
I voted 4, not because what they've done with the game itself is bad (it's not, it's very good), but because of:
a) the problems with downloading the last part of the pre-download initially
b) the buggy perfomance on Intel graphics chipsets (even on a very new Macbook Air with an Intel 4000 HD chipset running Windows under Bootcamp), slow map panning and tearing, and poor performance with AoE spells.
c) Trying fix the problem by installing the latest HD 4000 driver from Intel, then finding my system wouldn't start after installing this, so having to roll-back to the last restore point, which is missing the BGEE executable, but the Beamdog installer won't seem to let me re-download the last part of the BGEE pre-download, so now I'm having to re-download the whole thing from scratch using the standalone installer - argh!
I'm a patient man, and really want to support Overhaul Games and all they're trying to do for Baldur's Gate, but its *extremely* frustrating... :-(
Weelllll.....I guess my opinion is rather plain compared to what most of you peps are saying, but here goes! I'm loving it, I'm loving it, I'm lo-oo-ooving it! Aaaaaaand, done! No sleep for me last night, I guess that's the only problem I've encountered so far. ^^ Rolled characters for 4 hours last night. <.<' I might be easy to please hah! :P
i agree about the intro movie and cutscenes, but thats just my opinion. agree about the customization stuff to. would be nice to be able to pick a custom resolution maybe?
but hey its baldurs gate 8-). i am at the friendly inn atm, and i love it so far. runs realy smooth. have to come to grips with the controls again after years of mmo ing, and the 12 hitpoints lol.
Where is the voice in spanish? Few years, translate. I can´t play this game, because not have original voices translates and places...and Where is the portraits? Fuck off.
If it wasn't for the download and Intel chipset (and related) problems, I probably would've given the game an 8.
It's a bit weird the action icons are fuzzy, though, that's kind of basic. More portraits would've been nice, but I'm not going to mark it down for just that.
The zooming is great
BTW personally I like the 1pp paperdolls and avatars.
I had some problems at first to launch it (white/black screen) but due to thread at bugs section i was able to solve it out. as people have said the new cutscenes aren't that good. Also IMO the new portraits are kinda "meh" as well, the new mage/priest spells section is kind of annoying. Also in my opinion the new maps character points are a bit too small for my tastes. Finally i find Neeras voice a bit annoying, not her character, just her voice. Oh well, i guess i will get used to it. Overall its not bad but there are some things what annoy me out, maybe "7" is a bit too harsh but oh well.
I gave a 7, mostly because the multiplayer is still crappy and we have no proper guide to make it work yet. Even if the host open his ports, the game randomly freeze and crash
Feels a bit rough still, but there is an excellent base here to build from. The UI overhaul was well-done (I get some people don't like the color, was referring more mechanically). The game is very quick and fairly smooth.
Overall, I am quite pleased with my purchase. I feel it just lacks a bit of polish. I'm ok with that, because this seems to be a bit of an ongoing project for the devs. I figure I'll get that lick of polish in the months to come.
I'm probably being a bit stingy here, but it is my highly subjective opinion that the UI looks so incredibly ugly that I can't stand looking at it for any significant period of time. Everything looks big, clumsy, blurry and tacky. I wasn't very impressed with the cutscenes either (even though I was initially really looking forward to seeing them). This is just me, though, and I am well aware both of the fact that I probably value aesthetics more than the average gamer, and that tastes differ a lot. It has ruined my personal gaming experience, however. Other than that everything seems to work flawlessly on my computer, and it's possible that my opinion will change as I get used to the game. I don't see that as likely, though, and that makes me rather sad.
The new context, based on what I've played so far, is great. The new NPCs are really good - so far, my initial impression of them is better than many of the original NPCs.
The game itself plays like vanilla - maybe I'm a rare person here but when it comes to mods I'm fairly light-weight; Tutu and SCS was pretty much all I used, along with Unfinished Business. So I'm not really picky about some of the other issues others are having
I also like the new movies. As much as I loved the original game, I never liked the movies. Even when I played the game back when it first came out I found the movies pretty uninspiring.
However, its not without serious issues. The fact that I need to be windowed to even play it is pretty disappointing.
I also know a lot of people who had issues trying to even download it. Add on the rest of the problems the game had and it doesn't bode well for Beamdog's ultimate goals; a Baldur's Gate III -or- an original IP in the style of the old Infinity Engine games. Word of mouth is a powerful thing and the internet is filled with venomous little people who say horrible things, making the truth seem far worse than it is.
I understand the issues and while some of them frustrate me - I also known Beamdog is a small company, with a show-string budget, doing what amounts to a budget remake of a classic game.
I voted 7, because the core game is brilliant, its resolution and zooming are great, the smooth game play is awesome, the text and extra details are informative and the music is brilliant. . However it doesn't reach my expectations because the multiplayer still doesn't work, I can get the old game to work via gameranger, the UI is pretty ugly compared to the original, the new cutscenes are not as impacting as the original. I cannot wait for future updates for multiplayer.
I've only had a chance to play about a half hour (messing around in Candlekeep) but so far it seems like this 'enhanced edition' is just the original BG1 with the player classes from BG2 and a couple additional voice sets. The additional content is definitely welcome, but it comes with a feeling that I'm really only playing a cheap user mod, rather than a fully fleshed out 'upgrade' to the core game. Oh, and some of the fonts are really hard to read and look strangely blurry..
The cutscenes are very bad.. And the multiplayer game is broken more often than not. There are so many issues and bugs all the time it is extreme. Multiplayer was much better with BG1 before BG:EE as it is now.
I would give single player 7/10, with the worst part being the cutscenes.
First and most important.. It is not that the EE is THAT bad.
The Ability to Zoom and the High Resolution Support is quite Nice
BUT !!!!
With a bit more defended freedom during making the contract with the right holders to include new banters for existing characters, and perhaps a reasonable longer Delay Time (which could have been used for re-creating sprites, and backgrounds - we all know we would have loved that AND we would have been WILLING TO WAIT for that!!!!!), without the many small troubles on the way to the game - a more effective marketing, the blurry screenshots managed to piss of quite bunch of people, no forced ground zoom in the game without the chance to turn it off - I would have given without thinking twice the EE 8 or 9 Points.
As it is now, if BG2 will be also featuring only such a low level of real enhancements, i will have to think twice as long if i will buy it at all.
But well, the EE is not THAT bad as i stated in the Beginning
After playing it for a while I cant rate it highly, there are too many annoying bugs and shortcomings:
1) FPS cant be changed through the ini
2) No character editor like shadowkeeper, go go chronic restart disease
3) Multi / dual classed mages dont display equipped robes (they did in BG2 and BG Tutu)
4) Game is incompatible with recording software, I recorded both BG Tutu and BG2 with ease using MSI afterburner, but BGEE freezes and locks up as soon as video capture is enabled.
5) Bears and monsters disappearing on reload - I shot an arrow at a bear, tried to kite and kill it, died in the process, reload and the bear is gone. Goodbye 270 - 650 EXP.
6) BG2 portraits and sounds cant be picked during character creation, they could in BGT / Tutu.
7) The new cut scenes are horrible, and they even entirely removed some like Beregost from the game.
Gave it a five in it's current state, though I could easily give it a 9 once things are fixed.
Some of the new cut scenes are bad. Game speed can not be increased like TUTU. Playing at 30 like I did the very first time I ever played BG back in 1999 is very painful. Sometimes things need to be clicked twice and I find some of the text/font a bit hard to read. Lack of gamma.
The core game is still excellent but it's not as enhanced as I hoped. They should of waited another two weeks to release the game. Brought in some more beta testers and really put a spit shine polish for this classic. I'm sure they've learned a lot on this release and BG2 will be more successful. I wish them all the best.
The game is unplayable on one of the most widely used chipsets. There are glaringly obvious bugs, such as the tooltip for what I presume to be the help screen reading 'rest.' Now that's not a major issue and it doesn't affect gameplay, but it's right there on the main screen that players spend 99% of the game looking at! How daft do you have to be to miss something like that?!
This game just wasn't ready for release, which is strange considering it was just fine 10 years ago. I shelled out $20 (£13 in the good Queen's coin) for new content that I won't get to see until these unforgivable oversights are corrected. Considering the years of loving care the modding community lavished on the original saga over the years and in light of how badly executed this release has turned out, I reckon I've been conned and should have just done another tutu runthrough with some new mods.
I feel it runs much better than modded BG game. there is no loading screens anymore which makes the game very fluid to play. And the new NPCs are pretty good too.
The work done here is of great quality. Either you like it or not it cant be perfect at once. We are looking forward for any new improvements! GJ Overhaul
Comments
a) the problems with downloading the last part of the pre-download initially
b) the buggy perfomance on Intel graphics chipsets (even on a very new Macbook Air with an Intel 4000 HD chipset running Windows under Bootcamp), slow map panning and tearing, and poor performance with AoE spells.
c) Trying fix the problem by installing the latest HD 4000 driver from Intel, then finding my system wouldn't start after installing this, so having to roll-back to the last restore point, which is missing the BGEE executable, but the Beamdog installer won't seem to let me re-download the last part of the BGEE pre-download, so now I'm having to re-download the whole thing from scratch using the standalone installer - argh!
I'm a patient man, and really want to support Overhaul Games and all they're trying to do for Baldur's Gate, but its *extremely* frustrating... :-(
I'm loving it, I'm loving it, I'm lo-oo-ooving it!
I might be easy to please hah! :P
It is heartening however, after all the negative threads on the forums, to see the silent majority of people are enjoying the game.
mostly because i am a bg addict.
i agree about the intro movie and cutscenes, but thats just my opinion.
agree about the customization stuff to. would be nice to be able to pick a custom resolution maybe?
but hey its baldurs gate 8-). i am at the friendly inn atm, and i love it so far. runs realy smooth.
have to come to grips with the controls again after years of mmo ing, and the 12 hitpoints lol.
i hope they do bg2 to actualy.
It's a bit weird the action icons are fuzzy, though, that's kind of basic. More portraits would've been nice, but I'm not going to mark it down for just that.
The zooming is great
BTW personally I like the 1pp paperdolls and avatars.
Also IMO the new portraits are kinda "meh" as well, the new mage/priest spells section is kind of annoying.
Also in my opinion the new maps character points are a bit too small for my tastes. Finally i find Neeras voice a bit annoying, not her character, just her voice. Oh well, i guess i will get used to it. Overall its not bad but there are some things what annoy me out, maybe "7" is a bit too harsh but oh well.
Overall, I am quite pleased with my purchase. I feel it just lacks a bit of polish. I'm ok with that, because this seems to be a bit of an ongoing project for the devs. I figure I'll get that lick of polish in the months to come.
If it was not for the re-release I might have gone even longer without replaying this classic, boy I am loving BG again!
Did not have too many issues like some others last night but can understand frustrations for those who did.
Broadly positive (8 or higher : 62%
Mixed (6 or 7) : 20%
Broadly negative (5 or lower) : 15%
The new context, based on what I've played so far, is great. The new NPCs are really good - so far, my initial impression of them is better than many of the original NPCs.
The game itself plays like vanilla - maybe I'm a rare person here but when it comes to mods I'm fairly light-weight; Tutu and SCS was pretty much all I used, along with Unfinished Business. So I'm not really picky about some of the other issues others are having
I also like the new movies. As much as I loved the original game, I never liked the movies. Even when I played the game back when it first came out I found the movies pretty uninspiring.
However, its not without serious issues. The fact that I need to be windowed to even play it is pretty disappointing.
I also know a lot of people who had issues trying to even download it. Add on the rest of the problems the game had and it doesn't bode well for Beamdog's ultimate goals; a Baldur's Gate III -or- an original IP in the style of the old Infinity Engine games. Word of mouth is a powerful thing and the internet is filled with venomous little people who say horrible things, making the truth seem far worse than it is.
I understand the issues and while some of them frustrate me - I also known Beamdog is a small company, with a show-string budget, doing what amounts to a budget remake of a classic game.
So far, i am disappointed with some things.
I don't like it when enhanced editions take away stuff as well :[
I would give single player 7/10, with the worst part being the cutscenes.
And multi player 1/10 so far.
First and most important.. It is not that the EE is THAT bad.
The Ability to Zoom and the High Resolution Support is quite Nice
BUT !!!!
With a bit more defended freedom during making the contract with the right holders to include new banters for existing characters, and perhaps a reasonable longer Delay Time (which could have been used for re-creating sprites, and backgrounds - we all know we would have loved that AND we would have been WILLING TO WAIT for that!!!!!), without the many small troubles on the way to the game - a more effective marketing, the blurry screenshots managed to piss of quite bunch of people, no forced ground zoom in the game without the chance to turn it off - I would have given without thinking twice the EE 8 or 9 Points.
As it is now, if BG2 will be also featuring only such a low level of real enhancements, i will have to think twice as long if i will buy it at all.
But well, the EE is not THAT bad as i stated in the Beginning
Time to make things better for BG2:EE
Would you Please?
1) FPS cant be changed through the ini
2) No character editor like shadowkeeper, go go chronic restart disease
3) Multi / dual classed mages dont display equipped robes (they did in BG2 and BG Tutu)
4) Game is incompatible with recording software, I recorded both BG Tutu and BG2 with ease using MSI afterburner, but BGEE freezes and locks up as soon as video capture is enabled.
5) Bears and monsters disappearing on reload - I shot an arrow at a bear, tried to kite and kill it, died in the process, reload and the bear is gone. Goodbye 270 - 650 EXP.
6) BG2 portraits and sounds cant be picked during character creation, they could in BGT / Tutu.
7) The new cut scenes are horrible, and they even entirely removed some like Beregost from the game.
Some of the new cut scenes are bad. Game speed can not be increased like TUTU. Playing at 30 like I did the very first time I ever played BG back in 1999 is very painful. Sometimes things need to be clicked twice and I find some of the text/font a bit hard to read. Lack of gamma.
The core game is still excellent but it's not as enhanced as I hoped. They should of waited another two weeks to release the game. Brought in some more beta testers and really put a spit shine polish for this classic. I'm sure they've learned a lot on this release and BG2 will be more successful. I wish them all the best.
The game is unplayable on one of the most widely used chipsets. There are glaringly obvious bugs, such as the tooltip for what I presume to be the help screen reading 'rest.' Now that's not a major issue and it doesn't affect gameplay, but it's right there on the main screen that players spend 99% of the game looking at! How daft do you have to be to miss something like that?!
This game just wasn't ready for release, which is strange considering it was just fine 10 years ago. I shelled out $20 (£13 in the good Queen's coin) for new content that I won't get to see until these unforgivable oversights are corrected. Considering the years of loving care the modding community lavished on the original saga over the years and in light of how badly executed this release has turned out, I reckon I've been conned and should have just done another tutu runthrough with some new mods.
Overhaul Games: From hell's heart I stab at thee!