My favorite was Neera, a "wild mage" with an endearing demeanor that recalls the Merrills and Nymphadora Tonkses of the wizarding world, especially when her spells produced effects that barely outmatch her personality in their randomness. Other substantial changes to the Enhanced Edition come in the form of the three new heroes waiting to join you on your adventure. In an age when words like “enhanced” all too often carry the stain of oversimplification when applied to refurbished classics, Overhaul Games’ refusal to sacrifice the challenge of Baldur’s Gate warrants applause. Then as now, if you’re not prepared, it’s possible that you’ll find yourself dead after your first encounter with some run-of-the-mill assassin while still within the walls of Candlekeep. New players may enjoy using it for combat practice, as Baldur’s Gate remains as challenging as it ever was. I found it most useful for experimenting with tactical battles to prepare for similar challenges in the campaign, and it contains just enough voiced story-complete with surprisingly adept voice acting-to keep it from feeling like a tacked-on sideshow feature. It's fun, but I spent most of my time fighting the same battles to earn enough XP and gold for gear in the Black Pits shop to tackle the higher rounds with confidence.
For one, there’s the Black Pits, a gladiatorial mode that throws you in 15 increasingly difficult battles of enemies for the amusement of Baeloth the Entertainer. Yet the Enhanced Edition manages to distinguish itself through a few standout additions. Smaller improvements such as highlighted targets abound, and players who aren’t keen on creating their own characters with expanded options that include the class kits from Baldur’s Gate II can choose from a selection of premades. Gone are the cumbersome quest logs that demanded flipping through successive pages in their place, we find the familiar drop-down toggles of contemporary games. The cumbersome inventory screen makes a comeback, but now it benefits from an expanded ground slot and improved tooltips designed to ease the entry for contemporary audiences less attuned to old school AD&D debates over THAC0 and saving throws. The old, blurry GUI remains more or less intact aside from a widescreen modification, but its background colors now have a dubious tendency toward blues rather than greens and grays. At one point, one of my party’s NPCs started receiving insane XP gains after each battle. Erased, allegedly, are more than 400 bugs that plagued the original, although my playthrough suggests that several new bugs made their way in as well. The Enhanced Edition introduces plenty of tweaks, but they're so quietly woven into the interface that you may find it hard to believe Overhaul's done much at all if you haven’t played in a few years. Higher resolution textures and improved spell animations enhance the visual experience for HD to a degree, but on a whole the project still looks its age.
The world of Faerun itself looks much as it did when I first booted it to escape the nonstop coverage of Bill Clinton's impeachment hearings, although a new option to zoom in and out of the action wisely stops just short of letting you study the sprites in all their pixelated glory.
At times, such as when you open the graphic options only to find nothing more than a toggle for full screen, all this "enhanced" business feels like a load of hogwash. Oddly enough, that’s also one of its problems.
This is still the Baldur’s Gate I knew and loved (complete with the Tales of the Sword Coast expansion), particularly if I’d smothered it with mods over the intervening 14 years. The good news is that these concerns largely end once the title screen emerges from a pool of blood.