So I'm interested in getting the Enhanced Editions of BG and BG2. I've never played either game before, but I've owned both of the original versions here on GOG for some time now after picking them up while on sale. I'm wondering if it's worth getting these new versions when I already own the originals, and I'd like a bit more information on what the differences are to help decide.

Firstly, I've heard that the new additions "fix" and "re-balance" a lot of things. Can I get some examples of what sorts of things were fixed or re-balance? I'm not the kind of person who likes using exploits and such to make an overly powerful character, and I like a challenge, but at the same time I hope that they didn't nerf certain play styles into the ground or anything.

Second, I know there's some new characters and areas and such. But is any of it good and actually worth the money? Like, are the characters interesting in design or personality, and are the areas fun?

Last but not least, I've heard there are a lot of glitches in the enhanced versions. Were those same kind of gltiches in the older versions? And what sort of glitches are they, progress halting, freezes, or just annoying things?

That's a rather difficult question, as it depends on taste, the willingness of using mods and your cash situation.

As long as there are the enhanced editions, there is the debate, that they offer almost nothing, that can't be accomplished with mods for the original versions. Further, as of now, there are rather few mods available for the new versions, so you maybe won't be able to benefit from a community built feature that you'd like to have.
All these arguments are true, but on the other hand not all new content (areas, cutscenes, characters etc.) is available due to mods (but most of the time alternatives).

You find extensive threads about this (sometimes with fierce fighting) in their official forum. E.g. this one:
http://forum.baldursgate.com/discussion/32880/standard-baldurs-gate-vs-the-enhanced-version

If you're short on money, stick with the originals and get used to modding the game. It's fun, easy and rewarding. Some people put a lot of work in creating community solutions and produced top notch quality. They've spend probably much more time on the games than the developers did. Or just play the games vanilla like they're shipped by GOG. They work fine, aside from a few technical glitches on certain machines (but the enhanced edition shares some of them as well), and after all, it's the version that made these games so popular.

If money is no biggie and you don't want to spend time on mods, but experience the better graphics, new characters and regions, pick up the Enhanced Editions. They're almost the same game so you won't miss not having played the originals, except you are a purist and you want to experience it like it was done in the first place (a matter of taste).

Code wise bgee is the basic game + fix pack + some extra npcs... I'm current playing bg2ee (no-reload) and have run into 25 bugs but I'm also an old hand with shadowkeeper and infinity so these don't stress me that much.

Note the main reasion people are so shitty about the bugs in bgee is that they are the same bugs everyone reported back when the game first came out and everyone else has long since fixed.

Buy EE. It wasn't very polished at launch but it is now. Despite what people may tell you, most of the bugfixes and a lot of features are exclusive to EE and are not available with mods. Also, all the big mods are either already incorporated into the game or are compatible with EE. The classic version is the way to go if you want to check the old, original game but is inferior bugfix/feature wise.

BG2:EE is a much bigger game and it was released after BG:EE. It's slightly less polished than BG:EE but will eventually reach the same standard it is still superior to the classic version also offering exclusive bugfixes and features.

The additional NPCs and areas are not as good as original BG content but they are just a bonus.

I own both versions and I also was against enhanced editions. They took their time patching both games but as today they reached the quality that should be present at the launch day. If you want to compare yourself, just read the patch notes available at the Beamdog site so see how far they came since the rushed first release.

I am an old BG nut and so far I am loving the EE. There are many nice features from BG2 (like doubling the quiver capacity and such), much nicer graphics and GUI BUT keeping BG1 style (I didn't like that the mods changed your characters' appearance into the BG2 one), and best of all, zooming in and out with the mousewheel!

Not really, no. Could you provide an example?

I'm curious about one thing: the advertised "new adventures" called The Black Pits (in both games). I'm all good for something new added to the game, but I wonder how these new adventures are.

I'm thinking of buying these on Christmas (when a discount is guaranteed and my wallet a bit fatter). Mainly due to the better compatibility (as much as I love the orginals, they crashed every 5 map changes which got annoying pretty fast and they didn't even work on my laptop (well, it could run Baldur's Gate 1, but not Icewind Dale for some reasons).

I'm a videogame historian-like connoisseur and I have yet to try EE, so my thoughts are clearly biased. But I'd recommend playing both BG1 and BG2 vanilla w/ the versions you have. They are really good, very few bugs that you'll probably notice, and just overall outstanding games. If you have a widescreen monitor, just stretch it or black-bar it and enjoy it in its intended beauty.

That way, you can experience these games like they were originally experienced.

If you love the games and want another playthrough at some point, then maybe see what EE has to offer.

This helps you save money, too. Especially since EE will be almost for sure available together for 75-80% off in a Christmas or two.

P.S. Icewind Dale I and II EE have been confirmed to be coming to GOG, so you can spend some saved money on those. :)

The Black Pits is just a fighting arena, completely separate from the Baldur's Gate game. It's not an adventure.

Thanks for all the input, as I had the exact same question (except I already played the original back in the day...but not 2).

Hmm...come to think of it, I haven't played any of the other Infinity Engine games, so I'll have to make do with them in their original form anyway...

Out of curiosity, will any of these games work with a touch screen? Would be awesome to play these on a Surface Pro or something :-D

I won't tell you yes or no to buying them. I picked them up as I don't have the best eyesight and the zoom in feature makes finding my characters and monsters in combat much easier. There are good and bad things with the games I've noticed (a decided lack of graphics options is a biggie for me), but the game does scale well to different display sizes. I primarily play on 1280x720, 1366x768 and 1920x1080 displays and things look pretty great regardless.

I have the originals as well (both from here and on disc) and the biggest draw for me on the originals is the Baldur's Gate Trilogy mod which combines BG1 and BG2 into one massive game using the BG2 engine. But I do have a hard time seeing the tiny characters in the game, so I haven't made it past Beregost yet. I am planning to re-install and leave out the widescreen mod this time as I finally fixed the scaling issue I was having with my laptop displaying 800x600 resolution incorrectly.

I also haven't really adapted to the combat style in the game yet. Managing the four characters in real time is a challenge for me, which I will overcome eventually. And I'm still adjusting to the AD&D ruleset after over 20 years away from it - and mostly from the SSI Gold Box games which only used a subset of the rules, heh.

Flynn

Oliluke's Resilient Sphere;

The spell is available in ½ a dozen places around the net and can even be extracted from the original bg2 here on gog. I also extracted and posted it here so people could just drop it into their override folder because I get so many requests for it.

http://pukdarkstar.businesscatalyst.com/assets/otiluke-s-resilient-sphere.zip

The bg2ee single slayer change bug is fixable by replacing the slayer icon once you change back into human form--- you loose the “once per day” restriction but keep the 2 points of reputation loss. This is a special bg2ee bug but It really is hard to see how something as basic to the game story as changing into the slayer can get into the finish produce without being fixed in play testing. Has this been patched yet? My own fix for it is here until then any way.

http://pukdarkstar.businesscatalyst.com/assets/slayer-change.zip

I’m currently testing the Neera romance and she bugged out in Ust Natha when I refused to sleep with that so and so – but I haven’t bothered to repair it yet because Neera is such a well-made npc that it doesn’t stress me.

To be clear and getting back on topic, bg2ee is worth the money gog is currently asking for it (I personally have it twice now because I wanted the gog version) but to say it hasn’t got bugs is like saying the sky is purple.

p.s. the game plays well on my Asus sonicmaster... touch screen laptop.

This fix is not in the GoG version.

I coded this fix for the BG2 Fixpack, which has been included in BGIIEE since its initial release. Your file is the same fix, minus the needed ancillary poison protections.

Yes, this is another one of my fixes. One of the main reasons why we see occasional regressions like this is because we're also fixing a lot of the back end code. This one in particular was likely caused by our fixes to some of the bugs in the item creation and expiry code.

Right. No one's claiming the EEs are bugfree, because they're not. However they also get unfairly dinged because people see the bug forums and don't realize that most of those bugs are also in the original games. Unlike EE, those bugs aren't going to be fixed any time soon. There's also not a lot of appreciation for how much has been fixed already.

There are a number of valid reasons to prefer the originals over the EEs, but fewer bugs stopped being a reason some time ago. When I get a chance to finally push out Fixpack v11 with everything we've learned from EE, maybe then we can re-open the argument. :)

Well. For starters, they changed the players' scripts. (default behavior). Even your own, handmade characters, do stupid things completely on their own. You have mages who charge towards the enemy as front liners, puny dagger in hand, trying to cut them down, and popping up in tiny pieces a second later.

They altered some cutscenes. Others, are replaced entirely, but by completely irrelevant or new ones that make no sense.

It feels more cartoonish, some cutscenes especially like intro with Sarevok, lack motion and gore.

In 1 enhanced, you can get ALL spells in scrolls, available for memorization. In 1 original, some were missing, and were exclusives to npcs spellbooks, like Wraithform.

In enhanced 1, you can exceed the XP cap, by playing the black pits adventure. It is interesting, but a hard challenge. The only thing i really liked in the enhanced version.

They restored some cut-off content. Don't know what exactly; some areas, some quests...

Added 3 npcs that can be recruited. Some gays in the official game forums, demand implemented romance path for male protagonists, with the male Half Orc Blackguard, one of those characters... Thankfully not all communities are like GoG, listening closely to their fans' desires...

Enhanced 1 has the mechanics of BG2 original. Which translates to watered down players. You can no more summon vast armies of creatures from summon spells, the weapon proficiencies are chaotic (in 1 investing a few pips on one category, gave you mastery over MANY weapon types, plus 1's system was more beneficial in general), thieves in 1 enhanced are crippled (because they get all the bunch of 2's skills to spend points on, so they cannot max all the key ones as they could in 1 original), spells that were very potent in 1 original (like horror, web, and hold person lasting longer and getting resisted difficult) now work as in 2 (watered down; but in 2 you are a powerhouse anyway, and the spells key in 1 are somewhat useless in 2), you can no longer create a general class in 1EE and choose a kit in 2EE (once you make in 1 enhanced a character, you cannot change it in any way upon transition to 2, except only for ranger racial enemy) which causes many powergaming AND ropleplaying issues (for example in 1 i would use a ranger wielding Drizzt's equipment with scimitar and shield, and in 2 i would turn him into a beastmaster with staff and sling; or create a druid in 1 to get higher stats and turn him into avenger in 2, so as to bypass the 16 to str and sta restrictions of the kit), and the list will reach plus infinite if i don't arbitrarily end it like now. Long story short, enhanced edition players, be them npcs or handmade, are not as strong and/or exploitable, as they had always been throughout the original saga. Keep that in mind.

You can no longer use Firebead Elvenhair to level up in 1. They "fixed" him. You can no longer use the tanner in 2 to hit max level. They seem to have ostracized ALL xp loopholes.

The spells in 2 EE no longer reek of cheese. You can no more utilize simulacrum to create like 12 copies of your main, each one casting his own planetar, and all the army happily pulverize each and every boss that would otherwise stomp on your dead carcass flat (hello, Demogorgon, dragon bhaalchild, etc). No more vampiric touch and larloch's return stolen xp when used on coffins and containers. It's all a bugger. 2's real charm has always been the pretty imbalanced spellcasting. Take this away, you took 2's real charm away. Congrats!

Finally, if you use xp loopholes in 2 original, you can end up with more weapon proficiency points than normally allowed, on dual classed players, by not levelling up until you exceed your inactive class with your new one; which means no weapon prof pips wasted on your second class, save for when choosing it. As you can imagine, this is no longer the case in the EEs, with the loopholes and stuff removed. I like my 13/28 berserker/mage with 3 pips to dual wield, and grandmastery to BOTH katana and dagger, thank you very much.

Ah, and if by any chance you expected those nice, fancy, premade characters that the original games featured, those nice little "bags" crammed full of endgame items you could "borrow" on your newly created character (by starting a multiplayer game and exporting your character next), just forget it. Also, forget the Tales of the Sword Coast saved game, which you could load and start an expansion only playthrough with the premade party of Abdel and co. They removed that, too. Especially since you could "borrow" their items on your newly created character, from there, too.

Me? I do not like the EEs the least bit. I am diehard original BG. I bought them only because GoG brought them in, because i am a collector (want entire, complete series on my shelf with nothing missing from any given franchise), and because it was on a serious discount (50%), so i couldn't resist. Hopefully, i will discover glitches and exploits along the way, to help me STOMACH the EEs and play them, at least for one full play. And i found a couple, already. Like importing your ToB character to 1EE. Or finishing properly 1 original, import/convert characters to 2 original, and then import to 1 EE for a complete, 1+2 EE playthrough. Lets see...