1. Not as an 'investment', certainly not. It's the same game with terrible extra content, and zoom gimmick.
2. Cannot compete with orginals for mods, nowhere near. Plus any patch or update completely removes any mods you have already.
3. Import, yes. Does she cross over with stats like BGT? No.

1. If you want to play Siege Of Dragonspear, you have no choice : you have to own BG1EE because it's not a standalone. If you are not interested then I would say like Hickory, just stay with the originals or at least wait few months untill they fix everything and modders save the day.
I have played the originals then BGT and now tried the BGEE and was quite disapointed. As italian you would have the same problem than the french community : the EE don't fully support for now the foreign languages (voices are in english, interface is half English, plenty of things not translated and replaced with "placeholder"... destroying the immersion). I guess you can find mod to fix this but that's a shame for me when the original was fully translated and voiced.
In the same time they pushed the update 2.0 which change drastically the UI (for the best or the worst...), some people like it but if you like the originals you would probably hate it, the changes are strong and disturbing. Check a playthrough in youtube to see by yourself but in my opinion it kills the BG spirit... To be honest it may be more practical and it seems that it's easier to mod. I'm sure modders will fix this sooner or later.
Main features of the EE : zoom in / zoom out (usefull for hd monitor), forgettable content (new characters, new quests), major UI changes (some can be disabled), cell shading character (can be disabled), journal mmo-like (cannot be disabled and looks terrible imo, probably more practical)
Before this 2.0 the EE were more or less the originals modded, now it feels like another game, maybe better for new player but quite frustrating for olders.

2. Hickory is right, there are not as much mod as for the originals and the worst is that the update can make them incompatible. That being said, the modding community seems very active and you can find plenty of quality mod, by example in beamdog forums.

3. And here we have maybe the best solution (considerating that you want to play SoD, otherwise stay with BGT) : Baldur's Gate: Enhanced Edition Trilogy (EET)
Same idea than BGT (but different team) : merge BGEE, Sod, BG2EE and ToB into one game :
- One engine (BG2EE), one world, one map for the 4 games, one GUI (so it could fix this mess)
- NPC continuity so that should answer your question with Imoen
- United journal System with all 24 chapters so I hope they will mod this to look like the original journal.
- No restrictions in travelling between areas, once they are discovered (by example you are in a map from BG2
, you can return to Durlag Tower anytime...)
- mod friendly platform with additional modding possibilities

See more here : EET in Gibberlings3.net

The team from EET need some time, the 2.0 patch and SoD are mandatory but they already have a working beta. In few months it could be available (or maybe take a year and more... no idea).

My 2cts advice : forget playing BGEE today and wait few months to get a fully working version with all we need and less ugliness. At least that's my plan. In the same time IWD EE is very nice, not buggy, good UI, nothing to say (until they force their 2.0 update on it...) so buy it and play it for now ^^

Ok here's my background:

Played the original BG. Loved it.

Bought the GOG versions of BG1 and BG2 several years ago. Tried to play BG1 but the fonts were too small, screen resolution didn't fit modern computers (I'm running 1920 x1080), etc. Tried to mod the game to get it to work and it was a royal pain in the ass. Eventually got something runnable and playable but modding was way too much work and frustration for the results.

BG:EE is released and I didn't really pay attention. My teenaged son did, however. He bought on Steam and it looked fantastic....just like the original only on modern computers.

I wait and wait forever for BG:EE to go on sale. It finally does again last Thursday. I buy it on Steam for $5 start playing it and.....wth is this? The UI looks totally different. And not in a good way. I refund this morning (thank you Steam). And then I discover that it's on sale at GOG and since I already own the originals I get even a bigger discount.

Ok here's my question:

Should I spend the $6 and get the EEs or should I just give up my dream of playing BG and BG2 on modern equipment? I don't know if I'm interested in the new title....probably would eventually like to play it. But that UI....ugh. There's a balance between improving something and keeping a classic feel. I think Beamdog had that balance....until this 2.0 patch.

On the one hand, it's only $6...not much. On the other hand that UI is....not nice.

Advice welcome (and sorry if this is perceived as thread-crapping...my questions seemed similar to the OPs).

Thanks!

This comment is very out of date. What you said was probably true when BGEE was originally released 3 years ago, but it isn't even close to true these days.

1. There are ton of UI improvements they have added in patches. Bigger ones include quickloot, being able to actually equip two-handed weapon in your quickslot with shield equipped, completely re-done quest journal, scaling interface, font size+much clearer text in general, no load screens, health bars, etc.

Then there are even more small things like selling items from stacks automatically defaulting to the max number, going through mage and cleric characters automatically changing to the correct spellbook, game remembering spells you had memorized when level drained, BG2 knows where your BG1 saves are for import, 4 rolling quicksaves, etc.

I'm a huge BG fan having played both games through over dozen times and there is no I'd go back to playing the vanilla versions.

2. It's true patches break mods, but the EE have also have a big boost to BG modding in general and the scene is now more alive than it has been in a long time. Also pretty much all major mods at least are compatible with EEs these days, and no doubt any problems 2.0 caused will be fixed.

I don't care about language because I play the english version anyway. If this plays with the BG2EE engine, then I could get BG2EE, as I have already BG1EE on Steam (bought years ago), if EET can use BG2EE from GOG and BG1EE resources from the Steam version. Do you know if it's possible? Last time I modded BGT I had a mod to make fonts larger, with BWS (BigWorldSetup) it wasn't too hard to get BGT working, especially if you didn't install too many mods. But yes it can be a pain to browse the SpellHold forums and setting everything up to make it work.

No it isn't. I'm playing the game right now, and it applies now as it ever did. I did not list all of the differences, certainly, but the essence of my comments are as applicable now as they were at release, particularly the main issue: terrible added content.

Just run it in 800x600. It looks perfect. Modern PC CAN 1920 x1080, but it doesn't mean they HAVE TO.

I have absolutely no idea but you should ask on their forum (Gibberlings3).

I tried that. It looked like a Lego game.

Thanks for the info! :) I just got the EE versions of BG1-2 on sale and I'm wondering about the extra content. When I played the original BG1-2, I had mods which restored some content that was on the disc but had been cut from the final version of the game. Is this restored content part of the "new" content in the EE? If not, then do the mods to restore the content work on the EE as well as the originals?

I like the EEs. I having an interface that better scales is nice, the quick loot bar saves me tedious clicking and I enjoyed the new content. I did not miss any and played BG1EE, BG2EE and IWDEE all medium modded. The popular mods are all adjusted to EEs by now. If you do not care for the new features save your money. If you care for the new feature wait about 3 month to get BG1EE or BG2EE so the bugs from the latest patch (2.0) are gone or workarounds are known. IWDEE is a save buy. It has still the old version.

BG2EE is still safe, because GOG doesn't release the updated version. There are numerous threads full of complaints all over the forum.

Back to topic: I think the zoom function is essential. If you play the original version at the default resolution everything is really huge and you have to scroll endlessly.

Edit: I'm really happy with the native Linux versions. My experience of Planescape:Torment in wine was not that great. It was impossible to rest without compiling a wine version with different optimization settings.