Once upon a time I played "Baldur's Gate: The Original Saga" and "Baldur's Gate 2 Complete", and they were bound together with mods to appear as one game (I believe I folowed the "conservative" sticky here on this forum).

What benefits would there be for me to upgrade to EE on a Win10 box? Can the EE games be modded together like the one I already have?

Hey there!

Well actually there was a mod that you probably used called Baldur's Gate Trilogy (BGT for short).

To answer your question, the EE versions of the games are expanded with various fixes (almost 400 were found) mostly thanks to the BG1 Fixpack mod for the 1st game. There are also four more companions for you to recruit in the 1st game and five in the 2nd. In my opinion very well written with their own backstory and a special companion quests. There is also a campaign module included in both of them called The Black Pits in which you play as a "gladiator" and fight in the arena with various monsters/adventurers. Short but fun :) Also native support for large resolutions, ability to zoom the screen while playing, different spell animations and shorter loading screens.

Beamdog has made a DLC called Siege of Dragonspear that comes between BG1 and BG2. I have just finished it and I got to say, I haven't played a game that stayed in my head for so long :) It fits between the saga perfectly, has the atmosphere of the original games and explains how some of the things have happened after the end of BG1.

There is a mod for the Enhanced Edition that merges all the games (BG1:EE, SoD, BG2:EE) together in a big, single campaign. It's called Enhanced Edition Trilogy - EET for short. You can find it on the g3 forums.

In my opinion, the EE versions of the Baldur's gate are well worth the price, they are fun to play and overall a good tribute to the original pieces.

Have fun :)

I will just react on this sentence : this DLC is noted 2.5/5 stars on GoG.
I won't say more : there are lot of reviews on the net on the EE versions.

Thanks to you both for replying! Useful, and if I'd remembered to post as a question, I'd mark it "solved" already.

It sounds like moving to EE is a good idea! Is there less of a need to patch/mod it than with the original (or any must have mods)? Otherwise I'd just get #1 to start with.

The main difference to play the game one by one rather than EET is that you just have to import a save from the previous game. EET also allows you to travel to every location from BG1 in BG2 and so forth.

It's just up to you,

Happy to help though!

It is your choice. But everything good that EE brings to the table is available from mods. On the other hand, EE brings a lot a questionable "improvements". For example interface is a huge mess; original content like cutscenes and loading screens are gone; new companions are terribly written and do not blend with the game well; there are bugs that were not present in the classic versions.

And SoD is considered bad not because of transgender character. It is because of terrible writing and the plot that does not make sense.

It is your choice, but don't say you haven't been warned...

The last post made me re-think and so I set up the game with the 'old' version I have and following the guide in the top post of the "Baldur's Gate 2 essential mods" sticky. Looks OK. Did not get it to run in 1920x1080, so use 1600x something, might benefit from a font size mod. So now we shall see.

Well, some general points, hope they´ll help:
1st: The EE of PST is the only NoBrainerEE: Great interface-rework, (way above what average mods do!) everything that is a matter of taste can be en-/ disabled, features a lot of QualityOfLive and fixes and no negative stuff at all. The other EEs haven´t recieved an interface rework at the same level, on top of that BG & BG II got the additional, controversial characters. And AFAIK these characters cannot be disabled. The chars mainly are controversial because they behave unlike the vanilla characters. Beamdog would probably have expended these as well, but it wasn´t allowed.
2nd: SiegeOfDragonspear is very controversial expension due to similar reasons why the characters are controversial. But it seems to be even more LoveItOrHateIt. Some praise the artwork. Others hate the artwork. Some praise the way the story ties in. Others hate the way the story ties in. I haven´t played it.
3rd: There´ve been recent news that Beamdog is considering updating the interface of the games in question, but details aren´t set yet. Personally, I do own every of the EEs, but despite PSTEE they are on hold, waiting for these updates. If they don´t deliver an interface upgrade to put them roughly on par with PSTEE, I´ll keep on waiting. Maybe to infinity... (sorry, couldn´t resist the pun)
4th: Bugfix-Wise there has been a huge patch called 2.5 for BGEE (&SoD), BG2EE and IWDEE. So far it looks like it is a well done update.

P.s.: There is a cool blog entry giving some insight how beamdog managed to give PSTEE got ways better UI: http://blog.beamdog.com/2017/10/ins-and-outs-of-planescape-torment.html
P.p.s.: Those interface-stuff becomes more important the higher your screen resolution is. The others are very bad at UHD/4K, PSTEE is pretty fantastic.

A few things to mention about EEs. Note that I finished BG1 6 times, once original, 4 times as Baldur's Gate Trilogy Mod (BGT) and once BG:EE. I never finished BG2 in either versions. I am also close to finishing Siege of Dragonspear (BG1:SOD).

Quick note. If you are going to play Ice wind dale, then I full heartedly suggest going for the EE version. They have done an outstanding job there. I do not think anybody will suggest otherwise anyways.

EEs are buggy as HELL. There are over a thousand (1000) bugs that literally fuck up the game experience that were not present in the original games. And none of those are fixed with the 2.5 version. People who still claim EEs are bug free either do not know how the game is supposed to be or do not know what BUG means. items disappearing, quests becoming unsolvable, bosses become immortal and unattackable, quest marks giving you weird error messages and bags (potion, scroll etc) getting bugged, User made notes on maps duplicating themselves and carrying over to other maps are just a few examples that come to my mind that are still present in the LAST 2.5 version. 2.5 version also introduced NEW bugs which you can read in the STEAM forums.

Now that is out of the way, EEs are NOT Terrible. I really enjoyed playing them.They have some nice adjustments that you can not have with mods, like properly displaying Armor types (piercing, slashing, crushing and missile), properly showing your THAC0, quick loot that greatly enhances game play, especially for new players.

SOD is... OK. Writing is terrible, story is horrible, there are TONs of plot holes and it messes up with the level balance between games (BG1 and BG2) and yet it is still enjoyable. I loved new characters Glint and Corwin. Hearing the voice of old fellows (Minsc, Dynaheir and Khalid) again is really amazing. Sometimes annoying tho when 3-4 people talk at the same time. Some side quests, even tho far from being original, are fun. In the end, I believe it is worth a try but do not expect anything spectacular.

Interesting read. You didn´t mention PSTEE, haven´t you played that one as well?
Note btw: The only IE-engine-game I´ve ever finished is PST and am halfway-through PSTEE. Have gazed into the others, but finished none of them. As said before I´m waiting for an interface update.

I have only played BSTEE like 10 minutes, just to see how it looks. It looked decent enough but I am not qualified to make a comment on that... yet :)

After playing the EE version, I'm never going back to the old ones. I've completed once the EE version of Baldur's Gate, BG2 and Siege of Dragonspear (which I loved) and I encountered no bugs. Currently playing Icewind Dale EE, no problem so far.

It's not true that you can achieve the same experience playing the originals with mods, the EE adds a lot of little things that make playing the games more enjoyable to me... and now I don't have to keep track of patches and mods for widescreen, large fonts and other stuff anymore, just a quick installation and the games are ready to play.

I don't care much for the new characters (except a couple from SoD), but it's not like you're forced to have them in your party anyways.

I just finished Siege of Dragonspear. Do people really say it has a story?

Storywise, it is utterly empty. There is almost nothing in it. I knew the end when I started the game.

It is as linear as this type of games can be. Even Icewind dale games were not that linear. It is so linear that you can not even go back to places you finished.

Length? It is super short. I finished BG1:EE in 120 hours. Finished SOD in 8 hours. Last 2 chapters took less than 30 minutes. And that's because I took my time. That should tell you something.

Voice acting... While it is done right on most cases, there are times when it is super annoying. To make some dragons or ancient beings the "cool" act, they made them read 5 words in 60 seconds... It is never a good sign if I am yawning when a dragon is talking to me.

I had read some people comparing SOD to the Tales of the Sword Coast, the expansion for BG1. I disagree completely. Either Durlag's Tower or the werewolf Island has more content and story and excitement than SOD. With the Ice Island, TotSC easily has 3 times more content than SOD.

I normally hate to talk about price but... if BG1:EE (with TotSC mind you) is 20$ (the classic was 10$) then SOD is worth 2 or 3 $ tops based on content, story and fun.

I had also read someone compared SOD's story to Planescape Torment. Even tho I respect every opinion, that's the stupidest comparison in human history. I can write a book on the subject but let's just say that the quality of writing in SOD is poor at its best. It is probably written by someone who read lots of manga but the implementation of that culture is out of place. Most writings do not even make sense. I often found myself re reading to understand what it meant. Typos, grammar errors are all over the place. As someone who love reading books, especially in english, I found that utterly disturbing and mood breaking.

In conclusion, buy it when it is highly discounted. Play it, enjoy it, and forget it afterwards.

This is probably the truest, succinct précis of SoD that I have read since its release. I wholeheartedly agree with every point made. Nicely put, especially about only buying it at a discount and forgetting it afterwards.