My internet isn't exactly blazing fast. The most I can get is 180 kbps. The download so far is staying consistently around 140-180. Should that hold true, I'll have it in about three hours.

Thats good enough for me, I heard people were waiting a few days apparently, cheers :)

Here is a handy link for prospective buyers, check the Support link, it's interesting and scary at the same time, seems like quite a few issues with the game.

http://forum.baldursgate.com/

One thing that worries me is that you can start the game from the Beam client or something like that, is it like Steam?

BTW you can also start the game from a .exe.

I think it used the desktop resolution when I started at the first time. Since that I run it in window which can be freely resized.

Here's my stance on launch bugs. It sucks, but it all depends on how support handles it afterwards. I only get upset when a company abandons a game half broken (see Ubisoft for a good example).

Beamdog has to fix the game up. They have to build good will if they ever want to do BG2, or even a remake ever again.

i know what you mean, I really want to get the game and every time I go to buy it, I see something else that annoys me lol! :)

I just hope they are not leaving the PC version to tart up the android version :)

There's supposedly mods to replace the UI and disable the zooming so you get much sharper graphics.

Review Game Banshee

http://www.gamebanshee.com/reviews/110209-baldurs-gate-enhanced-edition-review.html

TL:DR


Baldur's Gate: Enhanced Edition could have been great, a tribute to a classic RPG and a promise of things to come for the franchise and for party-based RPGs in general. Its creators clearly had their hearts in the right place in trying to update Baldur's Gate for a newer generation, that's hard to deny. It's also hard to argue with new characters, quests, areas to explore, and a new adventure, all of which are, for the most part, competently done, if ultimately non-essential. However, the lack of real advancement in terms of interface and controls, as well as the crippling number of glitches, simply makes it impossible to recommend this new version of Baldur's Gate over the original. The sad and ironic thing is that this version of the game, which boasts hundreds of bug fixes (mostly taken from the years-old work of modders), better performance and new features, ultimately looks like it will require multiple patches and mods to even reach parity with the modded-up original version. Unless you are desperate for the new content, I cannot in good conscience recommend Baldur's Gate: Enhanced Edition, considering the original is still available, has hundreds of mods and bug fix packs, costs $10 USD less, and is just as great as it's ever been.

I defended the BGEE earlier when people decried it as an inevitable failure, saying that we needed to see the final product before passing a final judgement – and now that we've seen the final product, the general sentiment (myself included) seems to be that it's an unfortunate disappointment. Bugs and lack of innovation aside, it looks like they really did do what a lot of us feared and simply repackaged the game with some bug fixes and mods.

But the real killer is the price - even if it was relatively bug-free, at its current price tag, there's no justifiable way that anyone would want this when, for a little bit of extra effort, they can get a quantifiably cheaper and superior experience by buying the original here and modding it.

I can understand the rationale for releasing it for tablet/mobile users, but they should have just stopped there and put their resources into making sure the iOS/Android release is perfect.

In the meantime, this does not bode well for a future desktop EE version of BG2 or PST.

Thank you, I thought it must.

And another question for folks reading this thread. Sorry, not meaning to hijack, just genuinely interested in playing this game (either version). You see, I've NEVER played it. I own a box version and I purchased the GoG version so I would have an already patched up version to install instead of using my boxed version and searching/hoping for patches.

However, reading this thread leads me to believe that this game apparently had lots of bugs even after they patched it, and I keep reading that it was mods that made the game great.

Ok, so, could someone, anyone please tell me WHICH mod or mods I should get if all I want to do is play the game as intended but without bugs, because after reading about the EE I think I'm going to stick to the GoG version and play this one.

I know there's probably a million mods out there and so asking this will likely get a million answers, but hopefully the community can settle on the right one/s just to play the game as intended (no added quests, NPC's, equipment, etc.) with as few bugs as possible and if there are graphics mods then looking as good as possible as well.

Anyone?

Modders have been working towards making their mods compatible with the Enhanced Edition. This may take a bit of time, but I expect most of the Enhanced Edition's bugs to be squashed by then. I am going for BG1: EE with mods, because I want at least one of the new NPCs to be a part of my party for bantering with.

In terms of content modifications, Unfinished Business and the 'BG1 NPC Project' would be ideal. When combined, these mods offer:

*Restored content, including items, creatures, areas, and quests.
*Banter between NPCs


BG1 Unfinished Business
http://www.pocketplane.net/mambo/index.php?option=com_content&task=blogcategory&id=161&Itemid=114

BG1 NPC Project
http://www.gibberlings3.net/bg1npc/index.php


There is a modding guide in the Baldur's Gate forums at GOG. Here is a link to it.
http://www.gog.com/forum/baldurs_gate_series/newbie_guide_modding_bg1_if_you_buy_bg1_bg2_from_gog/page1

I played a little last night when it finished.

Do not buy the game if you have an integrated Intel HD Chipset. They're trying to get workarounds I read, but it's not working right now. I tried running it on it, and got graphic issues. Using my dedicated card fixed them.

I like the UI improvements. The breakdowns of THAC0 and AC in relevant screens makes it much easier to understand what exactly is going on at all times. You could always get that information, but you had to go to other screens for it. In general, menus have a really nice look to them for me. I like big buttons, and I like big screen elements. The EE pleases me in this regard.

The journal has been improved. You can now minimize journal entries, allowing you to ignore any you got you won't solve. Handy.

Zoom in feature is nice. Nothing really else to add to it.

They rearranged locations, adding new things. For instance, Gorion drops an unidentified belt now. In one of the assassin attacks in Candlekeep, there's a locked chest now too. I would assume more tweaks are all over the place.

The new "Blackguard" class is pretty neat. I like the idea. A Paladin warped into pure evil. Neato.

Tweaks have been made, like showing the dice rolls to show damage calculations, and little helptful things like arrows stacking up to 80 per slot.

Now for negatives:

The touted included portraits & soundpacks are a joke. There's five new portraits per gender. They don't mesh with the original BG's quasi-realistic style and only having ten total new ones is silly when you can easily add hundreds. The six new sound packs all have this weird echo to them, and their quality doesn't match the originals. They don't mesh well.

I ran into a few bugs in just a few minutes of playing. The biggest was scripts being broken. If you turn on a script for a character, they'll just stop. They won't follow orders. It's not a deal breaker since I never used scripts for the NPC's but it's still silly.

Sounds come and go. Sometimes a door makes a door opening sound. Other times it doesn't. Sometimes a person gives a death cry, other times they don't. Odd.

I'm pretty confident they're going to work out most if not all these issues, but some of them are just odd decisions.

anyone play the iPad release?

I have a gen-1, which unfortunately won't run it, but i'm really curious to see how well the iOS version works.

Hawk, hve you encountered any of the new characters yet?