I was looking at some RPGs, and saw that there are three versions to some games - the standard game, the complete version, and the enhanced version. What is the difference between the three versions?

Icewind Dale Complete is the original Icewind Dale, 'complete' with its two expansion packs, Heart of Winter and Trials of The Luremaster. The enhanced edition is a commercial fan-made remake. There is no 'standard' game on GOG.

Some other (new) games though, have a standard version containing just the game and an "enhanced" edition containing extras, like maybe a novella or digital hardcover artbook or whatever. The game is the same, extras differ.

I don't think that's a good way to describe the Enhanced Edition.

It was done by a professional company (Beamdog), although they did hire some well-known guys from the modding community.

And it's not a remake either - it's still the same game, using the original data files, and you'll experience the same story/quests/encounters and the same graphics/music/voice-overs etc. as the original game. Just the engine was replaced with a modernized cross-platform port with extra features, and some additional content (like extra spells) was added.

It's fan made, and it's a remake.

And some things (that the people at Beamdog classified as "bugs") were changed. (Example: Armor of Faith, I believe, was made to not stack, making the spell no longer useful at reasonable levels.)

Sure, and just repeating your claim is an argument. /s

From the Wikipedia page 'Video game remake':

"A remake typically shares very little of the original assets and code with the original game, distinguishing it from an "enhanced port," partial remake, or remastering."

IWD:EE uses all of the original assets. Same graphics, sounds, scripts, etc.
It's not a new game in the spirit of the old or anything like that - it's still the same game just with an enhanced engine and minor content additions/fixes.

So it clearly falls in the category "enhanced port", not "remake". It's a first-level spell, it's not supposed to be earth-shattering at high levels.

I also think you're much too hung up on that one tiny detail. I get it, as a long-time fan of a game one can get used to certain bugs and get into the habit of exploiting them. But that's not a reason for an enhanced port to not fix them. New players (and more flexible old players) will enjoy it more without the bugs.

It's fan made, and it's a remake. I just love it when Americans try to teach English. Stick it.

The thing is, the spell in question is rather useless at low levels without stacking; it *needs* to stack to be useful at all at such levels. Also, note that this spell's duration is short.

On the other hand, I don't mind the change to Emotion: Courage, mainly for two reasons:
1. The spell has a much longer duration, which makes it much easier to stack. (+5 hit and +15 damage per hit is attainable without much effort.) You can cast this spell a few times well before combat, whereas Armor of Faith needs to be cast when combat is imminent or already started. (In the latter case, you might not get it to stack to the point where it makes you invincible.)
2. Emotion: Courage still restores HP if cast again before it wears off.

On the other hand, Vampiric Touch not stacking at all does bother me, as it prevents you from using it to heal before it wears off. (It also makes you immune to enemies using that spell against you, which doesn't make much sense.)

One example where fixing an exploit inhibits normal use of the spell is Project Image. (I know that spell didn't exist in the original IWD, but bear with me.) In IWD: EE (and probably BG2: EE), if your image gets killed, you can't summon another until the duration wears off or the caster is hit with a dispel. It was probably intended to prevent the use of Chain Contingency to get multiple images, but it ends up hurting normal use of the spell, where killing off (or dispelling) the image so you can summon another one is part of the strategy.

I see Icewind Dale: Moneygrab Edition is twice the price of the proper game too, same as with the BG editions. Shame. Shame. Shame. Shame. Ad inf.

Problem I see with enhanced edition is that everything is extremely small. This game isn't also friendly with widescreen monitors, as result it makes it hard to get information from UI, as it is at opposite corners of screen, it makes me feel that my eyes are about to break when I try to look at the picture.

This game was intended to be played with much smaller area to view and with much larger character/creature models. I don't know why people aim for this "miniaturity" as it truly cheapens experience. I understand that original resolution might be a bit too pixellated, but zooming out =/= smoothing pixels. How do people even differ what kind of monsters they fight unless it is a dragon?

Yup, the EE is a glorified fan patch with some added content at best. It might perhaps be called a remaster but hardly a remake, as nothing actually got remade, just tweaked, patched and some content added. And... Well, remasters tend to be glorified patches :D

I would, however, like to point out that the very same [url=https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Baldur%27s_Gate:_Enhanced_Edition]Wikipedia[/url] calls BG: EE a remake. Not the best source of information ever ;-)

Well it did take a decent amount of work, IIRC they had to rewrite bits of the renderer, add new behavior to some input, and they went trough the game and did a lot of rebalancing. I too find 20 euro to be a bit too much, but it's most likely justified.

What? The entire engine was remade; the entire UI was remade; the entire game assets were remade -- the original masters don't exist. What more constitutes a remake?

Remaking an engine would be rewriting it from scratch, these games are still running a modified IE and were updated to the newest version of it, that's about it. I'm not saying the changes were not significant, but they were far wrom rewriting the whole thing.

Nah. Updated and tweaked, yes, which does sort of come with the engine changes. IIRC they mostly messed around with the renderer and did some optimisations, like pathfinding for IWD.

As in they actually sat down and redrew every single asset used by Enhanced Editions? I somewhat followeed the development and never heard of that, do you have a source for the info? It does sound intriguing.

Well... Actually remaking the thing would be a good start ;-) You know, as in making it again. Entirely. In fact I've never even seen Beamdog to use the term remake, they seem to avoid it (which proves nothing of course)

But naturally your opinion is the king as usual, so all I ask are sources for your info so I can educate myself and butt out.

I didn't realize that being born in the UK gave you natural expertise in international gaming lingo.

Btw, video games are an industry which is mostly driven by the US and Japan - deal with it!

The main game area supports mouse-wheel zooming, and there's a font size slider in the settings - does that not help?

And of course you can always set your screen resolution to something smaller, as a last resort.

They did no such thing of course.

They used some automated conversion to get the format of the data files to be compatible with their enhanced engine - but that just affects how the data is stored, not its contents.

I wish there were an upgrade option for those who already own the original, because for them, paying the full 20 bucks to get the enhancements feels like a bit much.

However, for new costumers I think it is a perfectly fair price.