This review contains spoilers, click expand to view.
For reference, I played through the whole game series for the first time on this Switch release, but I've previously played every part of the Baldur's Gate series on PC except for Siege of Dragonspear and the BG1 expansion Tales of the Swordcoast. I did not try the Black Pits or Black Pits 2 in my hundred + hour campaign, because those parts do stand alone. My review score reflects a couple of key things that haven't aged well: bugs and some problematic storytelling.
Before that, here's what really works about this game:
Controls--Wow, I really have to hand it to Beamdog on redoing this for consoles. The main thing holding me back from buying this was concern over the point and click nature of the game. You can still do that with a simple button toggle, but most travel happens by highlighting the whole party and just using the thumbstick to directionally travel. I cannot overstate how smooth this makes the gameplay--pathing issues stop mattering because all of your characters more or less follow your leader, even if they're hasted. It's great.
UI--all aspects of the UI feel like an improvement on base PC version. Whole lot of love for consoles here.
Siege of Dragonspear--there's a lot of trolly reviews for this game that are directly related to this content and supposed SJW themes that happen here. Take it for what it is: some great quest building using the design of Baldur's Gate to its limits. This addition is a lot bigger than I expected and culminates in some great fights. There was only one trans character, and I felt the writing for her was pretty good. Some of the other series standard characters felt better developed than ever. It's a nice bridging point, though the early introduction of a series baddie felt a little unnecessary.
Beyond that, if you didn't want to mod the game, I feel strongly that this is the best version of it.
Why the 7/10?
Bugs! Irritatingly, although BG1-2-TOB are all part of the same package that a single character can play through, the games all have different crashing bugs that activate at different times.
BG1: Crashes when you save, wiping the whole save file. This starts to happen late game more often in my experience.
Siege: Same deal as BG1 but way more often. This expansion crashes all the time.
BG2: Primarily crashes when changing areas but will start to crash late game when a lot of special effects are firing at the same time. I didn't have any save wipes, but it could happen.
TOB: Again, same as BG2 but the save crash comes back. This expansion was crashing once every couple of hours, which is not great.
Here's a very important trick that will save you infinite frustration: 1. Save constantly. 2. Make at least 2 save files and save in them interchangeably (like save 1, then save 2, next time save 1, etc.
Problematic! Some of the things that happen in this game really don't hold up well 20 years later. As someone who really loved the games as I was growing up, I found it harder to take certain story events at face value. Some of that stems from race and gender issues inherent in D&D, on which this is based, but that's no excuse. Baldur's Gate gets no free pass for being a game that was a formative experience in gaming for many people my age. Here's a few things that stuck out (spoilers):
1. Spellhold Battle: at some point you have to recruit people who have mental illnesses (caused by magic, the game suggests) to fight a wizard who will kill you in a scripted event if you do anything else. There is no way to keep these people alive, no matter how well you fight. The game handwaves this as, well these people were tortured and harmed by the wizard. What it really comes down to is simple: the game views them, the people with serious psychological needs, as expendable assets to drive the protagonist's quest onward. That's hugely messed up.
2. Moments later in the game, we come across two other racial factions. Let's be totally clear, it's possible to kill every single NPC in each of these situations and not lose any "good guy points" over it because they are characterized as evil, even though in both cases, the game gives exceptions to that from NPCs within the groups that are more willing to help the character. Again: your character can commit an act of genocide and not even take a penalty for it.
3. Smaller issues like Dynaheir, a clearly Black character, being voiced by Jennifer Hale, a clearly white woman, being written to talk in an awkward, overly formal, foreigner English kind of way. Or the way this game casually has children die in a number of quests. Seemed pretty often I had a child's body in my inventory to bring it to their parents. These kinds of things are upsetting and make the game feel a lot less welcoming in 2020.
I write this in the hopes that Larian, creating BG3, will make a more conscientious CRPG. We don't have to make everyone happy, but we should be able to recommend a game to friends without reservations.… Expand
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