GB Feature: Baldur’s Gate II: Enhanced Edition Review

Of course we’ll be updating our Baldur’s Gate II subsite with a walkthrough and more for the Enhanced Edition content, but to tide you over until all of that is ready to go, we’ve penned a full review of Overhaul Games’ latest Infinity Engine effort. A couple of paragraphs:

The new character added to the mix is Hexxat, an evil-aligned female thief. Personally, I found her to be much more interesting and better-written than the other three. There’s actually a pretty entertaining and well-guarded twist on her character that is revealed during her storyline, and it’s nice to have an evil-aligned character who isn’t a bloodthirsty lunatic, insane necromancer or self-centered jerk. While I always felt going good was a natural choice in Baldur’s Gate II, with a character like Hexxat the argument for following an evil alignment is a bit more compelling.

As for their quests and stories themselves, after playing through all of them, I have to say that it’s still something of a mixed bag, but overall the new content is a step up from the drab and uninteresting stuff found in the first game’s Enhanced Edition. For starters, instead of one or two new rather humdrum and short areas added to the map, now each character has about double that number, and all of them feature more elaborate questlines. While still linear, the gameplay they offer is a lot stronger, often featuring more side-quests and multiple quest solutions (like hiring on allies to help with a tough fight, talking your way out of one, and so on). This is good stuff, and while not all quests are that interesting, the mere fact that even few are is still welcome.