Baldur's Gate 2: EE - Now Available

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Baldur's Gate II: Enhanced Edition is now available. You can buy the game from Beamdog or Steam. It's your choice as both sell the game for the same price.

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About the Game
Kidnapped. Imprisoned. Tortured. The wizard Irenicus holds you captive in his stronghold, attempting to strip you of the powers that are your birthright.

Can you resist the evil within you, forge a legend of heroic proportions, and ultimately destroy the dark essence that haunts your dreams? Or will you embrace your monstrous nature, carve a swath of destruction across the realms, and ascend to godhood as the new Lord of Murder?

Baldur's Gate II: Enhanced Edition brings this critically acclaimed role-playing experience to back to life.

Features

• The Final Chapter - Baldur's Gate II: Enhanced Edition includes Baldur's Gate II: Shadows of Amn and Baldur's Gate II: Throne of Bhaal, the epic conclusion of the Bhaalspawn saga.
• Four New Party Members - Bundled with Baldur's Gate II: Enhanced Edition are four new characters that can join you on your journey.
• The Black Pits 2: Gladiators of Thay - Explore the tactical depth of high-level Dungeons & Dragons combat. Undermine your captors and prey upon their weaknesses while you dodge traps and battle for your life against Demi-Liches, Mind Flayers, and Githyanki.
• Easy Multiplayer - Baldur's Gate II: Enhanced Edition makes it easy to find, list, and join multiplayer games, even while behind a firewall.
• Widescreen and More - Baldur's Gate II: Enhanced Edition features full widescreen support, remastered area artwork from original renders, and a host of other interface and gameplay improvements.

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Don't buy the Steam version!

It's managed by Atari rather than Beamdog, and there is a significant delay as to when updates are available on this platform. The most recent patch, for example, was released a week later on Steam than it was for those who purchased directly from Beamdog. You won't be able to opt in to beta testing on Steam, nor was the pre-load for BG2EE made available on Steam.

Many who purchased from Steam are regretting it.

 

Thanks for the tip, Marceror. Was just going to buy it today from Steam.

 

Any reviews?

I'm tempted to buy, but the reviews of BGEE weren't great ...

 

^ Same here. Will wait 'till some Sorcerers take a better look at it.

 

I'm a good ways into chapter 2, and based on what I've seen this is an infinitely (no pun intended) better initial release than BGEE was. For starters BG2EE and BGEE share the same game engine, so BG2EE has the benefit of all the improvements that have been implemented since the initial release of BGEE.

Since Beamdog didn't have to spend so much time battling with the engine this time around, there seems to be a lot more content added. The new joinable NPC, Hexxat, is particularly well done, and quite a surprise. The evil blackguard Dorn has one of the most evil sidequests I've ever seen for an NPC in this game. I can't wait to see where his quests lead, but I know he (and all new NPCs) have several, which extend into ToB.

Finally playing a full evil party is viable, without having to sub in guys like Jan and Haer'dalis.

Of course, the new kits that were added later to BGEE are included, namely, the dwarven defender, dragon disciple, shadowdancer, the sun soul monk and the dark moon monk.

The opening quest for Hexxat had a really awesome intro video, so there are a lot of cool things going on. Thus far I feel that this entry is earning the name "enhanced".

And for what it's worth, BGEE has been dramatically improved as well through patches since its initial release.

And there are tons of compatible mods available for both, if you're mod obsessed. There is even an improved and merged version of Gatekeeper and Shadowkeeper called Enhanced Edition Keeper (EEKeeper) that allows you to modify both games from a single interface, which has expanded and improved on the original features.