Baldur's Gate: Enhanced Edition Review
Price: $9.99
Version Reviewed: 1.0.2
Device Reviewed On: iPad 2
Graphics / Sound Rating:





Game Controls Rating:





Gameplay Rating:





Replay Value Rating:





Overall Rating:





Baldur's Gate: Enhanced Edition is a hard game. It always was, to be fair. As a young teenager, a friend and I spent one Winter working our way through the game. It involved a lot of patience and a lot of planning. It was like no other RPG we'd seen before and it was wonderful.
There's a solid 100 hours worth of storytelling, murder and intrigue here, making any complaints about its price quite pointless. Bundled alongside its expansion pack, Tales of the Sword Coast, and the arena focused The Black Pits, Baldur's Gate: Enhanced Edition is exceptional value for money. It even comes with some new characters, Rasaad, Neera and Dorn, slipping into the established world as if they'd always been there, albeit at a price.
There are issues, though, mostly in the form of the game's control system. Previously having been designed with a mouse and keyboard in mind, Baldur's Gate: Enhanced Edition does falter on the iPad. The controls are far from a disaster but they are distinctly awkward at times. At first, it's not immediately clear what each button does as, despite the availability of a help button, there's a lot to take in during the expansive tutorial. Holding a finger to a button to bring about a tooltip would have been much appreciated here. Spells suffer for this too as they prove particularly awkward to distinguish from each other at first.
Lag issues are a big problem, too, with area effect spells reducing my iPad 2 to a crawl until they dissipated. Such issues are frustrating to say the least, and I'm hopeful for a significant patch that rectifies such problems and rightfully boosts its score.
It's a testament to Baldur's Gate: Enhanced Edition's quality that it still richly deserves its 4 star rating, even despite such significant issues. As a precursor to games such as the Mass Effect or Dragon Age series, it's an immensely important game and one that's aged well. Its graphics were never meant to be cutting edge, which helps somewhat. Forward planning is absolutely vital here and players will be punished harshly for not thinking ahead. Take the time to savor what's there and there are literally hundreds of hours of gaming to enjoy, with a ridiculous number of side quests to partake in, alongside the sterling main quest line.