Closing Thoughts
Unlike the original Baldur's Gate: Enhanced Edition, I am much more willing to recommend Beamdog's new Baldur's Gate II re-release to players. While there are some bugs and the new content still does not quite match what BioWare was producing in its prime, it's a much more solid package overall. After playing for a couple of weeks, I'm having trouble going back to the original, if nothing else for the technical features like the quick loot UI, the super-quick saving/loading, and the ability to play in windowed mode without requiring any third-party programs. But at the same time, is the new content excellent and must-play for most people? Probably not.
There's one more thing to consider - at $25 USD, Baldur's Gate II: Enhanced Edition is now more than twice the price of the complete edition of the original release commonly available at web sites like GOG and GamersGate. At $20, that price seems pretty fair, but $25, while realistically not that much more money, still feels a bit hard to justify, especially if you have already played Baldur's Gate II before. There are plenty of excellent new RPGs out today that can easily be had for that price or even less, as well.
So, with all that said, my conclusions about Baldur's Gate II: Enhanced Edition are probably not that surprising: the original game's still as good as ever, the new content is nice to have but isn't really necessary, the fixes and improvements are offset by the new bugs and crashes, and the price hard to justify paying for those who already own the game and are comfortable installing a few mods. Beamdog have won back some of my lost faith by bringing out a much more polished and higher-quality product this time around, but I still have my doubts whether the studio has it in itself to produce a game of its own at this rate, as seems to be the logical trajectory the studio's headed in. I suppose we'll find out in the coming months whether the team is content to keep re-releasing old Infinity Engine games, or ends up doing something new.
