Baldur's Gate: 4 in 1 Box Set (PC DVD)

Baldur's Gate is one of the best roleplaying games out there. The storytelling is done terrifically and there's plenty of plot twists and well written dialogue to keep you intrigued with the plot and wanting to learn more. The prologue to the game ends rather intensely and leaves you in a huge open dangerous world without any quest markers or guide holding your hand. From here you're on your own to solve the plot and gain answers. Chapter 1 starts rather slow but once you progress to the end of chapter 1 the plot starts unfolding even more and becomes even more interesting in the following chapters as you travel the sword coast trying to unravel a conspiracy and learn who's behind all the troubles that the sword coast is experiencing. The answers you receive are rather unexpected and increase the story on a huge scale.I won't go into much story details but I think the storytelling, the writing and the characters within the plot are one of Bioware's best and Baldur's Gate's story certainly stands out. Even your character's alignment and choices somewhat impact the plot and playing through the game multiple times is encouraged as you'll encounter different things as a different alignment along with a different party. Speaking of your party (companions), evil characters will leave a character that becomes too popular (liked among people) and good characters will leave a character who is disliked for evil actions and some characters (Minsc being an example) will actually attack you should your reputation become too low. Baldur's Gate is big on choices with consequences and even selecting a certain dialogue option can end up leading to a consequence. This game doesn't hold your hand and that's what I love about it.The world is pretty much open (although divided into multiple areas) and you can freely explore it in a non-linear pace. There's lots to do in each area. Every area I've been to has its own enemies, quests, treasure and secrets just waiting to be discovered. In one area to the foremost east there are some basilisks (creatures that can turn you to stone and thus kill you in one hit) which are being led by some mad dwarf who delights in turning adventurers into stone statues. Killing him and his creatures was hard-work (especially since I needed expensive potions required to resist turning to stone) but I got it done and the rewards were worth-while. In the same region I later come across some adventurers who started mocking me and my companions dress sense and they then dared to say that we weren't even true adventurers! I challenged them to a duel for their insults and obliterated them. They should have known better to have messed with the hero who had just wiped out the entire basilisk population in that same very region.Which brings me to another note. Baldur's Gate allows for immerse role playing. You can role play a heroic knight who happens to be rude and rather ruthless and yet a hero at heart. You can even knock people unconscious with your firsts if you feel that they've insulted you and you won't suffer reputation lost. The game literally allows you to roleplay a knight who believes in honor and who will do what is right but at the same time won't hesitate to defend his honor in a duel. There are often plenty of dialogue options for characters of any alignment and personality to choose from. Some quests even allow you to decline a reward and in another quest you could even help a farmer out by giving him some gold. The later quest became available after completing a previous quest given to you by the farmer. The farmer asks you to search a nearby cave for his son. The problem? The son is dead and when you give the body to the father he enters depressions because his son whom he loved is dead, he now has no help on the farm and he's penniless. Now you could just walk away because you've completed the quest but you can also do what I did and offer the farmer gold. The game also allows you to be as evil as a fiend as you can demand more money for completing a quest at times, you can break into people's houses and demand that they hand everything over to you and you can even kill children. Whatever character you can imagine you can create within this series.Yes, Baldur's Gate even has some well written side quests and sub-plots. The encounter with basilisks that I mentioned earlier on? That wasn't even a side quest. It was just an encounter in the world and yet it had an entire plot to it. Elsewhere to the south I encounter some kid who says he's lost his dog. Turns out the dog is a hellhound and the kid is actually a demon. I manage to slay the fiend before he escapes back into his hellish dimension. Then in another place we had some shadow druid who had poisoned a druid's mind so that he would go crazy and kill his group. The shadow druid succeeded in his plan and the druids were all killed. After questioning the shadow druid (who only revealed himself as such later on) I came to the conclusion that something wasn't right and that's when he admitted to his evil deeds and tried to attack me and my group. We put a short end to him and his miserable life.Companions in Baldur's Gate aren't as meaty as companions in later Bioware games. For example they don't have much to say and you can't initiate conversations with them. Even so they are somewhat interesting and every companion has their own biography and morals and even their own connection with other companions (Jaheria and Khalid are married). Some companions might even clash with one another at some time later in the plot and others might betray you should you go against their ideals. Minsc is definitely one of the best characters I've encountered in a game. There's nothing to hate about him. He has a hamster called Boo who he believes to be a giant space hamster and Minsc's frequent comments to Boo add to his character as he actually believes that Boo talks back to him. Minsc might be rather simple minded but he's on the side of good as well and despises evil with all his heart. His berserker nature, fearlessness, sense of justice and massive strength meant that he became my right hand man and took control of the party if my main character ever split from it.Combat in Baldur's Gate is strategic and tactical. Rushing into battle and into areas will likely result in a quick death. Enhancing your character's statistics with spells and potions before battle is a must especially in the face of potent foes and then attacking the right opponents in battle and using the right abilities at the right is also essential to winning battles. At times Baldur's Gate presents massive challenges and there's been several boss fights where I've had to retry but winning these battles is rewarding especially when you see that your tactics actually pays off when you wipe the floor clean with your enemies. Due to how punishing and hardcore Baldur's Gate can be at times, I wouldn't recommend the game to anyone who enjoys Amalur and Skyrim which are casual RPG's which hold the player's hand in and out of combat. Baldur's Gate doesn't have any quest markers and combat is about statistics, tactics and strategy. Companions can also permanently die if they explode (often caused by a critical hit being the killing blow) which means you can't resurrect them because there's no body to bring back to life. Baldur's Gate is all about patience and thinking. Quests are solved through reading what a NPC says and battles are won through quick thinking.On to Baldur's Gate 2 and it's Baldur's Gate 1 but enhanced. Companions now have more to say and you will have conversations with them. The level cap is higher which means that you gain access to more spells/abilities and better armor and weapons (thus your character operates in combat faster and deadlier) and the graphics are enhanced. The storytelling in Baldur's Gate 2 is just as amazing as what you'll encounter in the first game and the quests are handled the same way.Graphically this game is amazing. It's years old and yet the hand painted environments present everything as a work of art. Magic effects look old but everything else (from houses, to roads, to trees) look great. Basically everything is smooth and easy on the eyes.If you're big into traditional RPG's then buy this package. The package is currently £7 and that's an amazing bargain considering the two games and their expansions are bound to provide you well over 200 hours of content. The series of Baldur's Gate shouldn't be missed by anyone who loves traditional type RPG's.10/10Concerning the Baldur's Gate 1 expansion. The disc doesn't seem to work over here in the UK but you should be able to find the UK patch on the web. Download and install the patch and the expansion should work just fine.P.SI don't view comments. So questions shall not be answered by me.

They are old now and likely won't even run on modern PCs but at least you own the media if you can make it run now...

Not a big gamer, but tried this after DragonAge. Installs OK (Win 7 64bit) but seems slow keeping up with the graphics (DragonAge flies, not the video card!). Biggest issue is 4 disc, no paper, no docs, so I had to find info on the net before I could start making any sense of it, much less intuitive than DragonAge. And I was playing D&D on Commodore PETS.

UPDATE JAN 2015: To prove the point about what an absolute legend this game is, it has been reworked and released by Beamdog. It is now possible to play it on mobiles and tabs (5" minimum screen size) via Apple App Store and Google Play (hope your eyesight is better than mine), and you can also play on Windows post-Vista/XP and Mac OSX. The developer has ironed out all the previous bugs and added some enhancements (and new characters). I've downloaded a Windows version via Steam, but pleased I still have my hard copy DVD version for nostalgic reasons. So glad that so many others out there still see the value in this game. Originally released in 1998 but still going strong - Black Isle created a true legend.I've bought this purely and simply because I wanted to own it again for nostalgic reasons. Baldur's Gate was the amongst the first games to really switch me on to the RPG genre. At the time, it was unbelievably good. I've gone a bit retro of late, and played Fallout for the first time (which is brilliant). Without wishing to sound like an old dud, these older games are still heads and shoulders above newer games in my humble opinion. There was a huge amount of personal effort that teams of developers would put into such games and it's always evident when you play one of them; there's genuine intelligence in the design, everybody knew everyone else and there was massive interaction within the team. The results were something borne out of individual pride and team effort when 'game engines' didn't really exist until these peeps developed them - these games are a fine example of something crafted out of genuine ability. The games are therefore produced to a [high] standard, not a price or deadline. There is also usually plenty of authentic, non-sterilised humour in there as well. New games all seem to be the same to me with a few distinguishing features, but the result is always the same: eye candy and no substance.BG is simply a must-have, even if you are just getting it as an historical addition to a collection. It has incredible depth, plenty of complexity if you want it, and a character design which principally distinguishes this game from any others. Not only do you get to create your main character more or less from scratch, you also get to develop (not create) another 5 characters which can form part of your band of slayers. This means you get to learn other disciplines and skills which your main character might not have available. Lovely. The only downside for me is the lengthy and often tedious amounts of dialogue between characters.It is a very addictive game which has huge replayability because of the wealth of options you could use to develop your main (and team) character. Quite often you will find yourself re-fighting a battle with a different set of tactics to compare the outcome. You will not be able to finish this game in a day or two! Be sure to check out the additional downloads which other posters have very considerately included in these reviews.