On November 30, 1998, a little-known company called BioWare released a strangely-titled game named Baldur's Gate
for personal computers. It was critically and commercially acclaimed,
an excellent RPG with a gigantic world, interesting characters, and a
ton of little details to discover and enjoy.
Fourteen years later, Baldur's Gate is back. Today marks the release of Baldur's Gate: Enhanced Edition,
a touched-up port of the iconic RPG with some new characters, features,
and enhancements. But what's inside? Is it worth revisiting, or playing
for the first time today if you missed it in the past? You undoubtedly
have questions. No problem. We're here to help.
What is a "Baldur's Gate"?
Baldur's Gate is the name of a city that you can find in a role-playing game called Baldur's Gate. Fitting, right? The game is based on the world of Dungeons & Dragons,
meaning you'll find priests, half-elves, THAC0, and all the other
quirky features and stats that make D&D what it is. You roll your
own character under D&D rules and restrictions, then take him or her
into the world for questing and adventuring.
It's hard to sum up all the charm and wonder of Baldur's Gate
in one or two sentences, but at its core, this is a giant role-playing
game with a huge, sprawling world. There's a main storyline to follow,
but there are also tons and tons of sidequests: you can go help a crazy
berserker rescue the love of his life from a troll fortress; you can
save an apprentice wizard who has accidentally transformed himself into a
chicken; you can search for treasure in the undead ruins near a hobbit
village; and much, much more.
Oh, like Skyrim!
Well... yeah! Kind of. Instead of giving you a first-person perspective, Baldur's Gate
is isometric, which means you get a top-down view of the world. You
move your characters by selecting them and clicking where you want them
to go, which doesn't have quite the same feel as the direct control of a
game like Skyrim. Some other aspects feel rather different, but if you like the exploring and role-playing of a game like Skyrim, you'll probably like this game too.
Also, Baldur's Gate has party members.

Party... members? You can recruit up to five allies (for a total party of six) to follow you around, do your bidding, and fight for you.
Fun part is, all of the characters in Baldur's Gate
have their own goals, personalities, and ambitions. If you recruit
someone to help figure out why there's an iron shortage, but you don't
seem to be looking into the iron shortage, that someone might get mad
and decide to leave you forever. You also have to worry about balance:
if you team up with a Lawful Good paladin and a Chaotic Evil sorcerer,
they might not get along too well. They might get into a fight and force
you to pick a side. Loser dies.
That does sound kind of awesome. So what's the story?
Your
main character is an orphan (yeah, yeah, I know) raised by a dude named
Gorion in a quiet, studious city called Candlekeep. One day, Gorion is
all like "yo we've gotta get the hell out of dodge." So you're like
"okay." Then you run into a terrifying guy named Sarevok. And then...
well, bad stuff happens. You have to piece together a series of
mysteries from there. And kill lots of people.
How do you kill people?
Combat in Baldur's Gate
is really interesting: it's sort of a mixture of real-time and
turn-based battling. Everything happens at once, but you can pause
combat at any time to give orders to your party. So you can pause to
have your characters gulp down healing potions, cast spells, move around
the map, and figure out optimal strategies for taking out your
opponents.
It can get rather difficult, particularly at the
beginning of the game when you're rather low leveled, but you can always
change the difficulty settings, and there are always ways to upgrade
your party's equipment and abilities.
OK, OK, this does sound pretty cool, but what if I already knew all this? What if I've already played Baldur's Gate? What's different about the Enhanced Edition?
Lots of things. Let's make a list:

• The first thing you'll notice is that Baldur's Gate: Enhanced Edition
  can support a high-definition display. Everything is crisper and
  cleaner, and you can even zoom in and out on the main screen (not
  possible before). The art assets, however, have not been changed, so
  they don't look too great when you zoom in closely.
  
• This version of Baldur's Gate also takes a great deal from Baldur's Gate II, the 2000 sequel and by most accounts one of the best games of all time. Baldur's Gate II
  added a number of extra classes and sub-classes, some new features
  (like dual-wielding), and some other random interface improvements.
  Those are all implemented here.
  
• Bug fixes! The game's creative director Trent Oster says they've zapped about 400 bugs while porting over the game.
  
• This version of the game comes with Baldur's Gates expansion pack, Tales of the Sword Coast.
  
• It also comes with plenty of new stuff. First of all there's a new area called the Black Pits, a set of combat challenges with a customizable cast of characters.
  
• There are also a few new characters: Rasaad yn Barshi, a monk (and his new area, the Cloud Peaks); Neers, a wild mage (also comes with her own new area); and Dorn Il-Khan, a half-orc Blackguard.
  
• More to come, Oster has promised, especially if this one does well. There may be DLC in the future.
  
  
  
  So it's out for PC today. Wasn't it supposed to come to iPad? Or Mac? Or Android?
  It was. All of those versions have been delayed: the iOS version had a game-stopping bug, and should be out next week, according to Oster. The OSX version is also still waiting on Apple's approval, and the Android version should be out by christmas.
  The
  PC/Mac versions are $20. The mobile versions will be $10, but much of
  the extra content will not be included; you'll have to buy it separately
  as DLC.
  When the different versions do all come out, you'll be able to play cross-platform multiplayer.