Baldur's Gate Enhanced Edition

Introduction

Baldur's Gate: Enhanced Edition is Beamdog's 2013 re-release of BioWare's 1998 Dungeons & Dragons CRPG, the game that gave its name and setting to 2023's Baldur's Gate 3. Released on 16 January 2013 at NZ$28.99, it bundles the original campaign with the Tales of the Sword Coast expansion, alongside engine and interface updates. It sits at 92% positive ("Very Positive") across 10,989 English-language Steam reviews. This review read the 100 most-helpful negative reviews of 836 total, plus a sample of the 100 most recent English reviews.

A single, disastrous week in April 2016

A striking pattern in this review's negative sample is how concentrated it is: 25 of the 100 negative reviews read date to a tight three-day window, 1-3 April 2016, when Beamdog shipped the Siege of Dragonspear expansion alongside an update to the base game. "I was so happy of being back to BG, when suddenly, this morning, THE UPDATE happened. Cartoonish graphics, clumsy UI and a BIG BUG," reads one review from that exact window. Another: "Not much enhanced here - if anything the game is dehanced because of hamfisted changes to the UI which remove a lot of the fantastical charm the original Baldur's Gate had." Multiplayer specifically drew sustained criticism: "Game is unplayably buggy in Multiplayer. Over an hour to manage to even open a game... Game crashes every time I save in multiplayer," reads a third. The same window also included public comments from a Beamdog writer about revising some of the original's dated writing in the new expansion, which several reviewers reference alongside the technical complaints; this review reports that as context around the timing rather than taking a position on the underlying debate, since the clearer, more verifiable throughline in the sample is the technical failure.

A genuinely brutal opening, verified

Separate from the 2016 incident, a recurring theme across this review's sample concerns the game's famously punishing early hours, where a single bad encounter can wipe an entire low-level party. Rather than take reviewer claims at face value, this review checked the game's own Steam achievement data: the single most-earned achievement — tied to simply leaving the starting area — sits at just 54.1% of all owners. That means close to half of everyone who has ever owned this game never gets past its earliest content, a genuinely low top-achievement figure compared to most titles this outlet has reviewed, and hard confirmation that the difficulty complaint reflects a real, measurable pattern rather than reviewer exaggeration.

Verdict

Baldur's Gate: Enhanced Edition remains a foundational CRPG whose influence stretches directly to Baldur's Gate 3, and its 92% lifetime score with recent sentiment holding at 89% shows it has aged into a genuine classic rather than a nostalgia-only pick. What holds the score back is specific and largely historical: a disastrous April 2016 update that broke the UI and multiplayer for a concentrated window of reviewers, layered on a difficulty curve this review independently verified as genuinely brutal — a top achievement completion of just 54.1%. Worth experiencing for CRPG history and the setting's own sake — save constantly in the opening hours, and check current multiplayer reliability before relying on it for a co-op run.