Imagine the scene if you will; myself and 4 of my friends have gathered at a geekmoot the likes of which we hadn't seen since we were in school many moons ago... The game does not work on laptops with intel integrated graphics. The servers from which the game downloads are crap. On my computer, the game simply would not install - I got constant and unfathomable 'could not connect to server' errors. My friend is a network tech at a school, he couldn't get it to connect. To fix the problem, I formatted my computer and started fresh on Windows 7 (this was my spare old gaming rig). So, our eager adventurers have wasted ~5 hours dealing with shitty download speeds (which we circumvented by downloading once and then copying the files, but even so...) and issues with installation. Still, we had hope. We were naive. I can't really give good details here as the mead and baileys was kicking in (I was leaving the technical stuff to my friends as they do it better, so it's not that we were too pissed to get it working - just me) - essentially, we tried many many times to get into game, and succeeded some of the time. When we didn't succeed, the game client randomly crashed (we were on Direct IP so why?) or otherwise bugged out. When we did succeed (in launching) we would play for some time before; bugging out after being unable to equip items, randomly disconnecting (lots), and so on... The game isn't even in a fucking Alpha state. At least they gave me my money back. Get the standard version from GOG, it works better.
Oh and if that's not enough, it's all nicely packaged in a bullshit DRM heavy turd (even if you download the direct client, as far as I can tell). So, to sum up - fuck beamdog, boycott at all costs.
Ya I read in a review that you can get basically everything they added through fan mods (which they supposedly just lifted and added) but with a lot more bugs. Think Ill stick with my GoG version and mod it up.
Just a heads up, Vreith and myself have got this game during the steam sales ext and I can say that although I have not finished it yet, 10 hours in and I have not seen one bug at all. Highly impressed. So many memories, and this time I am running an all evil party. Hard and fun!
It is vastly improved from launch with the various patches they've added in (5 or 6 of them). It is now more stable than the original with mods on most newer computers. At least, I've seen very little complaining recently.
The ported the game to the BG2 Engine, which is a vast improvement compared to the original BG1. For BG2 I dont see the need of an EE (they are doing that), since it works fine under windows and has really intense mods
I think BG2:EE will be worthwhile mainly due to the ease of installation. Granted, this would be the 3rd time I've bought BG2 if were to buy it (I still own the original boxed version and I also own the gog.com one) but it does have issues. Like running very clunky. Or getting that bug where you can't talk to anyone and having to do a full re-install. That happened to me twice the last time I tried to play it and only after playing around with compatibility modes and endless forum research, did it get fixed. And the coding for BG1/BG2 both have a lot of functionality tied to Windows 98, so the future may be bleak without continued fan support or the clean-up of the engine.
Main attraction was this. i also know how long the conversion takes, not prepared to spend the time after having doen it once before. then onto of it ide have to get it from GoG or find my originals, well neither fo thats was goign to happen, so got it on steam. since the release seems they fixed it up. lets hope they learn from round 1 and don't Fk up BG2 on release, as ile be playing all them again, memories from more than a decade ago. no problems so far, and no real bugs, even the edited in NPC's cause no in game issues, i see that changing in BG2 tho, much more banter heavy and your party has much larger consequences on some of your decisions essentially
