I just played Baldur's Gate to completion for the first time in my life last night.
I used Weidu BGT mod, which imports Baldur's Gate into the Baldur's Gate 2 engine. I tried playing it up to just past the Nashkel Mines a few weeks prior to trying Weidu on the BG1 engine so I have a frame of reference. I would definitely recommend that anyone planning on playing the modded original game instead of the Enhanced Edition consider strongly using this guide on GoG.com
http://af.gog.com/news/enhance_the_...ion_of_baldurs_gate_from_gogcom?as=1649904300 amusingly titled "Enhance the gameplay in your edition of Baldur's Gate." It is a very helpful step-by-step guide for installing the widescreen mod, the fixpack, and Weidu which imports the game into the Baldurs Gate 2 engine (you must own both games to do this). I found that the user interface worked with the widescreen mod when following this guide and scaled appropriately to 1680x1050 with no black bars or improperly-scaled UI elements.
This has a few advantages over the original game, namely that you can play Baldur's Gate 2 races (such as half-orc) and subclasses (such as Berserker, which I highly recommend if you're planning on making a fighter). Weidu also transitions you immediately into Baldur's Gate 2 upon completing the game. It is completely seamless and it does not require you to character import into a new game.
I would also recommend that anyone go into the Baldurs Gate 2 config and upgrade the Enhanced Pathfinding to somewhere around 400,000 path search nodes, and even with that engaged keep in mind that the pathing is still going to have issues.
I played this game for storyfag reasons because some asshole told me that Baldur's Gate 2 had a good story. I have my doubts, as Baldur's Gate 1 has atrocious companions. They say literally nothing of value throughout the entire game and the best companions are those that simply aren't annoying. They constantly whine and bellyache about your every decision and repeat trite and juvenile catchphrases over and over. I highly recommend that anyone playing this game turn OFF the voices of the companions in the dialogue options.
Onto the meat-and-potatoes of the game. Baldur's Gate has a few crippling issues and design flaws, but the peak experience of the game is without a doubt the dungeons, most especially Durlag's Tower, which is an immaculately rendered player torture chamber. All dungeons are beautifully handcrafted. Keep in mind that all of the content is agonizingly painful to get through due to a few serious issues.
This game wants to kill you. You have to save every time you round a corner or one of your party members will end up dead. I'm not kidding. If you're walking through Durlag's Tower, or a Basilisk den, or whatever, you are going to routinely trip over some trap or walk into some encounter you haven't prepared for and end up locked into some routine that requires you to load back your quick save and go through things the right way. For an RPG game this game has a lot of puzzle elements. In some areas (for instance Durlag's Tower), literally every square six-inches of every dungeon floor is going to have a trap. That's on average. You may walk over 6 traps on your way across a doorway. These also are not your grandpa Akbar's traps. Imagine walking down the sidewalk and a fireball hits you in the face, 3 times in a row, followed by a lightning bolt that ricochets around the room and subsequently a 20' radius Cloudkill for the fuck of it.
You must bring a thief, it is a requirement, but I'm sure you knew that already. I was walking around with 100 detect trap skill and 18 Dex on my main thief when I was doing Durlag's Tower and she was still stumbling over traps. At that level of skill you can barely detect a trap until you've almost tripped over it, and sometimes, you do anyway.
Second, the user-interface is not very helpful. Here's the kicker. Every time you DISARM a TRAP, your thief exits "Detect Traps" mode. Upon disarming, you must go BACK into "Detect Traps" and repeat the process. Every time you attack an enemy, open a door, talk to an NPC, Rest, or open a chest, you leave "Detect Traps" mode.
There is no unit-grouping hotkeys, although there are skill-hotkeys. F4 is Detect Traps, F5 is thief skills.
In effect, when you're walking down a cramped corridor lined with traps, ghouls, petrifying basilisks, and mind-controlling mages, you must alternately press F-4, lead with your thief who inevitably trips over at least one death-trap which possibly paralyzes half your party, engage in a cramped melee with a half-dozen monsters which requires you to fall back with your thief and bring forward your melee-tanks. After the combat, you must select your thief and drag forward your thief to the front again through shit-pathing in cramped quarters, press F-4 to engage your "Detect Traps" skill, moving one square at a time, and almost stumble over a trap which appears at the last moment. Then you must disarm said trap by pressing F-5, which turns off detect-traps mode. At which point you -think- the coast is clear and move forward your party before stumbling into another death trap that causes a party wipe.
I'm really not exaggerating.
Your party members stumble around each other in corridors no wider than 2 characters abreast.
Mages have the ability to mind control your entire party for 30 seconds in one cast (I'm not exaggerating). Basilisks have a ranged attack that paralyzes and permanently kills a character and makes them lose all their items. They can cast this attack roughly every 1 second (again not exaggerating) and the DC class is such that somebody with a 7 save against Paralyzation will likely get one shot as soon as he or she steps into paralyzation range. In effect, you must burn a potion that gives you immunity to these effects for each encounter. Be prepared to quicksave a
lot.
That's the biggest part of the experience. Fail to lockpick? Quicksave. Basilisk paralyzed your main character while walking around a corner? Quicksave. Mage MC'd your entire party and your -6 AC main character was beaten to death by a ghoul? Quicksave. Stumbled over a trap that webs your entire party from moving for 30 seconds? Quicksave.
TL;DR This game sucks and no one should play it.
