bit of a random question but do balder's gate 1 & 2 still hold up after all these years. I've never played them but I heard they were really good and I've been getting more into D&D lately so I thought I might give them a shot.
I'd say yes. There are some minor issues, like how unit pathfinding is... less than good if you have them try to move longer distances without micromanaging them, and how it relies on D&D Second Edition/Advanced Dungeons And Dragons rules, which can be a bit confusing to those more used to later editions, since there are several mechanics* that have changed drastically over the years, but the games themselves are still pretty damn good.
I will note however that both games are
significantly harder and much more unforgiving than just about any other RPG that Bioware has released since. Mostly due to how it handles combat and characters reaching zero HP in a fight. You see, in later Bioware games such as Jade Empire, Knights of the Old Republic, and Dragon Age if a character is knocked down to zero in a fight, they're just knocked unconscious, and will get back up with one HP after the fight's over, with the player not getting a game over unless the entire party is killed. Baldur's Gate does not do that. Instead, if one of your party members reaches zero HP,
they are dead, which means two things: a) you have to go to the nearest temple and pay about 500 gold in order to resurrect your companion**, and b) you have to deal with their inventory. Yep, you see, unlike
other Bioware games, instead of having the inventory be a collective pool of items, Baldur's Gate's inventory is sorted based on which party member is carrying what items, and a character's max equipment load is also based on their strength score. If say, Minsc dies fighting an Ankheg, not only do you have to worry about seeing if the other five guys in your group have enough slots in their inventory to carry his gear, you also need to worry about if they'll actually be strong enough to carry that set of plate armor and the two handed greatsword Minsc was probably using. Thankfully, loot items on the ground do
not despawn under any circumstances, so as long as you remember
exactly where it was, there's nothing stopping you from leaving, getting Minsc resurrected at the nearest town, and then going back to where he died so Minsc can pick up his gear again, but it's definitely something that I'm sure catches a
lot of players off guard the first time they try the BG games if they were mostly used to Jade Empire/KotOR/Dragon Age/Mass Effect before then.
And then there's also the other aspect about why Baldur's Gate's combat is so unforgiving. You know how I pointed out how in most modern Bioware games (Mass Effect being the only major exception) you only get a game over if the entire party dies? Yeah, that's not how Baldur's Gate does things. Instead, that game over happens the moment the player character is knocked to zero HP, regardless of how much health the rest of the party has. This is especially nasty in the first game due to you starting at first level, and
especially if you're playing a Mage or Sorcerer, since the low HP that those classes get means that for a
minimum of 1/3 of Baldur's Gate 1, you will be at a point where getting hit
once can potentially lead to a game over if you're not careful, or an enemy gets a lucky crit on you. Thankfully, this is downplayed in the sequel, since you start
that game at 10th level, but the game is still unforgiving if you fuck up. What I'm saying is be prepared to spam the quick save key like a motherfucker, and make sure you go in the options menu to select the "Fully Heal At End of Rest" feature. You will thank me for it.
Trust me.
Now that said, I do not consider the fact that the games as a whole are quite a bit harder than later Bioware games to be either inherently good, or inherently bad, but it's still something worth noting all the same. Though I think it says a lot about the state of the RPG market in the late 90s when despite everything I said above, the first game was actually praised f
or being easy, and friendly to beginners, something that makes me shudder to think what the other RPGs released around that time were like.
But, on the subject of the good stuff, and and without spoiling anything related to the plot, I will say that Baldur's Gate's writing and dialogue are still top notch to this day, and for an RPG released in the 90s (okay, technically BG2 came out in 2000, but you know what I mean), the voice acting is nothing short of
phenomenal. I'm serious. David Warner's performance as Jon Irenicus, the main villain of the second game, is so good that I
still consider it to be the gold standard of villain voice acting in
any medium, video game or otherwise, to this very day. The only thing I will say is that if you do get the Enhanced Editions, make sure you get
the mod that restores to original FMV animated videos of the first game, instead of the shitty motion comics the first game's enhanced edition used. Just compare
the original version of the intro cutscene of Baldur's Gate 1 to
the downright flaccid Enhanced Edition version. In Beamdog's defence, I understand why the cutscene downgrade happened (basically, their offices got flooded, and their copies of the original cutscenes were destroyed in the process), but yeah, just use the mod that restores the original cutscenes. Especially since without it, there are a number of cutscenes (such as the ones that play when you first visit Beregost, Nashkel, and the Friendly Arm Inn) that straight up
do not apear in the unmodded version of the Enhanced Edition. On the plus side, this is
not an issue that affects the Enhanced Edition of the second game, and I can confirm from personal experiance that the Enhanced Edition of Baldur's Gate 2 uses the same cutscenes as the original.
*Most notably things like how Armor Class works in
literally the opposite way that it does in 3rd edition D&D and later (expect to say "What the
fuck is THACO!?" at least once), the fact that martial classes have to level up their proficiency in different weapon types to determine how effective they are at using them, and most egregiously, the fact that certain classes
cannot be chosen by certain races, all of which are things that Bioware took from AD&D. I can't really blame Bioware for that, since AD&D was the most recent edition of the game at the time, but all the same, even if Baldur's Gate has aged pretty well, AD&D as a system most certantly has
not.
**
Technically at later stages in the game if you have a cleric in the party, they can cast Raise Dead as well, but that's not really going to be a factor for 95% of BG1, since a cleric needs to be level 10 to cast it, when the first game's Level Cap is
also 10. It's a lot more common in BG2 though, due to that game's higher level cap.