Baldur's Gate: 4 in 1 Box Set (PC DVD)

UPDATE JAN 2015: To prove the point about what an absolute legend this game is, it has been reworked and released by Beamdog. It is now possible to play it on mobiles and tabs (5" minimum screen size) via Apple App Store and Google Play (hope your eyesight is better than mine), and you can also play on Windows post-Vista/XP and Mac OSX. The developer has ironed out all the previous bugs and added some enhancements (and new characters). I've downloaded a Windows version via Steam, but pleased I still have my hard copy DVD version for nostalgic reasons. So glad that so many others out there still see the value in this game. Originally released in 1998 but still going strong - Black Isle created a true legend. I've bought this purely and simply because I wanted to own it again for nostalgic reasons. Baldur's Gate was the amongst the first games to really switch me on to the RPG genre. At the time, it was unbelievably good. I've gone a bit retro of late, and played Fallout for the first time (which is brilliant). Without wishing to sound like an old dud, these older games are still heads and shoulders above newer games in my humble opinion. There was a huge amount of personal effort that teams of developers would put into such games and it's always evident when you play one of them; there's genuine intelligence in the design, everybody knew everyone else and there was massive interaction within the team. The results were something borne out of individual pride and team effort when 'game engines' didn't really exist until these peeps developed them - these games are a fine example of something crafted out of genuine ability. The games are therefore produced to a [high] standard, not a price or deadline. There is also usually plenty of authentic, non-sterilised humour in there as well. New games all seem to be the same to me with a few distinguishing features, but the result is always the same: eye candy and no substance. BG is simply a must-have, even if you are just getting it as an historical addition to a collection. It has incredible depth, plenty of complexity if you want it, and a character design which principally distinguishes this game from any others. Not only do you get to create your main character more or less from scratch, you also get to develop (not create) another 5 characters which can form part of your band of slayers. This means you get to learn other disciplines and skills which your main character might not have available. Lovely. The only downside for me is the lengthy and often tedious amounts of dialogue between characters. It is a very addictive game which has huge replayability because of the wealth of options you could use to develop your main (and team) character. Quite often you will find yourself re-fighting a battle with a different set of tactics to compare the outcome. You will not be able to finish this game in a day or two! Be sure to check out the additional downloads which other posters have very considerately included in these reviews.

The game is too old to play on my PC, shame really as I was looking forward to playing this game collection, oh well. P.S. The header won't let me type properly, it keeps freezing and types backwards on my phone, Amazon fix your application!

Not a big gamer, but tried this after DragonAge. Installs OK (Win 7 64bit) but seems slow keeping up with the graphics (DragonAge flies, not the video card!). Biggest issue is 4 disc, no paper, no docs, so I had to find info on the net before I could start making any sense of it, much less intuitive than DragonAge. And I was playing D&D on Commodore PETS.

This pack is fantastic, far handier than the old CD versions (I think there were over 20 CDs in total!). First of all, a small issue: there is a problem with the BG1 location, the game will complain and won't run if your Windows settings are not English/US, but there is a patch to fix this. Just install the latest patches for both games to avoid problems. Yes, Bioware/Atari should have fixed this and not let it to the user, but we all know how these things work. Other than that, both games run fine on XP and Vista (and, as far as I know, on Win 7 and Linux with Wine too, so there really is no excuse not to play them). That said, I absolutely love these games! (Fangirl mode on) I love RPGs, I like most of what Bioware have done, but these (with Planescape Torment perhaps) are doubtlessly their masterpieces. Forget about last-gen graphics, you don't need them: the settings, the characters, the story are so deep, immersive and well thought you will find it hard to take a break from them. You will find yourself quoting the characters (mellonamin=my friend in BG Elvish) and commenting them with people (who will probably think you are a bit crazy, but hey, that's hardly news) and installing mods all over the place to get to know the characters better or to add side quests to the main plot. Because, as already pointed out by some other reviewers, there are tons of mods around for these games. I would recommend playing them as they were meant to be the first time around, but for subsequent playthroughs (you WILL want to play these more than once) you can add a lot of content and have completely different game experiences. EasyTutu (which makes BG1 run on the BG2 engine) and the high resolution mods don't add any content, and are very helpful to play BG1 in modern computers. They work perfectly fine for me on Vista, they solve the problem with the language/location (mentioned above) and are very easy to install. If you plan on adding any other content do check the installation order instructions. If you haven't played any games of this sort, or any games older than 4/5 years, I would advise patience: approach this like you would approach a very thick book. The pace may be slower than you are used to at the beginning, the story will take longer to develop, your character will die and you will have to reload sometimes, but don't rush it, give it time and you will find yourself carried along in the story, just like in a very good book, and you will not want it to finish. After these, most modern videogames will feel shallow, no matter how nice they look. (And if even these feel too new-school for you, there is always Angband/Nethack...)

Lose yourself in the Sword Coast region of Forgotten Realms. The brilliant Baldurs Gate. This game has so many added extras available from fan sites. Quests over and above the original story created by fans of the series and even now many dedicated fansites with loads of help available. I was one of the unlucky ones who got the "this game can only be played in Canada and the U.S." but it's not really a problem as there is a patch available. Having said that I noticed there are two versions of this game available on this site. The one I got has the age restriction sticker on the bottom left corner of the DVD case in yellow and was £9-90 when I bought it. There is another available with the age sticker in the same place but white in colour priced £11-99 at the time of writing, this one also has a red Atari sticker on the bottom right. The latter looks to be the Atari release whereas mine is the Interplay release. I don't know if buying the Atari release will avoid the region problem but it might be worth a try.

I bought these games specifically from the UK so I would have games coded with the appropriate region code. Much to my surprise, the games showed up and the Tales of the Sword Coast expansion does not work as it is a USA/CANADA region version, so I cannot play it on my computer without changing the region settings (which I would prefer not to do). Pretty annoyed as I already had the USA/Canada version and bought these specifically from the UK to get correctly coded versions.

Arrived on time, no issues here. All installed fine, ToSC will not run requiring US region and , no matter what I set either my system to game settings will not resolve. BG itself without the expansion works fine, as does SoA.

They are old now and likely won't even run on modern PCs but at least you own the media if you can make it run now...

Bien

I used to play these games over and over back in 1998-2002. The baldur's gate series is fantastic and the gaming platform is one I enjoy. The updates to Baldur's Gate 2 make playing Baldur's Gate 1 again a little difficult. There were many improvements to gameplay. Thankfully, someone came up with Baldur's Gate TuTu. Look it up! It allows you to put Baldur's Gate 2's system updates onto Baldur's Gate 1. The biggest issue I have with this particular set is that I haven't been able to install it on my computer yet. For Baldur's Gate 1, when I put the game in, the load up screen appears. When I click on install, nothing happens. I'm still looking into it. I already had Icewind dale installed on my computer. When I put the expansion disk in (from the same type of compilation format BG is in), it plays. So I believe these disks work, I just don't know if installing BG on Windows 7 is the issue, my netbook, or the disks themselves.

Epic game

Marche sur xp mais pas Windows 11

LE meilleur des RPG sur PC, mais même remarque qu'Anthony : seulement 2 DVD au lieu de 4, les 2 extensions sont manquantes ! J'attends une réponse de DVDMAX à ce sujet.