Baldur's Gate: Enhanced Edition

Baldur's Gate for iPad

One of the gifts I got for Christmas was a $10 iTunes card that I promptly spent on getting Baldur's Gate: Enhanced Edition for my iPad.

Overall the game is fun, but it is a bit buggy and there has been a bit of a learning curve, not to mention some issues.

If you don't mind the occasional crash and the frustration of trying to accurately click on a specific container or portal, then you should enjoy this version of the game.  They designers are aware of most of the bugs and hopefully an update is in the works.


The biggest problem I've had is simply dealing with the touch interface.  It took me a while to discover one icon would show me what can be opened or entered and when I want to open/enter/pick-up something I will probably have to move my party out of the way and take one PC and click around until I find the magic spot.

Image Courtesy of G4TV.com

I have had a couple of interesting crashes and glitches.  After defeating one particularly nasty encounter I had only lost two PCs.  "Only" is significant because I had tried many times, getting a TPK (total party kill).  After finally making it I saved the game with both a quick-save and a regular save, before calling it a night.  When I started the game up again neither save was in there.

A couple of times the audio has gone "wonky" and there have been little issues here and there, but the game is still quite playable, as long as you save often.  The thing is, with this game you'd probably want to save often anyway.

Overall it has been a fun game but I wish that they'd spent a little more time polishing it up and removing some of the bugs.  The fact that some very basic design features are not covered in the tutorial tells me that the game was rushed.

I think play-ability of this game would end up being a matter of perspective.  If you were a fan of the original game(s) you'd most likely be willing to overlook the problems and if you'd never played this game before this edition's shortcomings would overshadow gameplay.