Baldur’s Gate II: Enhanced Edition
This is Baldur’s Gate 2. You wouldn’t need something else to say.
But 2.0 update came out.
It did bring some improvements with it. Some spells and abilities were tweaked, a new class was added, some bugs fixed. Changes were made into a save system - now there are 4 slots for quicksaves. Cloudsaves and achievements were enabled. Off-hand weapons became equippable with launchers and two-handers, preventing constant jumping into inventory. Further zooming is enabled. That’s a good thing.
Some of the graphics was changed. Outlines were added for sprites, for instance. This gave the game a cartoonish look, turning them off replaced thick lines with thin ones thus retaining cartoon style.
– Real player with 325.8 hrs in game
Read More: Best RPG Dungeons & Dragons Games.
Baldur’s Gate II is the best role-playing game ever made.
It is everything that so-called RPGs of more recent times have forgotten: not defined by skill trees, vapid dialogue, time-wasting errands or how big the world is, but by its unparalleled depth, insane replay value through class variety and actual choice and consequence throughout the world.
“Ah, the child of Bhaal has awoken."
Awakening to a cold cell deep beneath the city of Athkatla, far to the south in the nation of Amn, you find yourself in over your head once again. It seems that no matter where the Bhaalspawn goes, fate and the latent power in your blood has a way of catching up in the end. After escaping, your path is set to figure out just what brought you into contact with this “Irenicus” you keep hearing whispers of… and what exactly the powers that be have in store for you.
– Real player with 225.9 hrs in game
Dragon Age: Origins
Dragon Age is a kind of game that is becoming increasingly rare: a deeply immersive single-player RPG with an interface clearly designed for the PC. It’s easy to sling around the word “immersive” at any game that looks pretty, but DA isn’t messing around - the world of Ferelden shows a unified sense of design and depth that blows even famously vast games like Oblivion out of the water. Coupled with consistently excellent writing and across-the-board quality character design even down to relatively unimportant NPCs, the game truly does feel like it’s reacting to your choices dynamically from the very beginning, and how you play your character can have amazingly subtle effects on the way the story unfolds.
– Real player with 466.3 hrs in game
Read More: Best RPG Story Rich Games.
Still the Best Game in its Franchise…
The first game I ever had on Steam. In fact, this game was the reason I got Steam in the first place. Bought the game upon it’s first day of release and I have been playing on and off over the years. Shame, I played this at least 3-4x the amount of hours it says on my profile offline, and I’ve not lost my interest in the game one-bit.
Rating(s):
Visuals & Graphics: 10/10
- It was very innovative during it’s time. I can remember all the HYPE it received months before release. Considering today’s present standards DA 1 Graphics is already a bit dated, but I will rate it accordingly to the time period it actually got released, and for that time’s standard’s it was one of the TOP.
– Real player with 416.7 hrs in game
Baldur’s Gate: Enhanced Edition
Baldur’s Gate is truly a masterpiece. Despite it’s beauty, tactical depth and great story, the game does not take itself too seriously. This cannot be said of many other leading RPG titles, which I soon begin to find rather corny. If you like RPGs and have not played Baldur’s Gate, then this is an absolute must, you do not even need to waste your time reading this review but of course you are welcome to. If you have played the original BG and are curious about Beamdog’s boob job, I share with you my opinion.
– Real player with 425.6 hrs in game
Read More: Best RPG Dungeons & Dragons Games.
Classics are often thought to be timeless for future generations to enjoy, but the same cannot be said for Baldur’s Gate—and it’s not because CRPGs are uncommon. To go blind into BG in 2016 is practically impossible because how modern expectations are at odds with the brutal accessibility of ’90s computer games.
Baldur’s Gate, simply put, is an sarcophagus; it is a coffin of a bygone time of design philosophies and of late ’90s player expectations, immersed in the counter-culture of D&D and of fantasy-fiction that is written in its code like hieroglyphics to modern eyes. The game’s reverence is both a nostalgic call-back as well as an appreciation of BG’s systems as a traditional role-playing experience.
– Real player with 203.9 hrs in game
Dragon Age: Origins - Ultimate Edition
Dragon Age: Origins is a God-Tier RPG. However I like to elaborate on my reviews, and so let me elaborate. I will try to keep spoilers to a minimum, but please note that I might let a couple things slip.
Now as a prelude, I’ll cover the gameplay, graphics and mechanics. Personally in RPGs this matters so little to me. I still play Fallout 2 and enjoy the hell out of KOTOR and Mass Effect. But…lets be real here. They suck. The graphics are…okay-ish? The gameplay has the pacing of tetris and the mechanics are just…old. None of it is fast paced nor are there any really cool abilities looks-wise. None of this is important to me, in fact, its clunkiness brings out a personal enjoyment. But yeah…its definitely really aged. It would also be remiss of me not to mention the fact that the game is ancient, and therefore crashes on newer PCs. About once an hour for me personally. Now I was able to fix it by way of a guide a while back, but going into it expect performance to be less than stellar. Now onto the meat.
– Real player with 182.8 hrs in game
❤ Audience ❤
☑ Beginner
☑ Casual
☑ Hardcore
☼ Graphics ☼
☐ Bad
☑ Alright
☐ Good
☐ Beautiful
☐ Fantastic
♬ Music ♬
☐ Bad
☐ Alright
☐ Good
☐ Beautiful
☑ Fantastic
☠ Difficulty ☠
☐ Easy
☑ Average
☐ Challenging
☐ Hard
☐ Brutal
§ Bugs §
☐ Bugs make the game almost unplayable
☐ Lots of bugs
☑ Few bugs
☐ Insignificant or contains humorous glitches
☐ None encountered during normal gameplay
☯ Story ☯
☐ There is none
☐ Bad
☐ Alright
☐ Good
☑ Fantastic
⚔ Gameplay ⚔
☐ Frustrating
☐ Repetitive
☐ Boring
– Real player with 170.9 hrs in game
Child of Light
Funshine Bear was hurtling towards my screen with sniper precision. My 7-year old daughter is a stuffed toy-throwing expert. She really fell in love with the lead heroine, Aurora, and each dramatic encounter would leave her aghast as the story unfolded. In this case a plushie bear attack was warranted as Child of Light got real right there. Funshine Bear might have lost a bit of stuffing too. The game was my choice for our daddy-daughter gaming nights and we enjoyed it so much, it warranted two playthroughs.
– Real player with 40.1 hrs in game
My review for Child of Light:
First of all, I’m going to address 2 concerns that I found in Steam community hub:
1. Uplay
Those who’re going to buy this game should know that this game is going to use Uplay, Ubisoft own game client. I noticed that many people dislike Uplay for certain reason so gonna respect that. I have my own issue with Uplay as well. So if you want to buy this game, make sure you know what you’re getting into.
2. Day 1 DLC
When the game is released, the dev put several DLCs immediately, including Golem DLC and Dark Aurora DLC which is the Special Edition bonus DLCs, Light Aurora DLC which is the preorder bonus and several “cheat” DLC which you can buy extra oculis for your game. Golem DLC gives you a new party member and a small quest to get him, while Light Aurora and Dark Aurora DLC give you skins for Aurora and extra oculis and bonus stats. The “cheat” DLC is actually consists of oculis, which means you can buy the oculis using real money once. Among these DLCs, only Golem DLC adds a bit of content while the skins just for eye candy. As much as I hate day 1 DLC, if you want to support the dev, buy the Golem and the skins DLC only. Of course you can ignore the DLCs if you don’t want to support day 1 DLCs. I myself didn’t bought any of the DLCs except Light Aurora since I preorder it.
– Real player with 36.8 hrs in game
Icewind Dale: Enhanced Edition
I hesitated honestly to recommend it, but Beamdog has been doing bugfixes still in 2020-2021 (!), so that certainly deserves respect and appreciation as such! (Beamdog is the company responsible for the Enhanced Edition. The original was developed by Black Isle Studios [Fallout 1-2, Planescape].)
Though it looks like Baldur’s Gate 1 and 2 (same engine, though not the same designers), the design and story are very different. I highly recommend playing BG1 and 2 in priority. IWD is much more linear (though I like the ambiance), with very little choices, and the AD&D rules used in BG1 and BG2 were butchered a bit in IWD. Although the rules are very similar, many of the character statistics have changed. The game balance (difficulty) is sometimes very odd in IWD. Many creatures can hit -15 AC easily (beyond rolling natural 20 which are always automatic hits in all those games). In terms of being linear, it is more of a dungeon crawl, from point A to point B, and so it is not a region to explore in an uncertain order à la BG2 or Fallout. And, really, sometimes your party is crawling forward under waves of creatures to slay.
– Real player with 155.9 hrs in game
Having never played neither D&D or an Infinity engine game before, I was pleasantly surprised by just how much value was put on the table in Icewind Dale: EE, not just as a videogame, but also as an introductory of sorts to D&D for new players.
Right of the bat you’re given the option to create a party of six (though you can choose to roll with a smaller party, or even solo the whole game) with a ludicrous amount of customization at your fingertips. For those new to the whole thing such as myself at the time, the options available might seem too overwhelming at first with all the different races, classes, weapon proficiencies, etc. Needless to say I’d spent the first few hours just to setup my party. This is a good thing.
– Real player with 129.7 hrs in game
Kingdoms of Amalur: Reckoning™
I can’t recommend this game any higher than any other game. Please don’t miss out on this; I will literally proselytize this game to the world. This game is incredible! I hate when people say it’s generic and bland… they echo each other’s complaints to the letter and it’s very obvious that people hear something about a game and repeat it without having a real reason why. Sure, everyone can have their opinion, but this game is a masterpiece! They put work into it- real work. For an original IP, it’s ambitious! For a combat/class style like this, it’s innovative! There is so much in this game and the developers really care about it. Go ahead and play Skyrim. It’s like the missionary style of RPGs- it’s great and classic, sure, but the real pioneer, adventurer freaks play this game.
– Real player with 580.1 hrs in game
Oh boy, this game.
Well, it’s fun, the combat is very fast paced and fun, you can do a lot of moves with your skills and magic and abilities, you can combine them or charge them for a more powerful attack.
This game is HUGE, the map is VERY HUGE, there are a lot of dungeons and there is like 300 or 400 side quests to be done, but it is very unlikely that you will want to do every single one, you see, most of them, most of the quests are like the generic MMO quests (grab question with NPC kill x things collect x things go back to NPC), but there is a lot of side quests very well done and with a nice story.
– Real player with 161.3 hrs in game
The Witcher 2: Assassins of Kings Enhanced Edition
This game was made for Team Triss 😍!
And oh yeah, its a great rpg in the Witcher franchise, you wont be disappointed!
– Real player with 130.8 hrs in game
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– Real player with 98.1 hrs in game
Pillars of Eternity
I’ve always consider the progress of graphics and telling stories with well made CG instead of words are good things for game industry, I thought the stunning graphics could bring the game world closer to us than the classic literature did.
Yet I found myself totally immersed by Eroa ,in this game than I’ve ever been in other games before, the astunning details I read from these words,just makes me questioning if the game industry is on the right path consider all those games with great power of graphics but turn out to be a total nightmare.
– Real player with 94.0 hrs in game
The game is just inredibly boring for me, never played it more than couple of hours from the start. Comparing to old BG/IWD series and Planescape:Tormet the only advantage of PoI is the graphic.
Game mechanics like allowing to sleep only when you have camp wood or some enemy beetles opening a door you close a moment earlier to hide from it is just lame.
– Real player with 87.4 hrs in game
Divine Divinity
After finally finishing this gem of a game I can only but recommend this game to any RPG lover out there. Beneath the now dated graphics lies a sound game with a complex world, rich lore and funny little gameplay gimmicks that made me smile a lot.
The good:
-
Rich lore, decent story (if a bit cliché by now)
-
Plenty of content (Took me appr. 70 hours to finish)
-
Pretty extensive and flexible RPG elements (create whatever character you like as you go)
-
Easy to get into, but challenges along the way
– Real player with 74.5 hrs in game
Divine Divinity
Date of this review: 15 March 2018
Update (25 April 2018): Formatting fixes
DISCLAIMER: I would like to point out that I likely achieved 100% completion in this game. Because it is so old, there are not achivements so I can’t be sure, but I did complete every quest that is listed in online guides, and I fully explored every map.
===Notes About Me===
Graphics/Animation: I usually don’t care about; I still play NES games occasionally.
– Real player with 71.7 hrs in game