Product Details

• Amazon Sales Rank: #1013 in Computer & Video Games
• Brand: Atari
• Released on: 2006-06-30
• ESRB Rating: Rating Pending
• Platform: Windows XP

Manufacturer's Description
Baldur's Gate
Baldur's Gate takes you back to the Forgotten Realms campaign setting on a visually dazzling role-playing adventure, one that brings to life the grand tradition of the Advanced Dungeons & Dragons game through cutting edge art and technology. Immerse yourself in this quintessential medieval fantasy world, where nations hang in the balance of your actions, dark prophecies test your resolve, and heroic dreams can be fulfilled at last.

Baldur's Gate: Tales of the Swordscoast
Continue your travels on the Sword Coast with the next set of adventurers in the award-winning Baldur's Gate role-playing game series. Legends of treasures lost and monsters to be defeated abound in the region. Almost all have at least some basis in truth. Are you up to the task?

Baldur's Gate II: Shadows of Amn
Baldur's Gate II expands the Baldur's Gate world by bringing you a new set of adventures set in the nation of Amn. Baldur's Gate II has a large central, nonlinear plotline which is broken down into 7-8 chapters, with lots of subquests and small adventures thrown in for variety. The number of item recovery type quests has been greatly diminished and there are be more class- and alignment-specific quests.

Baldur's Gate II: Throne of Bhaal
Baldur's Gate II: Throne of Bhaal greatly extends the Baldur's Gate II experience, with approximately 40 hours of additional adventures. Explore the lands of Tethyr as an epic conflict wreaks devastation on a scale never before seen in the Forgotten Realms campaign world

Customer Reviews

Best... Game... Ever.
This Baldur's Gate collection gets you both games and their respective expansions - total value for money. Each game comes on a DVD (with the exp. on a seperate CD), so you don't have to change CDs like in the old days. All areas are accessible from their DVD, and from the expansion CD once you engage the expansion. The game isn't very resource demanding either (minimum CPU 300MHz, 64Mb RAM, DVD-ROM), so you don't need a top-of-the-line gaming PC to play it. Simple, cheap and a world of fun... hence the quote from the geek from "The Simpsons": Best... game... ever.

The game itself is an absolute gem. Starting out in the small town of Candlekeep in BG1, you set out on a quest to learn about your heritage and find your place in the world. Sound simple? Well, it ain't. As the story goes on, the web is spun ever greater and so is the world you inhabit. A great amount of subquests help you find yourself and shape your character... you choose your path towards good or evil - or something in between - and build your party of followers and friends accordingly. You will fight (a lot!) your way through the various areas (and reload whenever you die), killing monsters, adventurers, bounty hunters and bad guys and becoming very, very strong doing it. You choose your alignment (good/neutral/evil) in the beginning of the game, and what type of character you want to be: fighter, spellcaster, thief... and you set your abilities: what kind of weapons you're good at using, your strength vs. intelligence, constitution etc. As you level up from all the experience, you continue to advance in these skills, becoming quite a character.

The story line is one of the most impressive I've seen in a game; the continuous progression throughout both games, the inclusion of the quests and subquests in said story as well as the development of relationships between the people in your party just sucks you in and presto! it's three in the morning and you begin to consider staying home from school to play some more.

Seriously, there's a reason why this game has a huge pack of fans around the globe. It contains so many races, so many stories, so many things to collect, sell, buy and use for your benefit... so many people, so many areas, so much to do that after a while you begin feeling like it's actually your REAL life going on inside that monitor in front of you. Just the way we geeks want it...

The best PC-RPG Series of all time for a tenner.
If Final Fantasy VII is considered the pinnacle of console RPGs, then Baldur's Gate is most definetely considered the pinnacle of computer RPGs. This is simply one of the best series of games ever made, and any RPG fan simply cannot afford to not play it (and since the whole series is available for a tenner, you don't exactly have an excuse not to do so!)

Pros:
-One of the best RPG series ever of all time for ten pounds. I haven't seen a bargain like that for a while.
-Make your own unique character from scratch in Baldur's Gate 1, and then after completing the first game, import them into Baldur's Gate 2 for true continuity and continue the saga.
-100+ hours of pure RPG bliss, with an epic storyline to match.
-Although the storyline does follow a set path, there are no restrictions in party members. Does your childhood friend Imoen annoy the hell out of you? Then dump her in the inn (or kill her if you are feeling particularly evil) and go off gallivanting with the Halfing pirate and insane necromancer instead!
-A horde of sidequests that can distract you from the main story-path for hours on end.
-Choose your character's allignment (from 'goody-goody two shoes' to 'completely neutral' to 'murderous lunatic'.
-Unlike the original releases, every part of the series is just 1 DVD, which creates a lot less hassle.

Cons:
-Despite the fact the game comes on DVDs you still can't avoid disk swapping at certain parts if you install all the expansions. For this reason I'd put off installing the expansions until you're at a point when you can make use of the expansion content (basically end-game or when you reach the experience-cap).
-Similarly to games like Black and White who let you decide to either be naughty or nice, the good and evil aspect isn't exactly balanced. Generally the rewards for playing good are superior to taking an evil option (and sometimes there isn't a clear-cut evil option available at all).
-Since Baldur's Gate 2 isn't able to check what characters are dead and alive during your playthrough of the first game, if you play through both games you might find characters who you accidentally got beaten to death by a pack of gnolls being A-okay again (and the story of the second game also assumes you had a certain party-setup which you probably didn't). This can't really be helped though, since it would have been difficult to drive the story on if all the major characters were absent since you killed them during Baldur's Gate 1!

But these aren't REALLY cons, just some of the things I spotted and said 'That could have been slightly better'.

RPG fan or no, you have no excuse not to play this incredible series.

Watch out for North American problem
Just wanted to alert people that Atari seem to have shipped some of these box sets with a US/Canada set-up.
Was a bit miffed when I installed the first two CDs, tried to play and got a "only playable in US or Canada" message.
In case you end up with one of these, don't panic as downloading the UK patch from the BioWare website (the original game developers) will solve this.
As for a review - Baldur's Gate is a great RPG that, despite being a little dated now, is still up there because of its excellent gameplay. To get the whole series for under a tenner seems incredible value (better put a couple of weeks aside when it arrives to get through it all!).