Given their age (and the fact that even at the time the games weren’t good looking) the graphics aren’t anything to impress (other than the gorgeous artwork), but this doesn’t really detract from the experience and neither does the isometric strategy game style viewpoint. The games’ core game play and its amazing characters (on top of the aforementioned storyline) carry it forward past the need for pretty visuals.

The game play in both Baldur’s Gate games is simple. Wander around large landscapes or dungeons fighting lots of baddies in turn based combat (that flows like real-time as opposed to Final Fantasy style). The game can be paused in combat and commands issued to your characters which make the bigger and more difficult battles very refined and based heavily on your strategy decisions. Also the second title (and its expansion Throne Of Bhaal) add some fiendish puzzles and riddles to the title adding a whole new dimension to the combat orientated gameplay of the original. There are hundreds of quests throughout the series to complete which involve and mix of your wits and combat tactics and the games (particularly the second instalment) maintain a feeling of freshness and variety through all these tasks you must complete.

Despite being made quite some years ago the series manages to maintain an addictive nature, and challenging levels of combat that can test even the most regular RPG player. The aforementioned sheer variety of subquests will also keep people digging out the games years later to see quests and outcomes they missed the first (or even second and third) time round.

The key highlight of the series of games for me is the cast. Bioware’s future efforts of Jade Empire and Neverwinter Nights II provide a better and more solid character interaction system but neither has provided such memorable or entertaining characters that are present in the Baldur’s Gate games. The dialogue from most of the cast is just brilliant. Minsc (and his deadly pet hamster Boo) for example stick in my mind as iconic RPG characters and will doubtless stay in the minds of all who play and enjoy the series. Other characters such as Jaheria or Viconia will also stick in my head as perhaps some of the most well realized companions you will ever find in a western role playing game and they didn’t even need to be 3D to achieve that.

Of course I won’t deny the series has its faults. The huge number of technically needless subquests can overcome plenty of people (I was myself when I first played the original game) and the first title in the series offers some incredibly dull wandering through pointless huge outdoor areas with little to do. However the second game did rectify this problem by making everything more compact and adding a level of linearity (from chapter 4 onwards) so the faults were rectified to a certain extent.

 When Baldur’s Gate was originally released as one of Bioware’s earliest projects, it came out promising a lot and the hype for the title was huge. Bioware to all intents and purposes managed to deliver a game that attracted new players while keeping the hardcore tabletop D&D fans happy. In doing so they reinvented the genre of Western RPG’s and developed a template almost all future role-playing games made in the west would draw from. A monumental achievement in itself.