My first thought upon starting Baldur’s Gate: Enhanced Edition was, “Where’s Nietzsche?” Exactly 14 years ago today, the German philosopher’s quote about staring too long into the abyss would set the mood for the hours I would spend staring into the abyss of my screen with BioWare’s ambitious RPG, and its absence in the opening cinematic of this upstart version imparted visions of coming disappointments. Back in 1998, my Southern kin still feared this Dungeons & Dragons “foolishness,” and the sight of this proto-Hitchens’ words both appealed to my freshman optimism and evolving sense of Schadenfreude. My worries about the Enhanced Edition grew as I saw the admittedly primitive cinematic featuring Sarevok and the hapless soldier swapped for mere illustrations, which perhaps wouldn’t have been so bad if they hadn’t cut one of the soldier’s key lines. Things were looking grim, and I wasn’t even a minute in.

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The good news is that these concerns largely end once the title screen emerges from a pool of blood. This is still the Baldur’s Gate I knew and loved (complete with the Tales of the Sword Coast expansion), particularly if I’d smothered it with mods over the intervening 14 years. Oddly enough, that’s also one of its problems. At times, such as when you open the graphic options only to find nothing more than a toggle for full screen, all this "enhanced" business feels like a load of hogwash. The world of Faerun itself looks much as it did when I first booted it to escape the nonstop coverage of Bill Clinton's impeachment hearings, although a new option to zoom in and out of the action wisely stops just short of letting you study the sprites in all their pixelated glory. Higher resolution textures and improved spell animations enhance the visual experience for HD to a degree, but on a whole the project still looks its age.The Enhanced Edition introduces plenty of tweaks, but they're so quietly woven into the interface that you may find it hard to believe Overhaul's done much at all if you haven’t played in a few years. Erased, allegedly, are more than 400 bugs that plagued the original, although my playthrough suggests that several new bugs made their way in as well. At one point, one of my party’s NPCs started receiving insane XP gains after each battle. Reloading my save fixed the problem.The old, blurry GUI remains more or less intact aside from a widescreen modification, but its background colors now have a dubious tendency toward blues rather than greens and grays. The cumbersome inventory screen makes a comeback, but now it benefits from an expanded ground slot and improved tooltips designed to ease the entry for contemporary audiences less attuned to old school AD&D debates over THAC0 and saving throws. Gone are the cumbersome quest logs that demanded flipping through successive pages; in their place, we find the familiar drop-down toggles of contemporary games. Smaller improvements such as highlighted targets abound, and players who aren’t keen on creating their own characters with expanded options that include the class kits from Baldur’s Gate II can choose from a selection of premades.Yet the Enhanced Edition manages to distinguish itself through a few standout additions. For one, there’s the Black Pits, a gladiatorial mode that throws you in 15 increasingly difficult battles of enemies for the amusement of Baeloth the Entertainer. It's fun, but I spent most of my time fighting the same battles to earn enough XP and gold for gear in the Black Pits shop to tackle the higher rounds with confidence. I found it most useful for experimenting with tactical battles to prepare for similar challenges in the campaign, and it contains just enough voiced story--complete with surprisingly adept voice acting--to keep it from feeling like a tacked-on sideshow feature. New players may enjoy using it for combat practice, as Baldur’s Gate remains as challenging as it ever was. Then as now, if you’re not prepared, it’s possible that you’ll find yourself dead after your first encounter with some run-of-the-mill assassin while still within the walls of Candlekeep. In an age when words like “enhanced” all too often carry the stain of oversimplification when applied to refurbished classics, Overhaul Games’ refusal to sacrifice the challenge of Baldur’s Gate warrants applause.Other substantial changes to the Enhanced Edition come in the form of the three new heroes waiting to join you on your adventure. My favorite was Neera, a "wild mage" with an endearing demeanor that recalls the Merrills and Nymphadora Tonkses of the wizarding world, especially when her spells produced effects that barely outmatch her personality in their randomness. Then there’s Dorn Il-Khan, a dour warrior who you’ll meet grumbling around the Friendly Arm Inn, as well as the initially weak monk Rasaad yn Bashir, who’s showing off his tattoos to the folks at Nashkel. It’s a great credit to Overhaul that these three fit into the existing narrative as though they’ve always been there, and the roughly four hours you’ll spend on each of their quests reward you with engaging writing and an experience that’s at least on par with the rest of your adventures. Considering that there’s already over an hundred hours of gameplay in store in your existing tale as the ward of Gorion, that’s a decent addition.But do all the enhancements make it worth the purchase? It depends on your investment in the original. It’s worth mentioning that I played the Enhanced Edition on the PC, and I can attest that any player who’s already played a modded version of the original won’t find much reason to spend $20 on this entry save for the conveniences of the built-in enhancements. It thus seems aimed at a newer generation, but members of that generation will still have to adjust to its outdated mechanics and graphics. If they do, they’ll find that one of the greatest RPGs of all time has aged well enough to justify spending the extra $10 for bonus content and a pile of tweaks, as even now it captures a spark of what attracted so many of us to Advanced Dungeons and Dragons in those early days of the internet. The story itself remains as engaging as ever (if somewhat generic), and you need only to play for an hour to appreciate how Baldur’s Gate's release marked a renaissance in high fantasy RPGs that continues to this day. If Overhaul manages to deliver on the cross-platform multiplayer gameplay with the upcoming mobile versions, that may be enough to establish this effort as the unequivocal superior to BioWare’s original