Baldur's Gate

aka: Battleground Infinity, Bode zhi Men, Forgotten Realms: Iron Throne, Puerta de Baldur, Wrota Baldura
Moby ID: 712
Windows Specs
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Description official descriptions

Candlekeep is an ancient fortress situated on the rural Sword Coast. Recently, inexplicable events have been plaguing this quiet place, which has long become a large library where men of wisdom and knowledge can study in peace. Unknown mercenaries try to enter the walls of Candlekeep, interested in a seemingly ordinary and unimportant young person - an orphan who was taken in by the mage Gorion and treated by him as his own child. One night, Gorion decides to leave Candlekeep and take his adopted child to a safe place. However, as they leave the fortress, they are ambushed by a group of assassins. The orphan manages to escape, but Gorion dies in battle.

The gates of Candlekeep are locked, because its inhabitants are afraid to attract to themselves the wrath of the mysterious attackers. Only Imoen, another child who was brought up by Gorion and has been like a sister to the protagonist, is willing to share the uncertain future. The two have nothing, no place to call their home, only a wide hostile world in front of them. A long and perilous journey begins there.

Baldur's Gate is a role-playing game that uses the rule set of Advanced Dungeons & Dragons (AD&D). Set in the universe of Forgotten Realms, the game is the first part of the saga that lets the player explore various towns, wilderness areas and dungeons, undertake many side quests, and find companions for the long journey. The player creates the hero(ine) by selecting his or her class, choosing between fighter, thief, mage, priest, ranger, and druid (including sub-classes, dual- and multi-class characters); alignment (Good-Evil and Lawful-Chaotic axis), and weapon proficiencies. The 2nd edition AD&D rules are applied in the game during combat, character leveling, class restrictions, etc.

Up to six player-controlled characters can participate in combat. Battles occur in the same environment as exploration, and flow in real time, though the player is able to pause combat at any time to issue precise commands to any of the characters. Once the game is unpaused, the characters repeat the last action selected by the player until it is changed or becomes impossible to execute. Characters can freely move during battles; party formation and positioning in combat play a significant role.

Spellings

  • Ворота Бальдура - Russian spelling
  • バルダーズ・ゲート - Japanese spelling
  • 博德之门 - Simplified Chinese spelling
  • 柏德之門 - Traditional Chinese spelling

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Credits (Windows version)

375 People (324 developers, 51 thanks) · View all

Reviews

Critics

Average score: 90% (based on 56 ratings)

Players

Average score: 4.1 out of 5 (based on 295 ratings with 17 reviews)

A fantastic adaption of the AD&D world.

The Good
Oi, pretty much everything is good in Baldur's Gate, but I'll try to keep it short. Well, the character generation is easy and pretty, and yet still detailed enough to make it interesting and fun to play around with. As for in-game stuff, I must say that the control interface is really great, as it gives you the option to assign keys to every action, every spell, every item....you get the point. It's easy and fast, even if you stick with your mouse (but why oh why?) and choose not to use the keyboard commands. Design-wise it is very very tight, with an excellent storyline and non-player characters with personality. You notice their personality as you do things or ask them to do things for you ("Sleep lightly, Taskmaster!", whispers Montaron, whenever you ask him to do something). On top of all this, there are tons of fun and quirky details, which adds alot to the atmosphere.

Combat is a breeze aswell. It takes place in real-time, and all you have to do is click (or press a key) and things will happen. Very simple and neat. But what makes it great is the 'pause' option. By pressing space you'll pause the game while you assign actions to your party. This is essential in most larger battles, as it's real easy to loose track of things. Great feature. As for the graphics and the sounds, they're both great. Really nice isometric world with all the right animal sounds, plus the usual howling and growling.

All in all, Baldur's Gate is a well-designed, detail-rich game with pretty spells and bloody sword-fights. And heaps of quests to finish! Almost the perfect role-playing game (if you're into that kinda thing).

The Bad
The only thing that really annoyed me in the long run was the travelling. Though the system is better than most games (Baldur's Gate has divided the world into several smaller areas, giving you a mix between point-and-click travelling and instant travel), it can still get tedious to walk the realms. But that is such a minor complaint when everything else is so darn good.

The Bottom Line
A great role-playing game that should satisfy everyone from a neophyte of the genre to the hardened AD&D fanatic. Simply stunning.

Windows · by faceless (438) · 2000

A groundbreaking RPG

The Good
Everything. First of all, the graphics: great, awesome, stunning, realistic, and the ability to import your own "custom" portraits if you don't like the ones the game has to offer, who could ask for more? Next, the sounds: interesting music, every character has their own voice which reflects their personality, and again you can use your own custom voices for the game (I even recorded my own voice speaking my character's lines). Thirdly, the AI: Your characters will become happy or upset depending on their alignment and your actions. I have actually had a couple of evil-aligned party members walk out on me because I kept doing good deeds and raising my reputation to the "heroic" level. Fourth: the game engine. Why can't all RPGs use this engine? It certainly is innovative, and user-friendly, and generally just the best RPG engine I've ever seen. Those who don't like the engine really show that they have not played the game very much. And lastly: replayability. Very much so. There are literally hundreds of side quests, and you will probably play the game several times before you find them all (I've had this game since it first came out, and I still haven't found all of them). Also, the Tales of the Sword Coast add-on adds four or five new areas to explore, with new treasures and magic items which cannot be found elsewhere in the game.

The Bad
The only problem I had with the game was the fact that you could not equip more than one form of magical protection on the same character (like a Ring of Protection +1 could not be equipped on my thief because she was already wearing Shadow Armor). There is nothing in the AD&D rules about this being forbidden. Whose idea was that?

The Bottom Line
If you are a hard-core RPG player, I would not tell you to get this game, because if you truly are, you already have it. Truly an epic game, and already a classic six short years later.

Windows · by Christopher Sutler (6) · 2005

Excellent game! Definitely worth it.

The Good
Baldur's Gate's plot is brilliant! The graphics are really good, especially considering the game's age, the gameplay is good, and it has a very user friendly interface. Overall it's a very good game.

The Bad
There were a couple things I didn't like. No matter how long you play, your character still remains pretty weak. I also didn't like the limitation on the number of people in your party, and the limitation on magic items.

The Bottom Line
This is a great game! I would recommend it.

Windows · by Dave Kbrana (1) · 2002

[ View all 17 player reviews ]

Discussion

Subject By Date
Remake Patrick Bregger (298879) Jun 6, 2013

Trivia

Cancelled Dreamcast and PlayStation ports

A Playstation 5-disc version was revealed to be in the works by Interplay on October 25, 1999. It was to be ported by UK developer Runecraft but on March 29, 2000 it was put "on hold" and never saw the light of day. Howewer, years later a nearly finished and working prototype was found and "leaked" to the net by an anonymous collector.

A Dreamcast port was also in the works during that time, but was dropped by SEGA for an unspecified reason in 2000.

Drizzt Do'Urden

Though he appears only once in the game, the legendary Drizzt Do'Urden makes a brief but sweet (and rewarding) guest appearance in a certain part of the game. Drizzt is a very famous D&D character that sprung from the Dark Elf Trilogy of forgotten realms-based novels by R.A. Salvatore.

German version

In the German version all blood and splatter animations were removed.

Graveyards

Visit the cemetery in one of the towns, and you'll be able to read many funny inscriptions on the graves. An example: "Here lies an atheist, all dressed up, and no place to go".

Narrator (Spoiler!)

The same person voices Sarevok (the hero's main adversary) and the narrator in the game. This might be a coincidence, but in Icewind Dale, another AD&D game by Black Isle, the ultimate evil and narrator are done by the same person again, and in that game it's a plot point.

Novel

Wizards of the Coast published a novelization of this game in 1999, written by Forgotten Realms series editor Philip Athans.

Remake

A fan-made remake called Baldur's Gate Reloaded was released as mod for Neverwinter Nights 2 in June 2013.

Sales

In 1999, Baldur's Gate has won the Gold-Award from the German VUD (Verband der Unterhaltungssoftware Deutschland - Entertainment Software Association Germany) for selling more then 100,000 (but less then 200,000) units in Germany, Austria and Switzerland.

Awards

  • Computer Gaming World
    • April 1999 (Issue #177) – Best RPG of the Year
  • GameSpy
    • 2001 – #36 Top Game of All Time
  • GameStar (Germany)
    • Issue 12/1999 - #31 in the "100 Most Important PC Games of the Nineties" ranking
  • Origin
    • 1998 - Best Role-Playing Computer Game
  • PC Gamer
    • April 2000 - #9 in the "Magazine's Readers All-Time Top 50 Games" poll
    • April 2005 - #11 in the "50 Best Games of All Time" list
  • PC Player (Germany)
    • Issue 01/2000 - Best RPG in 1999
  • Power Play
    • Issue 02/1999 – Best Isometric RPG in 1998
  • Verband der Unterhaltungssoftware Deutschland<
    • 1999 - Gold Award

Information also contributed by Alan Chan, Chris Martin, PCGamer77, Pseudo_Intellectual, Scaryfun, Unicorn Lynx and Xoleras

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Related Games

Baldur's Gate II: Throne of Bhaal
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Related Sites +

  • Baldurdash
    A site by Kevin Dorner of Bioware containing unofficial bug fixes for both Baldur's Gate and Tales of the Sword Coast that weren't corrected by any of the official patches.
  • Baldurs Gate Trilogy
    A German Fansite - containing detailed item, spell, monster, and NPC descriptions (with stats), and others
  • Mike's Baldur's Gate pages
    A great Baldur's Gate resource site. Maps, weapons/armor, potions, spells, walkthroughs and much more.
  • Planet Baldur's Gate
    Everything about the Baldur's Gate serie, also including other games from the same publisher.
  • Pocket Plane Group
    Pocket Plane Group publishes a number of detailed mods for Baldur's Gate and other Infinity Engine games. BG1 projects include the BG1Tutu engine converter and the Indira NPC for BG1Tutu.

Identifiers +

  • MobyGames ID: 712
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Contributors to this Entry

Game added by faceless.

Macintosh added by Kabushi.

Additional contributors: Zovni, Unicorn Lynx, Jeanne, Rantanplan, a2136*tds354o12ng, JRK, Alaka, FloodSpectre, Xoleras, jean-louis, Jason Compton, Virgil, Ms. Tea, Paulus18950, Patrick Bregger, Dimi Morabito.

Game added January 9, 2000. Last modified March 28, 2024.