Baldur’s Gate is an attempt to translate a Dungeons & Dragons campaign into video game form, as best as late-90s technology would allow. You start as a character of your own creation (following the same process you would use to create a character in D&D), who is a young man or woman who has spent most of their life in a fortress of monks known as Candlekeep and was raised by a kindly mage called Gorion (which is why in online discussions they’re often referred to as “Gorion’s Ward”). Your life has generally been calm and idyllic, but one day a man in Candlekeep tries to assassinate you. Gorion tells you that Candlekeep is no longer safe, and so that night you leave—but are intercepted by an imposing man in black armor. He murders Gorion, who creates an opening to escape. You’re soon joined by Imoen, your childhood friend, who snuck out of Candlekeep to join you. You and Imoen are thus left to fend for yourself on the Sword Coast, and discover who the man in black armor was and what he wanted with you.
Pretty standard stuff as far as D&D pitches, other than the fact that everything centers around one person rather than all party members. Gorion tells you to meet some of his allies at the Friendly Arm Inn, which is pretty easy to find, but after that you are free to explore as you please.
Baldur’s Gate operates in real time (that can be freely paused) from an isometric view on a series of pre-drawn maps. The game world is essentially a massive grid, and venturing to a new area for the first time requires entering from the appropriate edge of a neighboring area. So despite the limited graphics and technology, Baldur’s Gate actually does a great job of instilling a sense of adventure and exploration, as you need to physically trek across the game world as you initially traverse it, and each area usually has at least one quest or unique encounter. (From the overworld you can travel directly to any other area connected to the overworld you’ve already visited, so thankfully you won’t be walking back and forth the entire game world.)
As a D&D game, Baldur’s Gate features the core components of the tabletop game: questing, dungeoneering, and fighting. Talking to NPCs is straightforward enough, and when doing so you typically get multiple possible responses at each step of the conversation. Dungeons often have traps, hidden treasure and caches, and sometimes objects you can interact with. And finally, there’s combat.
Dungeons & Dragons is a tabletop wargame where you control the intricacies of a single character, so translating that to a video game results in some… oddities. Baldur’s Gate is dated, and combat may be where that fact is felt the most. There are two related issues: characters have too many options to micromanage six of them, and there is very little feedback in combat.
As I mentioned previously, Baldur’s Gate operates in real time. But it also operates in six-second rounds, with each character able to make only a certain number of attacks or actions per round. However, without feedback, it’s difficult if not impossible to make proper tactical calls. If you debuff an enemy, it’s impossible to tell if it actually affected them or how long the debuff will last, and that’s before even considering how to take advantage of the opening with your attackers. There is a combat log, but it displays only a very limited amount of information. For instance, with regards to saving throws, it tells you if an enemy succeeds at the saving throw and their final result, but nothing else…. That means you don’t know their modifier or even the save DCs for your own spells, so you can’t figure out the creature’s odds of making the save. There’s no message if the monster fails the save, making it tough to tell when your spells go through (like I said with the debuffs). The most information comes from attack rolls, which do display the base result, modifier, and whether it hits or miss, but these tend to clog up the combat log, which has no search feature.
When you only have a vague sense of what’s going on, giving nuanced orders to six unique units becomes quite challenging. Just keeping track of each character’s class abilities, active items, and spells become tough as the party grows in level, but deploying them properly without an understanding of the combat situation is impossible. If combat status was properly conveyed to the player, perhaps tactical play would be doable with a lot of pausing. At the end of the day the intricacies of a turn-based wargame just don’t function well in a low-information RTS.
That’s why my strategy in Baldur’s Gate was, generally, to just throw my party at the enemy and hope for the best. Equipping the entire party with ranged options was great, since then the enemy would often be severely weakened (if not outright defeated) by the time they reached the party. If my party lost the slugfest I’d reload, cast buffs on my party, and try again. This actually worked pretty well for most of the saga.
The issue arises when the games start constantly throwing enemies with spellcasting abilities at you. Not because of offensive abilities, but because of protection spells. Baldur’s Gate has a bunch of protection spells that can protect the caster from various types of attacks and spells, as well as spells that can pierce through and remove protection spells. Each removal spell will only work on a certain subset of protection spells, and honestly a magical battle where each wizard tries to get through the other wizard’s protection while maintaining their own by pulling out the appropriate spells based on what their opponent is casting is pretty cool.
But Baldur’s Gate never gives you combat information. If you attack the enemy the game will tell you your attack is ineffective, but that’s it. The combat log actually does tell you each spell the enemy casts, but with the constant messages in the log that information is tough to retain and parse. Even if the game tells you when the enemy puts up protection, it doesn’t tell you if your attempt to remove it is successful or not. As a result, figuring out what protections the enemy has up, and when their defenses are down and they’re free to attack, is a huge pain.
So instead of getting down and dirty with wizard battles, I cut the Gordian knot and picked up a party member that had a super-powered dispel magic ability. Instead of worrying about the enemy’s buffs and protections, I’d just wipe them all away. The issue is that dispel magic also affected me and my party’s buffs, reducing fights (back) to basic slugfests. Theoretically I should have been able to use dispel magic on the enemy while my party was out of range… but Baldur’s Gate gives no combat information, and that includes range indicators for abilities, so it was easier to just operate on the assumption that I wouldn’t have buffs.
And this isn’t to say that the combat in Baldur’s Gate is bad, but it’s essentially a small-scale RTS and completely unlike the tactical tabletop wargame even though it technically includes a lot of the same features and mechanics.
Character-building, one of the core appeals of D&D, is also not conveyed very well in Baldur’s Gate. Initial creation is actually fine. You choose your race, class, appearance, and voice set, just like in D&D. You have to roll for stats, but then can freely reallocate your total. You can reroll as many times as you want (and the game even tells you your stat total), so your stats are basically dependent on how long you’re willing to sit there mashing the reroll button until you hit a 90+ total.
This is also where we start to get into the character-building issues, as the game isn’t particularly clear on what the different stats do. Charisma sometimes affects dialogue options, but Intelligence and Wisdom are basically useless unless you’re a spellcaster who uses that stat. The mechanics that use mental stats have mostly been removed, while everyone needs physical stats because of the way that combat plays out. In this version of D&D, Strength has a weird quirk where it hits percentages between 18 and 19 (so you could have a strength of “18/45,” which is like 18.45), and it’s never made clear exactly how or why that works, or how it translates mechanically.
Taking a single class is straightforward, but if you want a character to have two (or more!) things get convoluted. In modern 5e, you can dual class by simply taking additional levels in another class, which any character can do as long as they meet the stat requirements. Baldur’s Gate has two separate systems: dual classing for humans and multi-classing for other races.
A multi-classed character literally has both classes at once: they have a separate level for each class, all experience they gain is evenly divided among their classes, and they gain the benefits (and sometimes drawbacks) of all their classes. Because leveling experience grows exponentially, a multi-classed character’s class levels will often only be a few behind single-classed characters. The classes available for multi-class also depend on the race of the character.
On the other hand, a dual class character starts off as a normal character. At any point they can choose to dual class into a class they meet the requirements for. They will then immediately lose all benefits of their initial class and become a level 1 character of their new class, until they become a level one greater than the level of their first class when they dual classed, at which point all features from their first class will turn back on. However, once a character dual classes, all experience they gain goes to their second class, meaning dual classing locks in their progress on their first class. For instance, if a level 5 cleric dual classes into fighter, they will lose all cleric abilities and become a level 1 fighter. When they reach level 6 as fighter their level 5 cleric abilities will return, but all future experience will continue to go only towards fighter levels.
So multi-classing allows a character to balance between two classes, while dual classing is good for a measured dip into a specified class. Of course, the level that you choose to dual classing plays a huge role in the process: you need to decide how much of your first class you want, and the longer you wait to dual classing the longer you’ll be forced to use a gimped character (since you’ll need to reach a higher level in your second class to turn your first class back on). And this all might seem nuanced but manageable when laid out like this, but remember that the game doesn’t explain any of it! Imagine trying to figure out why your orc can’t dual class even though that was your plan the entire game, or randomly clicking the “dual class” button on a party member and suddenly having them revert to a level 1 character.
And this is before I’ve even gotten to thac0. Modern D&D (and other d20 systems) operate by resolving the success of an endeavor whose outcome is unknown based on the result of a 20-sided die (or d20). For any given attempt—whether it is to seduce the noblewoman, or pocket an item in a store, or land safely after a long fall, or thwack the enemy with your sword—there is a number representing the difficulty of the task, called the “difficulty class” or DC. Climbing a knotty tree with many branches may have a DC of 10, while scaling a slick castle wall in the rain could have a DC of 30. You will have a modifier of some sort, determined by your character, the particular circumstances at play, and the rules of the game. To determine whether you succeed or fail you roll the d20 and add your modifier. If the result equals or exceeds the DC you succeed, and otherwise you fail. In combat, the difficulty of hitting a particular person is a certain kind of DC called that character’s “armor class” or AC (but which otherwise functions the same as any other DC). So if you have a +6 bonus to hit with your sword and attack an enemy with an AC of 18, you need to roll at least a 12 on the d20 to hit.
Hopefully that all makes sense and seems straightforward. The version of D&D that Baldur’s Gate is based on doesn’t use that system. Instead it uses thac0, which is short for “to hit armor class 0”. What thac0 represents is the number on the die that you need to roll to hit an enemy with armor class 0. So if you have a thac0 of 8 and attack an enemy with an AC of 0, you hit if you roll 8 or above. Fine.
The issue that makes thac0 unintuitive is that this means that a lower thac0 is better. So a “+1” sword will decrease your thac0 by one. If an effect says it applies -2 to your thac0, will it actually decrease (and buff) your thac0 or increase (and debuff) it? It’s not always clear, and takes some time to get used to the idea that the numbers in item descriptions aren’t actually the numbers being applied to your stat.
You also might think that basing your attack stat on the die number you need rather than the AC might actually be simpler, and isn’t that difficult to adjudicate since to get your new to-hit number all you need to do is add the target’s AC to your thac0, and you’d be wrong because AC also functions on a lower-is-better system. Instead, you need to subtract their AC from your thac0, which is a bit more difficult to do at a glance. This means that AC suffers the same “+1 items lower the number” problem.
So if that all seems silly and confusing, you now understand why modern d20 systems have generally moved from thac0 to to-hit. In tabletop, one of the big advantages of a to-hit system is that the player can just always report their to-hit number, rather than needing to do an odd calculation with their die number, their thac0, and the target’s AC (which they probably won’t know) each time. In Baldur’s Gate the computer does all the calculations for you so ease of adjudication doesn’t matter—but if a new player boots up the game, they are unlikely to have any idea what “THAC0” on the character screen means, or might not understand why in the shop AC4 armor costs more than AC8 armor.
One counter to this notion that Baldur’s Gate is full of odd systems that are difficult to intuitively parse is the fact that a lot of this information is contained in the manual, because Baldur’s Gate was released back when software was only sold as physical media and thus always bundled with a manual, which users were expected to read. And that’s fine, but I assume most modern players are going to skip the manual, and I’m reviewing how the games play now, not how they stacked up at release. (Or at least, I assume all this stuff is in the manual. As a modern player, I obviously never read it.)
Inventory management is, unfortunately, a major annoyance. Technically D&D and related systems do have annoying rules for managing inventories… but I’m pretty sure most tables just ignore them so long as player inventory doesn’t get abused. In Baldur’s Gate, each character has a maximum weight of items they can carry based on their strength, but that’s not the issue. The true limiting factor is the 16 inventory slots each character is limited to. Once those slots are filled, you can’t carry any more, and they fill quickly considering how many monsters you end up killing. (You can find bags that can hold more items, but they have limited space and often can only store one type of item.)
Obviously I don’t expect to be able to carry around an infinite number of items, but it still feels a bit bad to be constrained by the artificial limitation imposed by the technical limits of the program than the intended weight limit of the system. Items eventually disappear if dropped on the ground but last forever in containers, so you basically end up choosing a random barrel to store everything you ever find (which obviously has no way to sort or search). (My recommendation is to find a couple of containers grouped together, and designate each one for a certain type of item.)
The last major component of gameplay is magic, which is actually not that different from modern D&D. If you have not played the tabletop game, magic works with a “spell slot” system, where each magic user receives daily spell slots representing the spells they can cast that day. Each slot and each spell has a rank, and each slot allows one casting of a spell of that rank. So if a wizard has 4 first rank spell slots and 3 second rank spell slots, they can cast 4 first rank spells and 3 second rank spells per day. Modern D&D has a set of spells called cantrips which can be cast any number of times per day, but these aren’t in Baldur’s Gate, so you’re stuck with your slotted spells (and a sling, dart, or other simple weapon).
Another feature of modern D&D not present in Baldur’s Gate heightened spells—although perhaps I should just say that it’s handled differently. In modern D&D, you can heighten a spell by casting it from a higher ranked spell slot—for instance, casting a rank 2 spell in a rank 4 spell slot—which, depending on a spell, can improve its effect. In Baldur’s Gate, you can only cast spells in same-ranked slots—but spells automatically improve with your caster level.
Honestly, the Baldur’s Gate system might be more fun, especially if casters don’t get cantrips. In modern D&D, one of the “problems” with a caster is that lower-ranked spells fall off in usefulness as the caster levels up. For instance, magic missile is a quintessential damaging spell. At level 1, a rank 1 magic missile will do decent damage, but by the time the caster has rank 4 slots available, the rank 1 magic missile will hardly matter. If the caster wants magic missile to matter, they probably need to use rank 3 or rank 4 slots—but using magic missile in those slots means not using the cool rank 3 and 4 spells they now know in those slots. Plus the caster still has rank 1 slots, which they presumably don’t go to waste, so they need to find rank 1 spells to cast from those slots that will still be useful at higher magic (so typically utility spells). In Baldur’s Gate, in contrast, magic missile can only be cast from rank 1 slots, but its damage will scale up with you. So when you have rank 4 slots available, you can fill your rank 1 slots with magic missiles that still have relevant damage, and cast your awesome rank 4 spells from your rank 4 slots. (With the downside being that once you’ve cast those spells, you’re out, while in D&D you always have cantrips to fall back on.)
Baldur’s Gate also uses a system called Vancian spellcasting, which modern D&D has moved away from. In D&D, many casters need to “prepare” spells before they can be cast. In modern D&D, a wizard may know 5 spells and prepare 3 for the day, and then they’d be able to cast those 3 spells whenever they want, expending a spell slot of the appropriate rank each time (until they run out of spell slots). With Baldur’s Gate and Vancian spellcasting, each spell slot must be prepared with a specific spell. In other words, you don’t just decide which spells to cast that day, you need to decide how many times you’re doing to cast each specific spell that day. Obviously, this puts more restrictions on how spellcasters. In tabletop, where adventuring days tend to be more drawn out and deliberate, I think it can be a real restriction, and inducement to get the player to think about their spell selection (and result in a great high when they get to whip out the niche spell they prepared specifically for this moment), but in a video game like Baldur’s Gate where you can freely reload and/or rest essentially any time, it does feel more like a time-wasting annoyance than a real constraint.
Characters will manage their spellcasting either from a mage book (for arcane casters like wizards and bards) or priest scroll (for divine casters like clerics and druids), which are mechanically identical, except in how they learn spells. Arcane casters don’t know any spells innately, and so need to learn all their spells from scrolls. Divine casters, however, automatically know all spells available to their class. While that might sound nicer, divine spells tend to be more focused on healing and utility, while arcane spells are more offensive and varied. Having a mage book allows you to tailor that character’s spells to your tastes, and access generally more powerful spells.
So that’s the nitty-gritty of how a lot of Baldur’s Gate works, and why, as I described earlier, I tended to just throw my party at the enemy and hope for the best. Much easier to just do that than attempt to micromanage all the stuff I just discussed. Arcane casters are the rulers of the system, but trying to stay on top of spellcasting with invisible turns and poor visual indicators is tough. The spell slot is used up when the character begins casting, which means if the character begins casting and then you tell them to move (because, for instance, you think the game ignored your command to cast the spells), that will interrupt the casting and waste the slot. Whoops! Now, don’t get me wrong, I still cast plenty of spells, but it was mostly pre-battle buffs and then one or two big hitters in the fray (and oodles and oodles of magic missiles).
While combat is obviously one main pillar of gameplay, the other is story and exploration. The game is about you, Gorion’s Ward. While your companions will periodically prattle off a set of randomized voice lines and each has a unique quest, they’re mostly there for the ride. The game does a decent job of nudging you towards towns and quests, but there’s plenty to discover by just trawling the game world yourself.
Role-playing has always been lauded as one of the major strengths of Baldur’s Gate, but to be honest, I found it a bit lacking. Dialogue choices were typically a polite heroic answer or a rude evil answer, with maybe a third wildcard option. Obviously a video game can’t have the same sort of free-form dialogue system as an actual TTRPG, and especially not one from the turn of the millennium, but the choices in Baldur’s Gate still felt stiff and constrained. I think the main reason it fell flat to me was because dialogue choices rarely mattered, and that fact was patently obvious. The bandits will attack you whether you’re polite or rude. The quest-giver will give you a quest whether you’re polite or rude. There are hardly ever lasting consequences for any dialogue choices. The dialogue is mere window-dressing for the pre-set gameplay, which is understandable, but still prevents me from feeling like I’m really roleplaying.
All in all, while Baldur’s Gate wasn’t bad and I could see how it was revolutionary for its time, it didn’t feel like much of a lasting masterpiece.
And then I played Baldur’s Gate II. Now, before I get ahead of myself, I don’t think that Baldur’s Gate II is the greatest game ever made, but I can understand why people still love it all these years later.
Baldur’s Gate II’s gameplay is pretty much the same as the first game (except it covers a higher level range, so running into enemy spellcasters and enemies with random resistances becomes a lot more common). However, rather than an gridded overworld like the first game, you can only visit locations you’ve heard about—and yet is still feels expansive and packed with content.
What sets Baldur’s Gate II apart, in my mind, is the companions. They chat with you, they chat with each other, they react to events that are happening around them, they unlock new dialogue options in conversation trees. The companion-specific quests are deeper and more involved. While the game is still about you, they feel like actual companions rather than statballs who mindlessly follow you. I’m being a bit uncharitable to the first game, but this is also where I think Baldur’s Gate II made the greatest improvement. The writing is fun and witty, and pretty much every companion pair has meat to it.
I don’t think the plot itself of the two games is particularly compelling—it’s relatively standard as far as fantasy goes—but the world is full of mystery and wonder, and there’s a real sense of adventure as you explore all the quests and content the games have to offer. I also really enjoyed and appreciated the way the scope of the plot naturally shifted and expanded from the first game to the second to Throne of Bhaal (the extra campaign for Baldur’s Gate II added as an expansion pack).
One thing I did not like was the title. Baldur’s Gate doesn’t even matter! The first game takes place in and around the city of Baldur’s Gate, and while the city is relevant, it is only relevant for being the major city of the area; you could transplant the game to pretty much any fantasy city and it would function all the same. And then the second game doesn’t take place in Baldur’s Gate at all! I understand why it happened that way, but that doesn’t mean I need to like it.
Certain parts of Baldur’s Gate and Baldur’s Gate II have certainly aged poorly, from the UI to the ruleset to the inventory system. While these clunky elements do serve as impediments to immersion, if you can get yourself in there’s a wide world of fantasy and adventure to explore. Without the rose-colored glasses of nostalgia they probably won’t win you over as timeless masterpieces, but they’re still fun time capsules and certainly a high water mark for the CRPG genre, and a great way to something approaching on-demand D&D.
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