The Verdict
Baldur’s Gate II is the gold standard for party-based RPGs. It’s a massive, soul-stirring campaign that respects your time, trusts your intelligence, and pulls you in from the very first scene.
The Quick Take
Most RPGs take hours to find their footing. Baldur’s Gate II skips that entirely. You’re dropped straight into a high-stakes situation, and the momentum never lets up. That’s a rare thing in a 100-hour game, and it’s a big reason this one still gets recommended two decades after launch.
Where the first game earned a lower score here (largely due to its age showing), BG2 is a different story. It still holds up. Not “impressive for its time.” Actually holds up.
What Works (The Highs)
It hooks you immediately. The opening doesn’t ease you in with tutorials and fetch quests. You start in trouble, and the game trusts you to figure it out. That sense of urgency carries the whole experience.
The writing has genuine soul. Companion dialogue, narrative arcs, moral choices, all of it stays sharp across the full runtime. That’s genuinely hard to pull off at this scale, and very few games manage it.
You can play it three times and still find new things. Different classes, party combinations, and choices don’t just change the outcome; they change how the whole journey feels. The replayability here is real, not theoretical.
What Doesn’t (The Lows)
The engine is 20+ years old, and you’ll feel it. The Enhanced Edition smooths out a lot of the rough edges, but some old-school friction remains. If you’ve never played an Infinity Engine game, expect a short adjustment period before things click.
Baldur’s Gate II earns a 10/10 because it’s the rare sequel that genuinely improves on everything. Better writing, better pacing, more depth, more character. It doesn’t waste your time. If you consider yourself an RPG fan and haven’t played it, that’s the gap to fill next.
Baldur's Gate II: Enhanced Edition scores 10/10 on immediate fun. A legendary RPG that drops you into the action and provides a massive, compelling campaign with soul.
Old-school friction.
One question: did it deliver immediate fun? Graphics, story depth, difficulty and critical acclaim are ignored. Pick-up-and-play accessibility is rewarded; anything that makes you wait for the fun to start is penalized.
How we score: We don't care about graphics, story depth, or critical acclaim. One question — did it deliver immediate fun? We reward pick-up-and-play accessibility and penalize anything that makes you wait for the fun to start.