Baldur's Gate 4 in 1 Boxset

by Interplay

Product Features

• This is the complete Baldur's Gate Compilation on four (4) DVD's. Includes: Baldur's Gate, Baldur's Gate: Tales of the Sword Coast, Baldur's Gate II: Shadows of Amn and Baldur's Gate II: Throne of Bhaal.
• Baldur's Gate : Baldur's Gate takes you back to the Forgotten Realms campaign setting on a visually dazzling role-playing adventure, one that brings to life the grand tradition of the Advanced Dungeons & Dragons game through cutting edge art and technology. Immerse yourself in this quintessential medieval fantasy world, where nations hang in the balance of your actions, dark prophecies test your resolve, and heroic dreams can be fulfilled at last.
• Baldur's Gate: Tales of the Swords Coast : Continue your travels on the Sword Coast with the next set of adventurers in the award-winning Baldur's Gate role-playing game series.
• Baldur's Gate II: Shadows of Amn : Baldur's Gate II expands the Baldur's Gate world by bringing you a new set of adventures set in the nation of Amn. Baldur's Gate II has a large central, nonlinear plot line which is broken down into 7-8 chapters, with lots of sub quests and small adventures thrown in for variety. The number of item recovery type quests has been greatly diminished and there are be more class- and alignment-specific quests.
• Baldur's Gate II: Throne of Bhaal : Baldur's Gate II: Throne of Bhaal greatly extends the Baldur's Gate II experience, with approximately 40 hours of additional adventures. Explore the lands of Tethyr as an epic conflict wreaks devastation on a scale never before seen in the Forgotten Realms campaign world

Product Details

• ASIN: B000FGA1US
• Item Weight: 1.4 ounces
• Media: DVD-ROM
• Average Customer Review: 4.3 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (86 customer reviews)
• Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #1,401 in Video Games (See Top 100 in Video Games)
  • #1 in Video Games > PC Games > Arcade

Product Description

4 in 1 Box Set - Enter a World of Intrigue Adventure and FierceCombatProduct InformationThe Complete Baldur's Gate Compilation!  Baldur's Gate takes you on adazzling role-playing adventure that brings life to the grand tradition of theAdvanced Dungeons & Dragons game.  Continue your adventure with thecharacter you created in Baldur's Gate where you travel the Sword Coast to findclues on your true identity.  In Shadows of Amn your choices will determineyour fate.  As you venture through Throne of Bhaal a storm of chaos anddestruction thunders across the Sword Coast - fulfill your destiny in thedecisive conclusion. Product Title Included Baldur's Gate Baldur's Gate: Tales of the Sword Coast Baldur's Gate II: Shadows of Amn Baldur's Gate II: Throne of Bhaal Product OverviewBaldur's GateThestory takes place in TSR's best-selling FORGOTTEN REALMS. The western shorealong the Sea of Swords contains a multitude of ecologies and terrains includingmountains forests swamps marshes plains cities and ruins. Collectivelycalled the Sword Coast it attracts adventurers and evil alike and is thebackdrop for this epic adventure.The region encompassed by this game is roughly bordered to the South by theCloud Peaks the East by the Wood of Sharp Teeth the West by the Sea of Swordsand the North by Baldur's Gate (the largest and most affluent city in theregion).Chaos threatens to overwhelm the Sword Coast. The state of Amn is under siegeto the south the High Moor is being overrun in the north and the region aroundBaldur's Gate is in turmoil. In an area known for its ample resources acrippling shortage is slowly developing for the metal that is used throughoutthe Realms for everything from swords to forks - iron. When iron ore reachingthe region is smelted the resulting wares are plagued with brittleness suchthat they crack and break with little more

Customer Reviews

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

217 of 220 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars So much fun, it's dangerous, July 26, 2008

By 

Charles P. Frederick (Cambridge, MA) - See all my reviews
(REAL NAME)   

= Fun:5.0 out of 5 stars 

Amazon Verified Purchase

This review is from: Baldur's Gate 4 in 1 Boxset (DVD-ROM)

First off, any person who has played a bunch of computer games will tell you this: The amount of fun you have in a game, after say the first day of playing it, is totally irrelevant to the game's graphics. The BG collection is a good example.

I too think it is better than the Neverwinter series, for one main reason:

BG and especially BGII are extremely open and non-linear. Yes, of course the game has limits, but there are so many optional areas, quests, characters, and items, and more importantly, so many decisions you have to make in each play-through that open some doors and close others, that you can play this game probably ten times in a row and still discover fun new things.

Even concepts which seem like game-universe "laws" can be surpassed once you gain enough skill as a player. I'm not talking about cheating. For example, you might think the Cowled Wizards are impossible to resist when they arrest you, right? Nope, not for a creative tactician. Or, you might think that it's impossible to beat the game using just three, two, or even one single character. But it's actually very possible--just more intellectually challenging and rewarding. Most do that with a fighter/mage or fighter/thief, though, to get the maximum number of abilities. But you couldn't do it with a single, lonely armor-less kensai fighter, right? Think again...

The great thing about these "implied" challenges, in addition to every other normal challenge in the game, is that even though they are ridiculously difficult, you still don't need a cheat sheet to do them, because since the game contains hundreds of items, spells, and abilities, (access to all of which have a sort of "open this door and shut that one" style) there are still a million different ways to complete even the most difficult challenges.

This is why the Baldur's Gate games are huge fun the first time, for the above-average (not great) story, and even more the second and third, to explore all the variations and possibilities within that story.

Finally, a note for new players:
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The only complaint I would have is that in order to play a Fighter character, you can't just choose one weapon specialization and go with it--you have to have advance knowledge of what weapons exist in order not to be stuck with crappy weapons during critical endgame duels.

If you are about to buy this game, let me tell you a few things that will save the need for the cheapening feeling of using a game guide or deciding to reboot your character halfway through:

-The one and only great 2-handed sword can only be used by Thieves and Paladins, though it comes early in the game. It is by far the best weapon in the game
-There is a good mix of low-to-mid level longswords, but few great ones
-There is only one good bastard sword and it comes late in the game
-There is only one good battle axe, and it is great, but it comes late in the game
-There are a good mix of low-to-high level Halberd weapons
-More attacks per round *usually* nets you more total damage than a higher damage per hit weapon, because all the different weapon types do not have a wide spread of damage ranges. I.E, most of the damage you do at a high level does not come from your weapon.
-Some liches can only be hit by +4 or higher weapons.
-NEVER be a sorcerer for your first playthrough...you will inevitably choose spells that sound good on paper but fall flat in practice...be a wizard instead, you will get more (real-life) experience that way.

That's it--all the rest you can figure out yourself, with a little patience and experimentation. Happy adventuring!

51 of 51 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars Great game still holds up after all these years, February 10, 2010

By 

A. Perala (Buffalo, NY USA) - See all my reviews
(REAL NAME)   

= Fun:5.0 out of 5 stars 

Amazon Verified Purchase

This review is from: Baldur's Gate 4 in 1 Boxset (DVD-ROM)

I purchased this when I was on a retro-gaming kick a while back, and out of all the older games, I think this one stood out as the most enjoyable. Since there are plenty of older reviews detailing the game features, I would like to point out a few things about the distribution.

First, there is no printed manual, only a .pdf file contained on the disk. Also, the box itself is pretty flimsy, with the discs stacked on top of each other and held with rings that are too stiff. The way this is packaged makes the discs very prone to scratching, so I would inspect your discs first, then transfer them to another case. Compare this to the Diablo II box set which comes with a nicer jewel case and a booklet for about the same price, and you can see that Atari is treating this as a cheap-o product instead of the gaming classic it really is.

Secondly, installing on Windows Vista can be a pain. Don't do the auto-run install, or files will be missing and the game will crash. I did this originally and thought my discs were corrupted, but it was actually a Windows Vista problem. Find the setup.exe file by exploring the disc and right-click "run as administrator" and it should install properly. Do this for all 4-discs. If you are using 64-bit Vista it will be even more of challenge to get this installed. I recommend disabling autoplay altogether, and perhaps even installing from safe mode.

Thirdly, you SHOULD download and install (again, run as adminstrator) the Throne of Bhaal patch from Bioware's site. But DO NOT install the Tales of the Sword Coast patch. This version is essentially the same as the "original saga" version, so you don't need to patch it. If you do, the game will start asking for disc 6 or other discs, and you will have to uninstall then reinstall it.

Finally, there is a player-created unofficial mod called "Easy TuTu" you should download after you've played through it, if you decide to do another play through. It brings the features, including additional classes, kits and proficiencies of BG2 to BG1 so you can have a more enjoyable experience. Although it is a bit buggy, so I recommend your first playthrough of BG1 be the unmodded original game.

If you love role-playing games, or just looking for a retro PC gaming experience, then this is definitely worth the money, if with the aforementioned issues. The game is exceptionally fun, having a great story, as well as good tactical and varied combat that will having you comeback for many replays with different class and alignment combos.

80 of 84 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars Let's go back to when there were better games., April 20, 2008

By 

M. Diaz "Smoke" (St. Amant, LA United States) - See all my reviews
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= Fun:5.0 out of 5 stars 

Amazon Verified Purchase

This review is from: Baldur's Gate 4 in 1 Boxset (DVD-ROM)

So you want to try out some of bio ware's older games? Here is a secret. These games are better than the recent Neverwinter series. "What?" you say, "How could you." Well it's true. Sure it has AD&D version 2 which is an older ruleset than the Neverwinter series has, but you won't care. I'll assume you don't need great graphics to enjoy a game. Why would you even consider buying a game from the late 90's if you cared about graphics right? So I'll say the graphics were great for it's time and now I will leave the graphics alone. So how is this game so good? The answer is open ended gameplay, great combat system, and a great quest system. Exploration is another great thing about this game. To fully explore every part of the world will take you a long time, and you will find many fun little battles along the way. You can stray off from the main quest to explore the wilderness if you want, and pretty much it is part of what makes this game so great. The game has simpler combat and character customization than NWN, but it is not a negative factor. Simplicity is not always a bad thing. In truth the combat isn't really simple, it is just simpler than NWN. So should you buy? Yeah. Baldur's Gate is a wonderful adventure and baldur's gate 2 is even better. It's time to go back in time.