Baldur's Gate: Tales of the Sword Coast (PC, 1999)

Baldur's Gate: Tales of the Sword Coast (TSC) is an expansion pack for the original Baldur's Gate role-playing adventure game. In order to use the expansion CD, you must have the original game installed. The expansion package does not add a new chapter to the original, but rather increases the number of available exploration areas within the existing chapters of Baldur's Gate. A utility updates previous saved games from the original title for compatibility with the expansion.

Three options are available once TSC is installed. Start a new game of Baldur's Gate as usual with no noticeable differences because of the TSC installation, continue Baldur's Gate from an earlier saved game with the option of exploring the new TSC areas when you arrive at the point in the game where they become available, or, in the event you have finished Baldur's Gate and kept the automatically generated "final save" created just prior to the final battle, you can load it to re-entering the game near the end of Chapter 7. In this case, the TSC components have been seamlessly merged into Baldur's Gate and you'll begin adventuring again at the town of Ulgoth's Beard. Returning to the Baldur's Gate world once you have entered the new areas provided by TSC is possible under all three of the aforementioned scenarios.

Several enhancements to the game have been included as part of the expansion pack including a new ending with heightened interests, challenges and rewards. Also, a "quick save" feature has been added, as well as about a dozen tweaks or add-on capabilities, some of which were available but not mentioned in the Baldur's Gate documentation (e.g., auto pause when enemy is sighted, blue-tinted unidentified magic items, speed of all projectiles have doubled, possible experience points are now 161,000 versus 89,000 in the original game, an option to increase or decrease AI path searching, etc.).

I'm one of those gamers who played BG2 and never had a chance to play the first until now. Obviously, it's a bit of a step back technologically, but it's more a different experience than a worse one. As long as you can take the old graphics and early D&D ruleset, you should definitely pick this one up.