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milking the game for experience points so that your characters can become stronger, more resistant to damaging magic, more accurate with a bow and less likely to have some puny elf come along and kick sand in your face at the beach. Here and there, you'll be given little titbits of plot advancement which leads to further quests.

This is where Baldur's Gate is a winner. If you like RPGs, then Baldur's Gate will provide you with tremendous value for money because there are hours upon hours worth of entertainment here.

I bought the Baldur's Gate collection on DVD from Amazon UK for a 10 (approx. $20) and for that, I got Baldur's Gate, the add-on pack "Tales of the Sword Coast", Baldur's Gate 2 and its add-on "Throne of Bhaal". All for ten of your English pounds! How big a bargain is that?

There are a few minor issues. As Baldur's Gate is a fairly old game in computing terms, there's not much you can do about screen resolution, so the graphics can look dated and a bit rough in places. That shouldn't effect your enjoyment of the game, well, it didn't bother me that much once I got into the game and most of the important stuff is still clear.

The sound is excellent overall, but some of the lines from the voice actors are used far too often. If I hear that bald goon shout "Go for the eyes, Boo, go for the eyes!" one more time, I will shove my sword up his ummm backpack.

The age of the game means that you don't need a spanking new PC to run it, either. I thought there might have been issues with running such an old game with Windows XP, but these worries were unfounded and XP is supported (at least in the compilation version that I bought).

Atari's recommended specifications are:

Windows 95/98/ME/2000/XP
Pentium II 300 or AMD K6-III or faster
64 MB RAM
DVD-ROM drive
Direct X compatible graphics card
Direct X compatible sound card
Direct X 8.0

I ran it (with no issues whatsoever) using:

Windows XP Professional
1 GB RAM
DVD ROM
Soundblaster 7.1 soundcard
ATI Radeon 9600 graphics card
Direct X 9.0c

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