I remember that when the EEs were first announced and when BGEE and even BG2EE were released, some amount of people kept saying that the changes the EEs brought didn't justify their price and/or those changes didn't make BGEE and BG2EE much different from vanilla games with mods.
Then when the patch 1.3 was released, the number of fixes and additions it brought was overwhelming. I thought at that time that if BG2EE in its prior-to-1.3 version had been a vanilla game, we could call the EEs as of the 1.3 version Enhanced Editions alone.
And now, after I tried the 2.0 version of BG2EE that is currently in the open beta process, I can go as far as to say that the changes this version bring certainly make the EEs look and feel different than vanilla games with any mods you can think of.
Whether all players like these changes or not is another question and I would greatly advice to share your views (if you haven't already) in the appropriate subforum - https://forums.beamdog.com/categories/bg:ee-bgii:ee-2-x-public-beta.
But the fact we have a very different UI, a lot of possible tweaks to game options, a shaman class with unprecedented feature of constant summoning and using druid spells in a sorcerer's way, the Legacy of Bhaal mode, plus all the additions from the 1.3 version and other previous changes, including the core elements of the EEs NPCs, items and kits, makes me think that it would be hard to say that BG1&2EE don't bring enough to call them worthy independent projects, and not just "a modded BG but for a price".
Again, whether you prefer the vanilla games or the EEs, whether you prefer 1.3 UI or 2.0 UI, are other questions. I just wanted to share my thought that as of the 2.0 version the EEs definitely look differently from the vanilla games with mods.
And although I don't agree on everything the new UI of the 2.0 version in its current state brings, I can perfectly understand and appriciate Beamdog here in a sense that they've been busy for several years after the initial releases of the EEs tweaking the enhancements to the engine to make the EEs much more characterized than what we could ever experience with the BG games.
Then when the patch 1.3 was released, the number of fixes and additions it brought was overwhelming. I thought at that time that if BG2EE in its prior-to-1.3 version had been a vanilla game, we could call the EEs as of the 1.3 version Enhanced Editions alone.
And now, after I tried the 2.0 version of BG2EE that is currently in the open beta process, I can go as far as to say that the changes this version bring certainly make the EEs look and feel different than vanilla games with any mods you can think of.
Whether all players like these changes or not is another question and I would greatly advice to share your views (if you haven't already) in the appropriate subforum - https://forums.beamdog.com/categories/bg:ee-bgii:ee-2-x-public-beta.
But the fact we have a very different UI, a lot of possible tweaks to game options, a shaman class with unprecedented feature of constant summoning and using druid spells in a sorcerer's way, the Legacy of Bhaal mode, plus all the additions from the 1.3 version and other previous changes, including the core elements of the EEs NPCs, items and kits, makes me think that it would be hard to say that BG1&2EE don't bring enough to call them worthy independent projects, and not just "a modded BG but for a price".
Again, whether you prefer the vanilla games or the EEs, whether you prefer 1.3 UI or 2.0 UI, are other questions. I just wanted to share my thought that as of the 2.0 version the EEs definitely look differently from the vanilla games with mods.
And although I don't agree on everything the new UI of the 2.0 version in its current state brings, I can perfectly understand and appriciate Beamdog here in a sense that they've been busy for several years after the initial releases of the EEs tweaking the enhancements to the engine to make the EEs much more characterized than what we could ever experience with the BG games.