So my adventures into the Forgotten Realms come to a premature halt, thanks to missing data.

Originally Baldur’s gate came on five disks. Some time later it was re-released along with the Tales of the Sword Coast expansion, but now fitted on two disks + one for the expansion. Presumably the reduction in disks was thanks to improved compression. Except, some releases of this package in the UK were botched. A few hours in it asked me for a non-existent 3rd CD. Looking on the existing disks, they seem to contain the data for original CDs 1 and 2, but not 4-5. So then: huge cock-up, rather than releasing the game re-packed onto two disks, they just issued the first two disks of the original set. Oops!

I think this was later fixed, though. Check the blurb on the back of the box: If it says “5 CDs filled with nearly 10000 scrolling game screens”, it’s the b0rked version. If it says “3 CDs” it should be ok. Also, if you bought the American version of this pack (named Baldur’s Gate: The original Saga) that should work fine too.

I could go complain to the ebay seller and ask for a refund, dunno how well that will work. For now though I’ll try and grab a working copy through, ahem, unofficial means.