Karen Vest | Radford Alumna

1/25/02

While not a must for your Playstation 2 collection, Baldur's Gate: Dark Alliance is sure thing for rental. Touted as an RPG, it's really more of an action hack-and-slash with three character classes through multitudes of D&D monsters, which range from the magic wielding beholder to vicious hordes of kobolds.

The game nicely imports some though not all of the 3E D&D rules (for the un-indoctrinated, Third Edition Dungeon and Dragon ruleset) and is set in the Forgotten Realms atmosphere, a popular fantasy "world." The controls are quite well designed allowing for even a two left-thumbed person as I to control and kill multitudes with ease. Advancing one's character, a very RPG-ish element, consists of utilizing points gained after massive amounts of experience are acquired while killing enemies or completing mini-quests. Feats comprise a character class's special abilities involving such things as casting spells like Lightning or doing massive melee damage with a warhammer like Clangeddin's Fist.

The storyline of the game, while not extremely convoluted, does unfold nicely into three main "acts" that your character(s) must play. The storyline incorporates mini-quests that you may or may not complete, often for some hefty gold and experience. However the main storyline is extremely linear and dictates what areas you will be in and when you go to them. Returning to levels yields no new enemies or treasures.

Perhaps the strongest point of this game is its graphics. The scenery is absolutely amazing. The water, given a nomination to Gamespot's "Best In-Game Water of 2001," truly is a marvel displaying amazing fluidity, depth, and responsiveness. You'll be extremely impressed at the attention to detail in each level from flickering candles to the tiny vermin in dungeons. You'll be allowed to play in dungeons, trap infested guilds, snowy mountain ranges, rotting swamps, towers of evil, and more.

Co-operative play is where this game shines. I had the most fun utilizing this feature, screaming at my partner to nail the guys while I'm pounding on lightning. The co-operative play has some limitations with some puzzles in the game (particularly the "jumping" puzzles) being performed pretty much only when one of your characters "takes it for the team" and suicides. Fear not though, you don't have to go through horrible rigmaroles to revive a fallen comrade. Simply walk to a save altar (and save altars abound for those who despised the Resident Evil II's limited save crap).

Playing through the game however opens some modes of interest. The Gauntlet opens up when the game is defeated on any level; defeating Gauntlet mode yields a new "Extreme" mode and the famous Forgotten Realms character, Drizzt! For those who aren't "in the know," Drizzt was a dark elven ranger character made famous in the Forgotten Realms world by the books of R. A. Salvatore. Mention his name to a D&D fanatic and you will get some drooling.

Unfortunately, the addition of Drizzt as a new playable character only highlights some of the drawbacks to this game. With only THREE character classes available (human arcane archer, dwarven fighter, elven sorceress) and Drizzt later on, there are few combinations for team mode and few options for single-player. This cuts down quite a bit on the replay value. Although you can spend time getting your characters to the max level 40, after defeating the game even just once you'll find that the items you have make the trip a breeze. I clocked at 14 hours defeating the game in 2-player mode and I could have shortened that had I not done so much item-hunting. With the addition of Extreme mode, there's extra gameplay but all the areas are the same. The monsters are simply more difficult to defeat and give more loot. Considering the advent of RPG/action games like Final Fantasy X which can go upwards of 100 gameplay hours, a mere 14 for a first play seems to pale in comparison.

In conclusion though, BG: DA with amazing graphics, very enjoyable team and single player modes, interesting and differentiated character classes has a great hold on the hack-and-slash genre and is a definite rental. The replay value drawbacks keep it from being an absolute must-buy for the average gamer. However, if you are a Forgotten Realms fan, you may want to purchase simply for building characters experience in such a well designed visual environment, but if you don't have a clue what Forgotten Realms is then just rent and enjoy.

Ratings: Gameplay 9 /10 Graphics 9 /10 Sound 8 /10 Controls 8 /10 Replay 6 /10