Review of Baldur's Gate: Dark Alliance

Customer Ratings:

This is one rental that actually turned into a purchase. I'm usually not a fan of hack and slash type games, but this one has turned out to be quite entertaining.

Like other games in this genre, Dark Alliance is a third person perspective game (kinda 2.5D) in which you venture through cellars, mines, dungeons and even outdoor environments like mountain and villages. Levels typically end with a "boss" of varying difficulty and combat style. Gameplay is mixed with first person cut scenes in which you converse with other characters in a multi-choice format.

Interestingly, you can only save your game at certain points. At first this seems annoying, but there are enough save points around the game so it isn't too bad. Another big plus is that saving is really quick. If you've played games like Morrowind, where saving and loading are good opportunites to grab a drink, then you're in for a treat. Unfortunately you can only save about 25 games at once and there is no way to describe the saved game. A bit annoying, but oh well.

I'm not too much of a D&D fan, so I can't comment on how true this game is to the ruleset. However, as you move through the game you'll acquire better goods and have to manage your inventory and make decisions about how to develop your powers as you advance levels. Who knows if these mechanisms are authentic enough, but they are fun.. :)

Finally, one of the best aspects of the game (and why I ended up purchasing it) is the two player option. This put two players on the screen at the same time, working together to battle through the game. I find this style of multiplayer play to be much more enjoyable than split screen, and this is one of the few games that offers it.

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Despite the game's title, this game is not at all in the same vein as the wonderful Baldur's Gate PC RPGs. It's a hack-and-slash dungeon crawler, and in terms of gameplay it is nearly identical to Diablo II, but with better graphics. If this type of game appeals to you, great! If you're looking for your RPG fix though, you'll have to get it somewhere else.

Let's start with the good points. The game is pretty fun if you're into hack-and-slash types, especially with two players. Any game with a two-player cooperative mode always scores points with me. The graphics and sound are very good, and the game is easy to learn and easy to control.

There is some replay value to it, as there are some new modes you can unlock by finishing the game. Beat the game once and you'll be able to play a special game mode that puts you in a tough dungeon on a short time limit, playing as none other than Drizzt Do'Urden. Beat that mode, and you unlock Extreme difficulty in the normal game, which is several times more difficult than usual. If you manage to beat Extreme, you can play as Drizzt in the normal game.

There are some bad points to the game, however. It's extremely short; you can beat it in under 10 hours. It's really a shame that the game is not more extensive. Also, as with any game of this type, it can get quite repetitive after awhile. The game is very easy as well. The Gauntlet is really the only difficult part of it. Even on Extreme, I had no problems completing the game quickly.

And finally, although I knew this wasn't really an RPG when I bought it, I still couldn't help feeling disappointed at the great lack of depth compared to many other games that have been set in the Forgotten Realms. I would have liked to see a wider variety of D&D skills and spells brought in, as well. For instance, the Sorceress (and all spell-casting enemies) doesn't have any spell effects aside from direct damage. It would be cool to have things like Entangle and Charm Person available, to have a thief class with all their many skills, and so on. I realize why many of these things were left out, but a little more work on the design could have added a welcome element of strategy to what it is essentially little more than a slugfest.

My list of complaints may be long, but don't get me wrong; for what it is, this game was executed extremely well. If you're looking for a game like Diablo, you will enjoy this. If you want an RPG, you're better off with Morrowind, or waiting until Bioware rolls out their Star Wars RPG this summer. It's better with a friend, so BG:DA scores a few points there. Still, rent before you buy. You could easily beat this game in a weekend, and you might never play it again after that.

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Baldur's Gate is a hugely popular RPG series for the PC. With Baldur's Gate: Dark Alliance, console gamers get a taste for what makes this game so much fun.

First, remember that this is a console port of a very rich PC game. That means that instead of having lots of choices of male/female or human/elf/dwarf or fighter/thief/mage/cleric, you have three. You can be a male archer, a dwarf fighter, or a female sorceress.

The graphics are really quite good. There are numerous pools of water for you to run around in, to watch the ripples and wakes shimmer and merge. The lighting is lovely, the detail in the buildings and towns and dungeons look great on even large TVs. The sound is good too, and sitting in your living room with friends while the stereo sound surrounds you is tons of fun.

You can play single player or two-person cooperative, which makes couch-play even more fun. With a large bowl of popcorn and your favorite drinks, you can hack and slash your way through numerous hours or a weekend of play.

Now, the down side. Again, console port. Really, you're playing Gauntlet. You run around hacking up barrels and crates in your friend's cellar. Is this exactly the nicest thing to do? You hack at rats and enemies, look for things in barrels. Yes, you get into lever-pulling and puzzles. But in the end the game is pretty linear and the monsters don't regenerate. So whatever level you're at when you get to a certain point, you can't build yourself up more strongly.

This can get to be a real pain when you hit a strong boss. You can't go buy more gear, because there's no way to make more money. You can't get stronger or more skillful, because there's nobody else to kill "behind you" and you can't go "ahead" until you kill the boss. So you're doomed to keep trying to hack at him until you get past him ... somehow.

Another big complaint I have is that the gamemakers seem obsessed with the female form. The guys in the game are all pudgy and uninteresting. But the girls! The first woman you meet, the bartender, has jiggly, wiggly breasts and she shakes them around non-stop during her long, long discussions with you. Everyone I showed the game to was mesmerized by them.

And playing the female sorceress character, I found that no matter how hard I tried, I could NOT get her clothed well. Every outfit involved a cut-off top, skimpy leather boots and not much else. Ahem, she's going into a deep, dark dungeon to face dire enemies? And she's doing this in beach-wear??

Still, the game was campy fun, and definitely draws you in. A fun weekend-play game for real RPGers, and an easy way for those new to the genre to learn what it's about and to get a taste for the fun.

Honest reviews on Baldur's Gate: Dark Alliance

I saw Baldur's Gate for the PC but never liked the feel and control of the gate. I was a little hesitant to buy it for the Xbox but it was one of the few RPG games out for XBox and RPGs are my ideal type of game.

To my surprise I really enjoyed it.

The game is somewhat linear in the sense that you alway know what to do next as opposed to a open concept were there is no real order of objectives (such a Morrowind). Although this may not appeal to all players I prefer such games because I don't spend all my time gaming and in open concept games I tend to make a lot less progress.

Playing on the Normal difficulty setting the enemies present a challenger without being too extremely difficult to result in massive frustration.

The game is, for the most part, a hack and slash game but does have a small element of Roleplaying to it with interactive character dialogues.

There is a very limited selection of character classes (Fighter, Archer and Mage) but the classes are nicely worked out with ifferent benefits and abilities for each class.

The equipment available in the game is not as extensive as other games (such as Diablo II for the PC) but is still fairly extensive and the game provides good scaling of equipment availability making the characters progress from poor equipment to better equipment.

Best of all, for all you mage lovers, this is one of the first games that I have seen where the magic user can, for the most part, fight by using spells and rely on a weapon as a secondary backup. I love the mage class and in most games the mages are still too dependant on fighting with weapons and only using magic to supplement their attack. Well not in this game, sure you need weapons when you start out but with a little patience you can quickly make a mage that can predominantly fight with spells only.

In my opinion the only thing missing in this game is an way to swap cash between players and the ability to play the game over XBox Live.

All in all I really enjoyed this game and would recommend it to any who likes RPG games.

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I bought this game because I was looking for another two-player cooperative game after having played Halo for months, which is an amazing coop game as well as single player. This game allows you to play the entire adventure with two people. The graphics and music are superb. You are allowed to assign the controls any way you like which is a great feature not many games have.