Vivendi Universal Baldur's Gate: Dark Alliance 2

Baldur's Gate: Dark Alliance

Strengths: lots of levels

Weaknesses: lack of 4 player

Summary: Baldur's Gate: Dark Alliance is very different than its pc counterparts. In the pc realm, Baldur's Gate means great traditional rpg play, in the console realm Baldur's Gate resembles Gauntlet. Is the change a good change or horrible idea?

Baldur's Gate Dark Alliance is a ok looking game, in the middle of the pack. It features a top down perspective on dungeons as you battle your way through them. The overall beauty of the graphics isn't particularly impressive, but the game does throw tons of enemies at you, which is impressive in its own right. Audio is fairly good in BG: DA, featuring a sparse amount of solid voice work and excellent noise and effects. Music is also fairly good with some excellent dungeon diving tunes.

BG: DA is a game that definitely leaves its roots and heads out for different territory. This game does retain some semblance of the pc game's roots in the D&D paper game, but it heads for more of adventure vibe. You can outfit upgrade and level up characters, but instead of die rolls, your attacks are directly controlled by the player. This may be disconcerting to hardcore fans, but it is far more acessable to those new to the series. The game is very much like Gauntlet, you go from room to room smashing barrels and baddies grabbing all the treasure along the way. In this it succeeds as fun game. However, limiting the number of players to two is a bad choice, four player should have been a no brainer.

Baldur's Gate: Dark alliance is not a rpg, it is hack and slash dungeon crawl. It has passable graphics and sound and many levels and ways to upgrade your character. The two player mode is quite fun and a good cooperative engagement. One only wishes that four friends could have played instead of two.

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Hack'n'slash dungeon crawling

Strengths: Sticks close to the genre definition, no surprises

Weaknesses: No surprises = nothing spectacular

Summary: Baldur's Gate: Dark Alliance is a satisfactory dungeon crawling experience. If you enjoy running through dungeons, stopping only when there's a mob to kill, you'll find enjoyment in this game.

While BG doesn't do anything to really differentiate itself, what little it does, it does well. The graphics are acceptable; there's no oohing and aahing, but neither are they a detriment to the experience. There are always plenty of creatures or boxes to hack away at, leaving few truly dull moments.

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Baldur's Gate: Dark Alliance 2 (Gamecube)

Strengths: Excellent voice-acting

Weaknesses: Weak ending

Summary: I never played Diablo or any of the other Baldur's gate games, but I had a good time with this game. The voice-acting was top-notch and the cutscenes were good. My only problem with the cut-scenes were the continuation of the bob and weave motion of your character model from regular gameplay.

Overall I enjoyed the game, although the mechanics don't bear any similarity to D&D. I found the combat controls to be a bit clunky (switching between 'active' feats and weapon sets was always sketchy) but not terribly so.

The biggest weakness of the game was the ending, where the villain of the piece repents out of the blue. I really hate the Realms sometimes. The final combat was also very anti-climactic.

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In the simplest terms, this game is meant for peop ...

Strengths: Good Diablo style hack and slash. Decent multiplayer. Nice Graphics. Gelatinous Blob.

Weaknesses: This version has framerate problems not found on the other consoles.

Summary: In the simplest terms, this game is meant for people that were in love with Diablo, no more, no less. Of course, there are some superficial differences between the games, but not enough to make this game anything other than a clone of Diablo. Of course, the graphics are better than the granddaddy of this kind of game, and the controls aren't point and click, but it's heart and soul are the same. Hack at everything that moves (and some things that don't), pick up anything they drop in hopes of an equipment upgrade, level up. Not really much to it, but it's done very well. It doesn't have the breadth of Diablo 2, but it is a very nice diversion if you've already played the other to death.

If you're expecting something like the computer Balder's Gate games, you're in for a disappointment. Other than the perspective, they have little in common. If it wasn't for marketing, the AD&D license would be wasted on Dark Alliance. There is little to no story, nothing at all like the deep stories of it's computer cousins, and most of the monsters feel a little generic. If not for the beholder, all of the monsters seem generic.

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