Baldur's Gate: Dark Alliance II

"Bound to satisfy fans of the previous, and more."

Introduction
Baldur's Gate: Dark Alliance II - Bound to satisfy fans of the previous, and more.

Hack-and-Slash games usually bore me out after a few hours of playing. On the other hand, plot-driven games are usually too easy to complete, that or it doesn't require much playing. Baldur's Gate: Dark Alliance II strikes a perfect middle ground between the two types. Its mixed with a heavy dungeon-crawling act and a reasonable amount of character customization. This plainly achieves two things: You have fun leveling up your character while crawling, and you acquire a good control over your player's characteristic. Combined to the fact that
Dark Alliance II might be one of the sweetest looking game on the Playstation 2 yet, this game definitely holds some quality in it.

Erh...so, where are we?
Taking off from a rather abrupt stop in the first game - where the human archer, dwarven fighter and elven sorceress defeated the villain, and are quickly held captive by Mordoc - Dark Alliance 2 picks up the pieces from there and pins it back in place. If you didn't bothered to play the first series, you might have a problem understanding the whole main storyline. But, Dark Alliance II does a nice job referring back to the past events and frequently, familiar characters will reappear once again. However, the fact that whether or not you played the first game would not hinder the amount of fun you will get from this again. As I've said before, Dark Alliance II strikes a perfect balance between mindless slashing and being plot-driven.

Due to the fact that our first trio of heroes got captured by the evil vampire lord, we get a new selection of heroes to choose from. Oh joy! You can take control of one of these five special people who would determine the rest of your fate: A human barbarian that packs a strong punch; the master of unarmed combat, the dark elf monk; a moon elf necromancer that controls the magical forces of death; a greedy but a formidable fighter at range, a dwarven rogue and last but not least, the master of light, a human cleric. Each and everyone of the five have a special style of playing. The barbarian, needless to say shreds everything apart at melee battling. The monk excels at unarmed combat, while the rogue beats enemies from far. And the cleric and necromancer, both taught in the school of light and dark magic respectively. In addition to that, if you have a mate who could spare the couple of hours to play with you, the both of you can play Dark Alliance II in co-op mode. This definitely brings in another kind of experience that differs greatly from going solo.

Fighting and fighting and fighting. Boring? Not necessary.
Right off the bat, if someone claims that Dark Alliance II is a boring game, I would not exactly blame him. It takes a couple more ''serious'' hours of playing to realize the true quality this game brings. In fact, the game is pretty repetitive. A typical player basically fights through a dungeon nice and clean. Next, he goes back to town and sells of his extra loot, do some NPC-chatting and be off with a new quest under his sleeves. He then purchases any extra accessories he might need during his treacherous crawling, and then finally sets off. NPC-chatting might actually sound neat, but you can actually only talk to some extraordinary people, whom are usually marked with an attention-seeking exclamation mark floating above their head. Of course, there are some side-quests that yield those crucial additional experience, but they are rather rare occurrences.

Now, we shall set off on fighting. Once you enter a dungeon, you're immediately entitled the privilege to hack and slash at anything. Of course, you would want to specifically slay those critters. You issue commands such as melee attacking or magical ranged missiles blasting towards the enemy in real-time using the face buttons on the controller. In addition to that, you can block whenever you like or jump to evade the enemy. The shoulder buttons are also there whenever there is a need to use health or mana potions. With a touch of the d-pad, you can bring up the map in two styles - big and small - and also, change your melee weapons on the fly. Dark Alliance II now entitles you to carry three sorts of weapons - one-handed, two-handed and ranged - to fight the baddies. Dark Alliance II also spawns a major difference with the ranged weapons. You no longer have to purchase ammo, and a nifty laser-sight is already available to you at the start! (Although I don't really find the laser thing useful at all, but the free-ammo rules.) Despite the fact that all the buttons on the controller are used for specific purposes, they're easy to master once you handle your first hour or so. They will not affect your overall playing experience, but instead expands the possibility of you doing a wide variety of actions.

Ah, the spoils of war!
Whilst you're faithfully carrying out quests and tirelessly slaying monsters, your character will, at the same time, develop. Like all RPGs, killing harmful monsters will earn you experience points. This, when the time ripes, will cause your character to level up that triggers the stats-buying screen. You'll then be awarded a certain amount of points (which increases with each level) to spend on some of your character abilities. The cost of the ability increases when you level it up, so both of the advancement of points balance nicely. However, the abilities of characters are usually pretty much the same. There are some special ability that only your class can purchase, such as a new magic spell. While the customization isn't exactly very elaborated, as time goes on, two characters that are playing at the same rate would definitely differ by a certain extent at the end of the game.

While crawling, you would also pick up large quantities of spoils. Items such as rings, potions, amulets would be littering the floor when you slay a large amount of enemies. The likes of weapons such as axes, swords, maces would go hand in hand with the items. Of course, don't expect the best items to be dropped from a regular monster. Dark Alliance 2 uses the similar style of carrying loot like other Forgotten Realms games. You have an endurance limit, that states how much weight you can carry. Once you reach the limit, you can't possibly carry anymore without going back to Baldur's Gate with a broken back. Fortunately, handy recall potions will send you back to and fro in a blink of an eye where you can then sell off your excess loot. Also, an added feature to the shopping list is the workshop. In that handy portion, you can upgrade existing fine or better materials into items that boast special qualities. Through the menu, you can add magical stones, gems and jewels into the weapons or armors. With that, your specimen would then be imbued with special properties exclusive to that. Added to the fact that there are many different version of gems and jewels in the game, the sheer amount of customization you can do here is simply astonishing. Different combination of special gems would yield different results, good or bad. Thus, this ensures that the player would never stick with the ordinary weapons for too long, as they're missing out if they do so!

Great-looking.
As mentioned before, Dark Alliance is an extremely sweet-looking game when it was released a couple of years ago. With this new game, not much has changed to the graphics but they're still as excellent as before. The most noticeable ones would be the water effects, in which your character seems to flow across them rather dramatically. The game also has great jobs done on the lighting effects. Your character gives off a soothing glow of light, and displays it outstandingly while creating a mysterious atmosphere. The game also brings back familiar faces of the likes of the tile sets, and the monsters. Of course, there are additional new monsters to bash on, but expect to see some of them reappearing again. Dark Alliance II is available on both the Xbox and the Playstation 2. Needless to say, the box boasts faster loading times and slightly sharper graphics. However, its hardly noticeable and both of them still plays well on their own console. Of course, if you have both of them, play it on the Xbox. No harm caused.

Dark Alliance II also features sound and music from the Dungeons & Dragons game. It fits in nicely to the atmosphere, and definitely brings the medieval world come alive. The characters in the game that you can interact to have spoken dialogue, some in which are said in very strong medieval language according to their races. This is a nice touch, and will always continue to inspire the player. The music of the game are mostly dark and creepy, and will drift off halfway while you're dungeon-crawling. But, it immediately picks up when you are approaching a certain boss encounter. The effects that synchronize with your magical or melee attacks are a neat addition, and your character sometimes yell a battle cry during the midst of battling.

Dark Alliance II is bound to stay strong.
With five different characters to choose from, Dark Alliance II - despite its rather short adventuring - offers plenty of reasons to replay it again. Coupled to the fact that co-operation mode is simply one of the most satisfying way to play the game, you can be sure that this game would not hit your shelves and set to collect dust for a long time.

Reviewer's Score: 9/10, Originally Posted: 02/07/04