Baldur's Gate: Dark Alliance II

"If only interplay didn't take part in this game.."

This is the second series of Bladur's gate: Dark alliance 1 which is obviously call Baldur's gate: Dark alliance 2. It has 2 more chapters and with more characters and monsters, and even spells and equipments. However, a passing grade is what I will rate because of these following reasons. Now below are the reasons.

Gameplay: Well, gameplay is somehow ok, but then it is FAR TOO repetitive. Every characters is just too specialist for its own purpose. For example, a barbarian is plainly used for fighting and nothing much. Gamers play games to enjoy, not to follow the tradition of what is so call 'class'. Necromancer's attack are too pathetic and thus, he have to cast spells to defeat the monsters. Even so, the damage are not so impressive; monsters could have kill you before you defeat them.
Another thing is the creating of items. There are alot of combinations, though more than half of them ends up useless in battle, even though every one of them serves a purpose. In addition, the price of creating is far too expensive; even people playing extreme mode have problems getting strongest equipment, not to mention multiplayers. Also, people have to get the best material equipment which is flawless and the chances of finding them in extreme is extremely....low.
THe third thing concerns about the difficulty of the game. The difficulty of hard and extreme is far too....extreme. Monsters with 50hp in hard mode become 200+hp in extreme mode. Furthermore, the damage doesn't increase by 'multiplication', but it appears to have increase by 'power'. For example, a Gnoll in hard mode dealt only 10-20hp, but in extreme mode, if he hits you critical by chance, a barbarian will die by that insane hit.
There are far more negative points in the gameplay, but then they aren't the main point for this section. All I can say is that this game's gameplay is very bad, not to mention the flaws in the battle system.

Graphic/Sounds: The graphic are not impressive to me, the camera rotation is too restrictive; you can only look in the top-view, can't zoom in or out. As for the graphic, it's just like they are doing a 'anyhow' work to the environment, or rather a plain effort to it. There's not much detail on the landscape itself, no flowers, no weeds...ohh no, I do not meant such things. I mean obvious details like...you figure it out yourself.
Sound is another factor that I will explain briefly. The sound acts as either a boost or a drop to your playing morale. For this game's sound, it drops my playing morale instead, the background music isn't loud enough; I might as well mute the sound since there's only combat noise or spell effects.

Story: Addition of 2 chapters to this game compare to the first series doesn't really improve the storyline a bit. You just have to hack and slash all the way through the map or the dungeon just to learn some more storyline which links back BG:DA 1. In addition, the character storyline is too short(only one mission), I wish they could add some more to it. Furthermore, there's no storyline mission for Drizzt and Artemis, just because they are secret characters? No, I think they should add a storyline mission for them.

Conclusion: Save your money, and buy a better game. I think the fault lies with Interplay, Black Isle studio has created impressive Baldur's gate series even though it's PC version. As for the replayability, it is not that high because there's not much to do after playing one game except to unlock extreme mode and Drizzt, and then completing extreme mode to unlock Artemis. After that, it's left inside the cover, forever.

Reviewer's Score: 3/10, Originally Posted: 05/12/04