Baldur's Gate: Dark Alliance

"If you are looking for a well made action RPG, then look no further."

Baldur's Gate: Dark Alliance is a great action RPG that you won't want to put down until you beat it.

When starting this game, you are able to choose one of three characters to play though the game with. One is an Arcane Archer who is an expert at using a bow and arrow. Another is a Dwarven Fighter which rely's on brute force and hand to hand combat to defeat enemies. This character is my favorite of them all. He can equip all of the powerful weapons and any 2 handed axe or sword (something no other character can do). The last character that you can choose from is an Elven Sorceress. She is the only character that can cast spells.

The game starts your character out in a town known as Baldur's Gate where evil is among all of its inhabitants. The story is well done throughout the entire game. As I said in the title, this is an action RPG. Five minutes after you start the game, you will be ready to go to battle.

There are a few RPG elements in this game. Not too many though were the player is overwhelmed. You gain experience from killing enemies and completing special quests. Once your character levels up, you get ability points that can be used at your discretion. At level one you get one point, level two you get two points, and so on.

There is nothing really special going on with the graphics in Baldur's Gate: Dark Alliance. Don't get me wrong, the graphics are pretty good, just nothing amazing. You would think that the graphics would be much better on the Xbox than other platforms, but that is not the case.

One of my biggest disappointments in this game is that there is hardly any music. The sound effects are well done as well as the ambient sounds. I only wish the developers had added music to the world of Baldur's Gate.

Since I have told you about my biggest disappointment, let me tell you what I like the best about this game. Once you beat Baldur's Gate, you can start a new game and import your character that you just used to beat the game. So in other words, you can have a level 22 dwarf starting at the beginning of a new game. This is very useful for beating the game on hard or extreme difficulty mode. It would be near impossible to beat extreme mode starting with just a level one character.

If you have a buddy over, you can always play the the game together in cooperative mode. I really enjoy games that have this feature. In this mode, whoever kills the enemy gets 60% of the experience, and the other person gets the other 40%. Completing a quest will give both players the full amount of experience. You should try playing this with a friend as it is a very fun.

Overall, if you have not played this game on another platform, and you like action RPG's (like Diablo) then you should get this game. It is possible to beat Baldur's Gate during a five day rental, but I suggest you buy it because of it's high replay value and fun addictive game play.

Graphics - 8
Sound - 7
Story - 8
Control - 8
Replay Value - 9

Reviewer's Score: 8/10, Originally Posted: 02/11/03, Updated 02/11/03