Baldur's Gate: Dark Alliance

"A visual feast of hacking and slashing"

The Baldur's Gate series began its life as a couple of D&D based RPG's created by the brilliant developer, Bioware. Dark Alliance, created by Snowblind Studios, is a Baldur's Gate game which is friendlier for consoles. The complex D&D rules are gone. Combat has been modified and resembles the combat of Diablo 2. While dumbing down a computer game for a console usually spells trouble, Snowblind instead makes a fantastic hack-and-slasher with great graphics and fun, challenging combat.

Story - 8

The game starts out similarly to how many of your D&D campaigns might start out. Walking through a town, your character is knocked out and robbed, only to be saved by the town's guards. You awaken in a tavern as the large breasted barkeep (there to attract lots of men to the tavern, no doubt) explains that there is a thieves guild sending out its members to kill guards and mug civilians, the same thieves who mugged you. You want your goods and revenge, so the barkeep gives you her keys to the basement where large rats have invaded. This first mission is one of the most memorable as it shows just how fun the rest of the game will be. So, the heroes go from killing rats to thwarting much larger schemes such as rescuing the whole of Baldur's Gate from destruction. While the game is well written and acted, you will most likely not care too much about the story.

Gameplay – 9/10

The combat is as simple as moving your character, either the fighter, the ranger, or the sorcerer, and pressing a button to swing your weapon. These characters get other abilities and spells to use, though the fighter has such a little amount of distinguishing abilities that he's a little boring to use. I've watched many people play this game and most play the hack-n-slash way where they mash the attack button and use health potions constantly in order to live. This way works to an extent, but costs lots of money. The way others fight is using caution and hit and run tactics. I found that way better seen as how enemies can sometimes kill you in a few hits. Either way, though, you will die a lot and eventually get to the end of the game. So, yes, the game is plenty difficult on normal and very difficult on hard (easy is a breeze). That's what makes the game so fun. You're fighting enemies as strong as or stronger than you, the odds are against you, your character doesn't perform the superhuman stunts of Dante or Ryu Hayabusa, but you can still prevail.

Visuals – 9/10

Another thing that makes the game so fun is the visuals. Like Diablo 2, the game has lots of eye candy, although this looks much better than Blizzard's game. Everything from watching spells cast from you and hit your enemies to watching gigantic spiders approach you to watching your character walk through water is a visual treat. Many people may say that graphics don't matter, but in some cases they really add to the game, such as in this case.

Sound – 8/10

There's nothing here that stands out, but nothing bad. The voice-acting is engaging enough to listen to the characters. The musical score has a few stand out moments, but many of the compositions aren't very memorable.

Longevity – 9/10

I found this game fun enough to play through three to four times, and it's rare for me to play through a game more than once. For that I give it credit. The game does get repetitive and is nothing deeper than a hack-n-slash, but what's that matter when it's so fun? Also the save system is lazy and it's easy to save over someone else's file on accident. With very careless people, it's easy for every save game to be deleted at once. It happened to me. This is definitely worth a buy, seen as how it has some good replay and gameplay value. It's even better if only you or you and a bud plan on making one file to save over as to prevent others from getting very angry.

Score – 9/10

Reviewer's Score: 9/10, Originally Posted: 09/10/04