Baldur's Gate: Dark Alliance

"A mediocre port of a much better game."

Introduction

Baldur's Gate: Dark Alliance was in my opinion one of the greatest, if not the greatest game available for the Playstation 2 (and those other two consoles whose names evade me at the moment). It took a very interesting spin on the popular D&D-ish Baldur's Gate games for the PC in that it was nothing at all like them. The end result was a hack & slasher imbued with several RPG elements that pleased both RPG fanatics and RPG haters alike. I must admit that when I heard that such a great game was going to be ported over to the Game Boy Advance, I was rather apprehensive about it, mainly because I didn't think it could be done. So, how does this semi-direct port stack up against the original? Let's find out.

In a nutshell, the original Dark Alliance was a very simple game with just enough substance to maintain someone's interest indefinitely. As you might expect, the game had to be much more simplified in order to work on the Game Boy Advance. And a simplified version of an already simple game is going to pose some problems in and of itself. A lot of the abilities and spells were cut out, leaving mostly the major ones. And since one of the funnest parts of the original Baldur's Gate was customizing your characters with a set of abilities from the myriad available, this removes one of the most enjoyable elements of the game. Thankfully, this was the only gameplay aspect that suffered severely from the transition.

Sound: 4/10

Sound, however, is another issue altogether. The audio in the original Dark Alliance was excellent. A riveting soundtrack worthy of the Baldur's Gate name accompanied some of the best voice acting to ever appear in a video game. Due to the technical limitations of the Game Boy Advance, the voice acting has been eliminated and replaced with on-screen text. This was understandable. But the music was a real insult. They could have done so much better than the tinny, sub-par soundtrack present in this title that it seems to me they weren't even trying when they threw this crap together. And as if the bad music wasn't bad enough, the obnoxious grunting noise your character makes every time you attack with a melee weapon will eventually drive you towards wanting him to die in some horrible fashion. At the very least, it adds an interesting element of challenge to the game, but I still see it as a flaw.

Graphics: 7/10

The graphics are a mixed bag, more or less. In the game's defense, it is really hard to create large, 3-D environments on such a small screen. And in that respect, they did pretty well. The world of Baldur's Gate looks pretty damn good for the tiny-ass screen it's seen through. That being said, the stuff that really needed a lot of detail put into it didn't. A prime example would be the character you choose at the outset of the game. In the original Baldur's Gate, the character models were very well done, as I can confidently attest to after hours of stripping my elven sorceress down to her underwear and staring at her. Not only was the sexy elven sorceress disappointingly absent in the GBA version, all three selectable characters were the same damn guy in three different colored shirts. And you'd think that since there was only one playable sprite in the game, they wouldn't have dressed all three variations like a damned fruitcake. A lot of the other characters in the game suffered the same cruel fate as your main character, but seeing as you spend 99% of the game staring at the main character, I figured it was the issue I should harp on the most.

Gameplay: 7/10

Gameplay, as I mentioned above, also suffered in the transition to the GBA. It doesn't render the game entirely unplayable, but it's enough to lower the quality of the game quite a bit. My major gripe, again, is that a lot of the spells and abilities were cut out of the game. Also, due to the fact that your characters can no longer jump as they could in the original Dark Alliance, most of the dungeons were redone to accommodate this. This again is another example of how the game was oversimplified. Controls were another issue, but an issue that was at the very least handled well, given its complexity. Learning to manage a combination of melee, ranged, and magical attacks takes a little getting used to, but it's not like the combat system in the original Baldur's Gate was any easier. The only major problem is the fact that you can only use one spell at a time, and must enter the menu screen to change that spell. This should be very aggravating for those of you playing as the Sorcerer.

To the game's credit, it actually had a positive change when it made the villages more interactive than in the original. The streets of the original Baldur's Gate were full of lifeless zombies who for some reason refused to talk to you. In the GBA version, this much has changed, but it doesn't come without some highly questionable side effects. A number of people, mainly, will give you additional side quests to complete, which almost sounds like a very positive addition to the game. And then you very quickly figure out that not only are every last one of these side quests pointless, easy, and banal, but the rewards reaped from them are so not worth it that you begin to wish you had your 30 seconds of time back instead. In one side quest, your reward is 1 gold piece. And for those of you unfamiliar with RPG economics, this is more or less the equivalent of the game programmers visiting you in your home and kicking you in the crotch.

Overall: 7/10

In conclusion, despite what I have said about the game above, it is still very much playable and perhaps even enjoyable. The only real problem is that the original version is much, much better, and this mediocre port does that original version absolutely no justice whatsoever. Therefore, I cannot recommend this game to anyone who has any means of purchasing the much better game it was ported from. And given that Baldur's Gate: Dark Alliance is on all three major consoles, I very much doubt I can recommend this game to anyone.

Reviewer's Score: 7/10, Originally Posted: 03/02/04