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After several hits on the PC, such as Baldur's Gate and Baldur's Gate 2: Shadow of Amn, the popular series has finally made its way to the consoles in the form of Baldur's Gate: Dark Alliance. How did the transition to console turn out? Read on and discover!
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The story to Baldur's Gate: Dark Alliance starts out in the city of Baldur's Gate in the Forgotten Realms world. You journey to the city in search of riches and adventure, but soon after arriving you’re mugged by members of the thieves’ guild and lose all of your possessions. You make your way to the Elfsong Tavern, and are told that the thieves reside in the sewers. You then head to the sewers to face the thieves and your adventure begins. On your journey you’ll encounter much deadlier enemies than thieves and you’ll find yourself in a battle to save Baldur's Gate from a dark alliance of foes. The story seemed to start out very slowly and having your character pursue the thieves simply to get back his money seemed like a lazy way to start things off. Later in the game when things start to come together and the plot thickens everything becomes more interesting. In the end the story wasn’t the strongest I’ve seen, but it was interesting enough to drive the game forward and keep me playing.
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You start with one of three characters, each with their own advantages and disadvantages. You can choose from an elven sorceress, a dwarven fighter or a human archer. The most fun thing about this game is the two-player mode and you can go through the entire game with a buddy. It then becomes a lot like Gauntlet Legends as the two of you fight over the best weapons and most money, but it’s got a lot nicer look than Gauntlet and a halfway decent story to tie the hacking and slashing together. This helps to keep it from getting too dull, which is something that single player hack and slash games suffer from. Although the single player version of this game is good, its strength is in two player.
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Overall, the game is pretty basic. You run through dungeons hacking and slashing at everything in site and pick up lots of gold and cool items in the process. Occasionally you’ll find a shop owner who will sell you some cool stuff, but you can find some really good weapons and armor just by killing some monsters. There’s a large variety of items in the game and you can spend hours searching out the best stuff. Weapons and armor have numerous different classes, such as axes and bows, and there are different strengths too, like the occasional axe +2. There are various other factors that come into play in choosing the best equipment, such as weight. Each item you carry has a weight and depending on the strength of your character you can carry a certain amount. A large axe may have a very high weight, and if you choose to wield it because of its high attack power you may not be able to carry much else.
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The more enemies you kill the more experience you gain, which will eventually lead to you leveling up. Every time you level up you gain a number of points equal to your level to spend on learning new skills. Each character has several skills, many of which are unique and cannot be learned by the other characters. Also, for every four levels gained you can pick one of your characters stats, such as strength or wisdom, to raise. The characters all become pretty customizable because you choose which stat is raised, which ability is learned and what equipment is worn. Unfortunately the game is pretty short (roughly 10 hours) so it may be pretty hard to learn all of the abilities or buy all of the equipment you want…especially if you’re playing with a buddy who takes half the cash and plenty of experience away.
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The game does a beautiful job taking a PC style game and converting it to console controls. On a PS2 controller you can quickly use a heal potion by pressing R2 or use a rejuvenation potion by pressing L2. You can also easily switch between your sword and bow easily by pressing left and right, and can scroll through your magic by pressing up or down. The controls were nice and surprised me by how smoothly they worked.
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Graphically the game is beautiful. The characters are highly detailed in design and they move with impressive animation. The game has some beautiful effects, such as rippling water or the lighting effects caused by spells. The sound is also of high quality. The sounds of combat, like monsters growling or swords clashing, are crisp and clear, and the music is also of high quality. Unfortunately combat sounds almost always overtake the music and little of the score can actually be heard. The game’s voice acting is excellent, and features such talents as Cam Clarke and John Rhys-Davies. The voices all fit each character very well, and the lip-synching is also done well. My only complaint about the voices is on the occasional trip to the store. While you’re browsing through the items the store owner has the annoying habit of blabbing on constantly and it gets really damn annoying.
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Despite being a solid game overall, Baldur's Gate isn't for everyone. Unless you’ve got a buddy to play along with, the constant hacking and slashing can get dull. Also, because of the game's short length it may be tough to get your money's worth. Still, it’s a very fun game and at the very least worth a rental. If you're a big Baldur's Gate fan, or in love with hack and slash, then this game is sure to please.
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