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"Setting a standard for games of this genre to meet!"

Briefing Room
Baldur's Gate: Dark Alliance is an Action/RPG that pushes many of the different gaming boundaries, from solid controls to a decent variety of weapons, and spells. Let’s not forget the three unique characters you can choose from to play as. Even better yet would be its top notch graphical presence. Keep in mind; with all its great features and incentives to play, this title does have its own flaws.

Now for gamers familiar with this genre you will quickly notice a list of titles which this release seems to mimic in many ways. Titles such as Dungeons & Dragons, the Forgotten Realms, Baldur's Gate, Gauntlet, Eye of the Beholder and even a bit of Diablo. Yes, that is quite a wide variety of games, but it takes the best of each game element and mixes them in a fashion that leaves Dark Alliance somewhere on its own plane of existence. Sadly though, for everything good this game has to offer, it has flaws that make the greatness of this game seem merely above average. In a moment I will get to all that. But what it really boils down to is Interplay rushing Snowblind Studios to release a title that really needed more development time.

Gameplay: 9.1
Starting off you will be able to select a co-op or single player. It doesn’t really matter because you can import your character into another player’s game, and vice versa. Definitely one of my favorite features this game had to offer! When selecting new game you are given the choice of three characters to pick from: a magical elf, a human archer, and the axe swinging’ dwarf. Each had its strengths and weaknesses. Out of the three classes only the elf was female in sex. After selecting your character, you witness a quiet tragic cut scene. That is your character being assaulted from behind in the dead of night near some run down tavern and to add insult to injury, they mug you! Guards appear from a watch tower and save you from being beaten to death, while the villains allude being captured (Yes, as you may have expected these foes will fall under your blade later on in the story line, god bless RPG’s!).

After being nearly beaten to death, you enter the tavern. What do we notice first? Why, the female bartender of course! This is also where you hear the spoken dialogue (Extremely well done!) for the first time, and yes it can be found with just a click on any of the numerous NPC throughout the game. Now we have a dang good reason to have our gaze fixed on the ale slinging lady. That is the enlarged upper torso of the female bartender (All I can say is, Wow!’); she sticks out like a runway model chilling with trolls. Have no worry; all the female character models are just as appealing to the eyes! By the way, (yes ladies) the men look like Fabio digitalized. Anyways, this is where the story begins. She will introduce herself, give you information, and tell you what’s going on at the moment, finally sending you off on your first quest.

The controls are quiet simple, and far from anything innovative. This said, they do work well and respond flawlessly. Your spells/skills are used with the press of one button. The same goes for both your attack, and block. Even though the use of the skills is quite simple, leveling them up is far from easy! You will have to select what skills you like or need the most. Because in order to max out all of your skills and spells, you will need to beat the game at least a few times. Which isn’t as tedious as you may think, and that’s because of the incentives the game offers.

If you beat the game on all three difficulties you will unlock a new game mode called, ‘Gauntlet’. In this mode you play as the fourth character in Dark Alliance. ‘Drizzit’, the dark elf is by far the deadliest character in the game. But if you want to play him in the regular story mode, you must first beat ‘The gauntlet’ with him. Even though he must face an unreal number of creatures that were found throughout the game, he seems well suited for huge swarms of enemies. I won’t spoil anything by stating what his attacks and such are, but he’s defiantly worth playing the game a few times over. (What I found really disappointing was he couldn’t wear any new weapons other than the two swords he dual wield. To add to this, any armor you placed on him didn’t affect the look of his character model.) The object is to defeat all the foes and reach the exit within a specific time limit.

Graphics: 9.3
The games view is isometric and you don’t have any other option to view it differently. But this doesn’t harm the game at all; it really pulls off the ‘Diablo look’ well, while utilizing its own concept for attacking and casting spells. Each and every character model has an insane amount of extra detail. The character’s lips even sync up with the spoken dialogue. This might seem minor to the average gamer, but if you pay attention closely you will notice how few games actually sync lips with ‘spoken dialogue’. Almost all of the previous generation games resemble a 1970’s Bruce Lee movie. The female character models rival that of DOA: Volley Ball and the like. It’s quite obvious; the backbone to this game was its graphics. The landscape and environments were given just as much detail and realism, they look utterly amazing! The landscapes changed rapidly; first you were in the tavern cellar, than you found yourself scaling mountains, next freezing in a tundra ice land (The snow animation was nothing extraordinary), and finally a swamp (While you walked through the pond, you could see water rings). I never seen so many landscapes thrown at you so quickly, each had as much detail as the next.

The only weakness that Dark Alliance posses graphically, was the average animations. The ice sword/enchanted items froze creatures and weaker foes shattered under your attack in a single hit. The fire enchanted weapons created a flame effect around the enemies, nothing extraordinary, or even innovative for that matter in this sense. I wanted a lot more detail behind each attack and more variation in the graphics shown on the items when you viewed your character in game. The spell animations did little to impress me when weighed next to the rest of the games graphical fruit. I can’t say the spell animations looked bad; they just didn’t seem to fit next to how well everything else looked. Perhaps it was just all the other graphical elements that threw me off, and that could have been why I began to assume more eye candy was lurking around each and every corner. For the most part I was correct; a good example on this was how each boss looks down right sinister! The beholder was rendered just as ugly as he had ever been in any previous Forgotten Realm title.


Sound: 8.3
The voice covers that each NPC had was nothing less than the best I have ever heard to date! Dark Alliance not only added a way to implement perfectly spoken dialogue, but made it possible for voice covers to tell a storyline painlessly, ultimately setting a standard for games of this genre to meet. Every NPC had its own accent and unique voice, while every creature had its own agonizing moan it squealed in death.

The music in the game was nothing more than a few loops here and a loop there. Don’t get me wrong, the music worked wonders for each and every landscape you found yourself on. The atmosphere was never spoiled by the sound or music for that matter. But I hope you’re not expecting a huge orchestra of topnotch composed music, because you won’t find it here!

Replay Value: 7.6
Dark Alliance was setup to be played many times over. Basically it’s a cover-up, to make you think there was more game time. Truthfully, if you cant stand redoing levels on a harder setting, and consider beating normal the end. Than this is a game you could beat and toss aside in roughly ten hours. But if you want to ruff it out and go through everything, you’ll reap the benefits of your hard work because the incentives are definitely here. You’ll have to beat all three modes, than beat the gauntlet and than finally beat it again with the secrete character. Is it really worth the time it’ll cost you? That depends on each gamer, and what they think of the game. Personally, I couldn’t put the controller down! The ingredients to the perfect game are all here; to bad the journey is cut so short.

Closing Comments
Even though it’s a short game, and it has its flaws. You will be hard pressed to find a better RPG/Action game to rival Baulders Gate: Dark Alliance. Personally I think Snowblind Studios was rushed in delivering this one, but it’s defiantly worth the buy!



Reviewer's Score: 9/10, Originally Posted: 05/31/03, Updated 05/31/03