Baldur's Gate: not balderdash! (Baldur's Gate (PC))

Member Name: The Duke

Product:	Baldur's Gate (PC)
Date:	31/01/07 (643 review reads)
Rating:

Advantages: Great traditional role playing game. Loads to do.

Disadvantages: Lack of up to date graphics, some voice acting irritations.

Warning! This review uses words not often seen in the real world such as 'foe', 'flee', 'maiden' and the like. Apologies.

Baldur's Gate has long been regarded as the best traditional RPG available on the PC. When I say traditional, I mean with the usual experience points system, magic weaponry, party of adventurers rather than something like Deus Ex, which was a hybrid of a few genres.

Installation of the game is a breeze and before you know it, you're creating your character. Character creation is a staple of traditional RPGs and this one's no different. Most attributes can be altered, even the voice, and these are all fairly unimportant in the grand scheme of things. Watch your "rollable" attributes though – constitution, dexterity, charisma and the like. It's these that determine how much of a pansy (or not) your character turns out to be. Strength, for example, help you bash enemies, high charisma helps you make friends, dexterity dictates how able your character is a using a bow and arrow (though real adventurers use a sword to pummel their foes).

Once you're satisfied with your character, off you go into the world of Baldur's Gate. Various inhabitants of Candlekeep (your home town) give you pointless tasks to achieve to let you familiarise yourself with the in-game mechanics and this introduces you also to the experience point system where you're rewarded by experience points for completing tasks. You'll have to find missing books, talk to a guard who'll teach you how to fight and other chores before you're summoned to the great library by your step-dad.

Your step-dad Gorion (get used to this… everyone has silly names) is a miserable, serious sort and after some lecturing you on some great evil or whatnot (which you ignore cos he's only a trumped up librarian) he claims you will both have to leave Candlekeep. Hurrah! The open roads! Quaffing ale in inns! Meeting fair maidens! He forces you to tie up any loose ends before leaving, which you do, and off you go. Gorion apparently has some mates that he wants to meet and they're waiting in a town near by.

Unfortunately, you're only about two hundred yards down the road before you and Gorion are attacked by the medieval version of the Village People, including some guy that's camper than a row of tents. He forces you to flee. As a typical librarian, Gorian tries some mumbo jumbo he's probably read from a book, before failing miserably to stay alive. The last thing you see is Gorion cut down by the Camp Knight who proceeds to do some comedy bad guy gloating.

Awaking the next morning, you're joined by your chum, Imoen, from Candlekeep who secretly followed you along the path and watched everything. Stupid girl. Now you have to drag her along. At least you have someone to do the cooking…

Now this is where the game starts properly. Obviously, given the introduction and tutorial level, it's up to you to find the Camp Knight, give him a bit of a hiding and avenge Gorion's death. Oh, and if you could find out why all of this happened, that'd be just dandy. So far, so good. This is all typical RPG fayre and you'll have seen it all a million time before in other RPGs and fantasy films.

Baldur's Gate is a hugely complicated game with loads of little rules and whanot to get your head around. If you've ever played Dungeons and Dragons in any shape or form, this will help you a little as BG uses this system as the underlying engine. If you've never touched D&D, don't worry as it's all fairly straightforward and the game does it all for you. All you have to do is get your little party of people from A to B, bash any baddies (or goodies… you're given free reign to be Good or Evil), and cart off any treasure.

The interface for doing all your funky stuff is really quite simple and intuitive once you've mastered what the various icons mean (perhaps a dip into the instruction manual would help). Before too long, you're rearranging your party, swapping items, learning spells and tooling up your characters like a pro. Battle is something that requires a little practice, so it's worth spending a bit of time on it when you're given the chance in the Candlekeep tutorial level.

There are loads of little nuances with the game that change dependant on your own path throughout. Being the goody two shoes that I am, I decided that being evil simply wasn't my bag, baby. Dandering around the countryside performing good deeds, helping old ladies find their husbands, beating up giant insects all helped contribute to my reputation and my reputation, in turn, had an effect on who joined (or stayed) in my party. Killing the annoying yokel in one village who does nothing but follow you about, mutter inanity and say "heya" wasn't too helpful to my reputation, but by Jove, it was satisfying killing the little runt.

There's a load to do in BG. Along the way to finding Camp Baddie, you've got tons of quests and sub-quests to plow through. It makes sense to do as many of these as possible because there are experience points that must be gained and beating up giant spiders just isn't enough. Soon, you'll be milking the game for experience points so that your characters can become stronger, more resistant to damaging magic, more accurate with a bow and less likely to have some puny elf come along and kick sand in your face at the beach. Here and there, you'll be given little titbits of plot advancement which leads to further quests.

This is where BG is a winner. If you like RPGs, then BG will provide you with tremendous value for money because there are hours upon hours worth of entertainment here.

I bought the Baldur's Gate collection on DVD from Amazon for a tenner and for that, I got Baldur's Gate, the add-on pack "Tales of the Sword Coast", Baldur's Gate 2 and its add-on "Throne of Bhaal". All for ten of your English pounds! How big a bargain is that?

There are a few minor issues. As Baldur's Gate is a fairly old game in computing terms, there's not much you can do about screen resolution, so the graphics can look dated and a bit rough in places. That shouldn't effect your enjoyment of the game, well, it didn't bother me that much once I got into the game and most of the important stuff is still clear.

The sound is excellent overall, but some of the lines from the voice actors are used far too often. If I hear that bald goon shout "Go for the eye, Boo, go for the eyes!" one more time, I will shove my sword up his… ummm… backpack.

The age of the game means that you don't need a spanking new PC to run it, either. I thought there might have been issues with running such an old game with Windows XP, but these worries were unfounded and XP is supported (at least in the compilation that I bought).

Atari's recommended specs are:

Windows 95/98/ME/2000/XP
Pentium II 300 or AMD K6-III or faster
64 MB RAM
DVD-ROM drive
Direct X compatible graphics card
Direct X compatible sound card
Direct X 8.0

I ran it (with no issues whatsoever) using:

Windows XP Professional
1 GB RAM
DVD ROM
Soundblaster 7.1 soundcard
ATI Radeon 9600 graphics card
Direct X 9.0c

Summary: Possibly the greatest traditional fantasy role playing game on the PC.