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Baldur's Gate: Dark Alliance (Xbox)
by sagat
Baldur's Gate is generally acknowledged a one of the finest RPGs in existence. The expansions and sequels greatly added to its world, creating a rich and rewarding gaming experience. As a child growing up, you find yourself under threat from an unknown dark force, and you leave the safehaven of your home to investigate. What follows is a ... deep and dark storyline, which can last for hours, and has immense replay value. You can choose from a variety of character classes, each with their own set of skills.
Dark Alliance however, does away with all that and goes down the Gauntlet/Golden Axe road of arcade play and limited character design.
The graphics are passable for an Xbox game, staying pretty true to their Infinity Engine origins, although you can rotate the camera as you wish. The characters are animated to a decent level, but nothing to really excite or grab the gamer. Some of the backgrounds are very well done, with shimmering water and ominous lightening displayed very well.
The game faces two main problems. Firstly, your character is not very interesting. He or she has no backstory, nothing to make you identify or sympathise with them, something the original series achieved very well. This is combined with a dour story that contains none of the charm or depth of the originals either.
Secondly, it is an intense grind to play this game. As usual, you gain experience for killing enemies which you can then use to gain extra skill sets etc. The skills do not really branch, and the perks are far from exciting either.
The action involves you carrying out various quests and killing monsters with your weapons or spells. Unfortunately, this becomes a grind very quickly, requiring little more than hammering your attack button and running away until you gain sufficient health/magic power back.
The game is incredibly short compared with the PC originals and I was shocked when I defeated the final boss, only to be greated with an ending that promises a sequel! The final boss needed little more than running away and launching magic missiles whilst topping up with the millions of health and magic potions I had collected.
For me, I found little replay value here. There is an additional character to unlock, but I could not muster the enthusiasm to do it as the single player mode just was not interesting enough. Perhaps it would provide more fun with two players, but I would advise going for the Gauntlet multiplayer game instead with their bolder graphics and more hectic gameplay.
On its own, it is not a great game, when considered in the context of the Baldur's Gate universe, it is downright shoddy.
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