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When it was
first announced that Dark Alliance was in the works an eyebrow was
raised on my minds eye, but when I got word that it was an action RPG I
have to admit that I was just a wee bit skeptical. After being treated
to the joyous real-time, tactics oriented magic that was the battle
system of the Baldur's Gate and its little brother Icewind Dale, not to
mention the ultra open-ended questing, could an action RPG rendition of
the Baldur's Gate universe even be palatable? After spending an
unhealthy amount of time with the finished product I'd have to say yes,
and then some. Both the hacking and the slashing, the dungeon
exploration, and story are actually very good, albeit fleeting. If you
have a hankering for something with a Gauntlet vibe to it, but with a
little bit of Diablo meatiness as well, this is the game for you.
So what's all
the hub-bub in the game? What's the point? The goal? The grand master
plan? Well, you take the role of an adventurer who goes off to the city
of
Baldur's Gate in search of adventure, fame, riches, and all of the other
goodies that come with roaming the countryside clobbering evil-doers.
Not three steps into the city your character gets bonked over the head
by a band of thieves (not much of an adventurer if your getting beat
down the second you enter a city, no?), they proceed to take all your
money, so it's off to get them back through a series of small
adventures. Of course over this time the plot unfolds and there is more
to all this than a bunch of thieves going around town causing a ruckus.
I could go on, but then I'd ruin the plot, but learning whose behind
everything and seeing how the story presents itself is very
entertaining. It's surprisingly well-paced and allows the action to
continue to flow well, not over burdening players with a heavy
narrative, thus keeping the "action" in this action RPG.
Hurting the game somewhat is the level of narrative in the game since it
really punches a hole in Dark Alliance's replay value. You'll find
yourself frantically mashing the buttons while going through the
conversations, not the end of the world but the continued inclusion of
the story in repeat playings of the game makes it feel a little bit
slower the second and third time through. More damning though is the
length of this game. It is a short little bugger, clocking in at around
10 hours to complete on default difficulty settings (Normal Mode). The
simple fact that this is a Baldur's Gate game makes one think that it
has at least 30-40 hours of continuous, original gameplay in-store. It's
a tradition and staple in the franchise, but not present here. Making
the game at least 20 hours and five chapters long would have really gone
a long way. I don't think I've been so let down when I realized the game
was almost over. Helping to make up for this are three different
character classes and a secret character to use for additional trips
through the game, but 10-ish hours is still not enough regardless.
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the human is a ranged
fighter, but can still hold his own when sword fighting is required.
Like I said, archetypal, but effective nonetheless. When a character
levels-up the core stats (Strength, Wisdom, Dexterity, and such) can
only be enhanced every so many levels, and even then you can only choose
one area to improve and only by one point. It's the different abilities
that get the lion's share of the attention at a level-up. Players will
have to decide whether to upgrade a spell's potency or to enhance
regenerative abilities and so forth. It may not sound like much, but as
the game progresses the choices made here will really have an effect on
the character's development, particularly the sorceress with her large
selection of spells to learn. They're all setup like that of the
Baldur's Gate games on the PC where you get the weapon proficiency
level-ups. There are one to five circles that can be filled, each
requiring a different amount of points to fill depending on the skill
and the level of that skill. It's all quite straightforward and those
who have played the PC editions of Baldur's Gate will feel very at home
with this system.
The one disappointing thing in terms of progression is how the weapons
work their way up the food chain. It's all very rudimentary in its
execution. For armor you go from padded, to leather, to scale, to chain,
to plate, from weakest to strongest. There isn't really any strengths
and weaknesses inherent to each one, it's just one piece is stronger
than the other, no suits with a knack for stopping fire, no poison-
resistant armor. Weapons aren't so bad as attack strength also has a lot
to do with your character's strength and natural fighting abilities, the
choices in weapon selection largely hinges on whether you want a one or
two-handed one, then whether you want an axe, a bow, a sword, and so on.
The action
itself is where the game really shines. It isn't as intense as the
Diablo games and their gigantic swarms of monsters to fight, but the
intensity of the battles is still there with a good half dozen or so
beasts jumping you at once with a few particularly large ones in the mix
to keep you on your toes. If it looks like there are more enemies than
you can handle it's usually not too hard to inch your way up to them and
get a few to follow so you can fight a few at a time, making it easier
to defeat them. However, later in the game many of the monsters will
have none of that, so you'll need to be stocked up on healing and mana
potions then dive headlong into the fray. With this the regular battles
that were faught while working my way through the dungeon felt a lot
more difficult than the boss battles themselves. I had to think and
strategize far more when dealing with large numbers of enemies crawling
the dungeon than when dealing with the bosses. If anything the fights at
the end of each chapter were anti-climatic. All you need to know is when
to block and to stay close to avoid the magic.
Exploration of the dungeons themselves is fairly open-ended. There are
plenty of little side paths to take where you'll find all manner of
goodies, but they're far from being gigantic, sprawling catacombs. There
is still a very distinct sense of where you need to go and where you
don't. Things only get complicated in the last tower of the game where
there is little rhyme nor reason as to the level layouts, allowing for a
lot of exploring. I was pleasantly surprised to see that traps in the
dungeon hurt the enemies as well as your character, so if you come
across a group of exceptionally tough bad guys, just lead them to the
traps and let the traps do all the work. What was disappointing were the
lack of secret areas in the game that don't show up on the map, there
were none to speak of. Make no mistake though, this is a very "on
the rails" action RPG. There are no huge, sweeping vistas with
dozens of tiny niches to discover, it's predominantly dungeon crawling,
enclosed and relatively limited.
What really knocked me on my behind was how well the buttons on the
controller are utilized for this game, as in all of them serve a
purpose. Better still is that it is all well laid out, not all
complicated and disorganized. Besides the obvious movement, attack, and
magic using buttons, you can easily scroll through your spells or
abilities as well as down a healing or mana potion at the push of a
button. Very handy. Response is also worth mentioning as the characters
all react well to commands, especially useful for the dwarf when he's in
close with a lot of enemies, or the sorceress when she has to sift
through spells on the fly.
What's nice also is that there is the option for two player simultaneous
play, so you can combine the knee-deep axe whacking with arms-length
spell slinging and such. Difficulty is questionable overall though
at the lower levels, but if you crank it up a notch the game is a lot
more challenging and doesn't feel like such a pushover. You can
also open extreme difficulty mode by finishing the gauntlet (opened
after finishing the game) with everyone's favorite dark elf, Drizzt
Do'Urden (and play as the character if you finish the game on extreme).
From an aesthetic standpoint Dark Alliance is top notch. For there being
so many tiny monsters scurrying about the screen, it's nice to see all
the tiny details included in them. The larger beasts are definitely a
sight to behold though with frost giants, gnolls, and trolls really
standing out and actually looking very imposing. The animation is also
really smooth with no slowdown, even when there is a lot happening on
the screen at once. There are two aspects of the visuals that really
stood out though: the water effects and the lighting effects. Wow and a
half! The trail behind the character and the monsters and the ripples
are easily some of the most realist I have ever seen. The lights and
shadows when a spell are cast are also very impressive. Get a bunch of
magic users on screen at the same time and things just go crazy, and
still no slowdown too. There is very little in the way of cutscenes in
the game as everything remains in-game by and large, but what few scenes
there are actually look pretty good. They aren't the best of the best by
any means, but they do look nice. The visuals in Dark Alliance are
surprisingly good for the type of game that it is.
Keeping pace with the visuals, the audio for the game is also of
exceptionally good quality. First off, the voice acting is very well
done, but considering the track record of the voice acting in the
Baldur's Gate game it's hardly surprising. There are a lot of voices
that will be familiar to those who have played previous games from the
franchise, as well as there being a small army of voice actors who
participated in Metal Gear Solid 2, and John Rhys-Davis (from Sliders
and who played Gimli in The Lord of the Rings). All of this equates to
very good acting throughout the game. The music was handled by Jeremy
Soule, who was also responsible for the scores of Icewind
Dale, Total Annihilation, and Giants:
Citizen Kabuto, among others. It's a very good assortment of
atmospheric pieces, feeling more like something one would hear in a
movie, not over-powering, but not too subtle either. The odd thing is
that sometimes the music cuts right in, and other times it fades in. I'd
imagine this is to do with the programming. To complete the aural
aspects of the game, the sound effects perform their role admirably with
the expected clangs of weapons striking armor, roars and grumbles of
enemies, and zaps and fizzles of magic. It should also be noted how nice
the reverb is in the various caverns and castles, adding an additional
sense of depth and expansiveness to the environments.
Despite some minor shortcomings in the game, there is a lot to like
about Dark Alliance. The battles are frenetic, but still require
strategy for the best results, leveling up often proves a very deep
experience choosing what to enhance, and it looks and sounds great. The
only major problem is the shortness of the game, but even with this
Baldur's Gate: Dark Alliance is not a game to pass by. In the very least
rent this one for a weekend.
- Mr. Nash
(January 2,
2002)
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