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Baldur's Gate: Dark Alliance Review for GameCube
Posted on Tuesday, December 16, 2003 @ 09:11:35 pm E.S.TAs we all know, the GameCube isn’t well known for it multitude of RPG’s. There’s Gauntlet, Gladius, and, well… not much else. For the role-players among us, Baldur’s Gate: Dark Alliance will be a refreshing change from the GC norm, but for everyone else it’ll be just another exercise in monotony.
The game’s story simple enough: you (in archer, fighter, or sorceress form), are returning from a long journey. While walking down a dimly lighted street in Baldur, you are accosted by a trio of crooks. Fortunately, a city guard shows up and the thieves leave with only your possessions. While tracking down said thieves, the plot unfolds and you see that the villains (part of a new, more vicious thieves’ guild than the guild of old) are indeed just small roots branching off the large, expansive taproot of, dare I say it, evil. This plot has been thoroughly used, but it still gets the job done. As you work—and yes, I said work, not hack, or triumph—your way through all the game’s treachery and peril, you gain levels, earn new weapons, and learn cool new skills, in regular RPG fashion.
But alas, gaining levels, picking up weapons, and learning new skills just wasn’t quite enough to keep me satisfied throughout the game. Enemies are splendid, and levels are well designed, but shooting and slicing baddie after endless baddie just becomes boring after a while. In all actuality, I only played through about half the game before I became bored; it took about seven hours. That’s right, even mediocre gamers, such as myself, should complete this game in around fourteen hours. This is an RPG, GameCubers. Many medium-sized RPGs will take about twenty hours to complete. This one took ten.
Maybe, though, it’s a good thing the game was cut off so soon. None of the levels are particularly memorable, and after throwing baddie after baddie at you, the game really loses its spark, and it becomes monotonous and time-consuming. I take this as pure laziness from Black Isle Studios. If they had attempted to make more enemy types and create some levels with a little variance, the game would have been much better.
Another problem that plagues BG is its complete lack of unoriginality. Everything in the game, like its tiered leveling and its tired storyline has been seen in, and is highly interchangeable with, many other RPG’s. Almost every aspect of the game can be traced back to some RPG, be it Diablo, Dungeon Siege, or the highly unappreciated NoX. Monotonous hack n’ slash gameplay coupled with sheer unoriginality make play Baldur’s Gate an unpleasurable experience.
On the flipside, BG holds many items to buy and many skills to learn, reducing the rate at which you become bored with its gameplay. Although there aren’t nearly as many items as in such series as Diablo and Everquest, there are still some cool items to choose from, including life-giving amulets and a sword that starts flaming only when enemies are near (the aptly named ‘flaming long sword’). As said above, though, these items just aren’t enough to keep gamers interested in the game long enough to complete it. Weapons are nice, but substance is even nicer.
BG is truly a feast for the eyes. Every environment looks touchable, all the creatures encountered are splendidly rendered, and lighting, whether in a gloomy forest or morbid dungeon, greatly adds to the game’s mood and gives each level some much needed character. On the downside, though, the game’s frame rate shudders when the fighting gets fierce and causes you to miss the action, sometimes even getting you killed.
In accordance with the graphics, the game’s audio is also very well done. Voice acting sounds professional and believable, every sound effect is crystal-clear, and the music, in collaboration with the game’s lighting, greatly adds to the game’s mood, and makes everything, even getting killed by an ogre, more enjoyable.
While no deathmatch modes are available in BG, a gamer and a friend are allowed to play through each mission cooperatively. While this adds some life to the game, it too becomes monotonous after a few hours worth of gameplay.
Overall, BG is a sub-par, hack n’ slash game that fails to reach its potential because of unoriginality, boring gameplay, and length (or lack thereof). Though visuals and audio are both good, they can’t begin to make up for the game’s sheer lack of substance. I wouldn’t recommend anyone who isn’t an RPG enthusiast to purchase this game, though the few hours of enjoyment it’ll offer you may be worth a rental. Review By: Stealth52 - 1591 Reads
Baldur's Gate: Dark Alliance Review Scores for GC :
| Gameplay |
| 5.5 |
| Graphics |
| 9 |
| Sound |
| 9 |
| Replay |
| 6.5 |
| Overall |
| 6.5 |
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