Baldur's Gate: Dark Alliance 2
by Interplay
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Category: Video Games
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Product Summary
Brand: InterplayRelease Date: 2004-01-20
Platform: PlayStation2
Publisher: Interplay
Product features:
- Fast paced, addictive hack n' slash combat with over 40+ levels of thrilling action spread over 4 acts.
- Five new customizable characters, each with distinctive powers appearances and abilities that develop throughout the game.
- New, amazingly detailed environments and monsters with even more explosive spell effects than before.
- A new, inventive item creation system that allows players to forge their own unique magical weapons and armor from raw components.
Video Game Reviews of Baldur's Gate: Dark Alliance 2
Customer Review: Less than the sum of it's parts.
Summary: 3 Stars
I love hack and slash action RPGs. It may be my favorite genre of console games. Baldurs Gate DA, Champions of Norrath , Champions RTA, heck I even played Justice League Heroes to completion 3 times.
I really wanted to love BGDA2 like I loved the first one, or at least as much as I enjoyed Champions of Norrath. BGDA2 has what you might think you want from a RPG. 5 classes to chose from. Customizable gear, dungeons, bosses, different spells, co-op play.
The problem is that even with all the great ingredients, it still takes a certain magic to combine them into a fun product.
That is where BGDA really fails, it's simply not as fun as the competitors. Creating your own gear sounds great, until you realize that magic gear just isn't dropping from enemies very much in terms of useful armor or weapons, and the gems you need to create your own are also very rare.
This means for the first 3-4 hours of the game you will be limited to 2-4 spells and some basic armor.
The classes seemed very limited to me. There is the Road Warrior looking faux punk "Barbarian/Fighter", a Cleric, and Dark Elf Monk, a Wizard and Necromancer Moon Elf.
I've played w/ the Necro and the Monk. The necro is very easy to use if you choose to put spell points into your Pet Skeleton spell. The Skeleton is a great tank and can take a ton of damage when maxed out. Combine that w/ a shield spell and some haste and you can have the Skellie do most of the work for you. Hit enemies w/ a cold spell to freeze and slow them at the same time, and watch the Skellie smash them into dust.
It's pretty fun for about 1 hour. Then it becomes clear that there is little to no challenge in the game if you chose this path of Necro. I switched to the Monk class and it was painfully boring and the monk is weaker than my pet skeleton.
Over powered pets is a common problem in MMORPGs, unfortunately there is no patch to fix this in BGDA2. You end up w/ either an over powered necro who runs around shirtless carrying a book which makes for a very odd looking fighting animation.
Level design is also very drab and predictable. While using the same technology from BGDA, BGDA2 is designed by a different team, and it shows. Where BGDA was surprising, pretty and eye catching with it's level design, BGDA2 tends to be boring and dull in appearance.
Each locale looks like something directly out of BGDA1 only less polished and with few surprises. This makes the ares a chore to slog through as you look for the unblocked path on the twisty road up the mountains. I spend more time in levels trying to find the exit than actually fighting. I started skipping searching weapons racks and chests because the overdose of "shoddy level gloves of nothing" became a pointless collect-a-thon to sell for meager amounts of gold.
I started doing a calculation of how long it would take to collect enough shoddy weapons to sell for enough gold to buy the magic gems I needed to make a full set of magic armor and I got a little sad that it was going to be many hours of recall selling.
After 5 hours in studded leather armor carrying a book and letting my skellie do all the tanking, I had enough. 5 hours in and I was still waiting for the fun level, or the cool looking designs from BGDA.
I salute anyone who finished this game all the way through, I still cant muster up any reason to invest another 5 hours of watching Skellie blink and swing every 1.5 seconds.
Description of Baldur's Gate: Dark Alliance 2
Darkness gathers yet again in the sprawling port city of Baldur's Gate. Bloodthirsty bandits stalk the trade roads, a secret society of heartless assassins dominate the criminal underworld abducting citizens on moonless nights dragging them screaming into the darkness. The city's most recent saviors vanished along with the Onyx Tower, and so, in heroic tradition, adventurers throughout the Western Heartlands make the journey to Baldur's Gate to meet their great and unknown fate. The threat oBaldur's Gate: Dark Alliance took co-operative action role-playing to new heights on the Playstation 2 console. Alone, or with a friend, you could tackle giant rats, undead monsters, dark elves, and even a white dragon, as you uncovered a plot against the good city of Baldur's Gate. But the ending indicated there was more adventure to come. Fans were worried that the sequel wouldn't live up to original's promise when the original design team jumped ship to work on Sony's Champions of Norrath: Realms of EverQuest. They need not have worried; Dark Alliance 2 is a worthy successor, retaining the weapons, monsters, Dungeons and Dragons action and rules, sharp graphics, responsive controls, and high adventure of its predecessor.
The plot is a bit darker this time, but you're given a wider range of character classes to help face the elevated threats. There's the mighty barbarian, a dwarf rogue, a cleric, the monk (a martial artist), and a necromancer. The quest is huge and there are character-class specific side quests you can embark on--an extra incentive to play again as a different character. The level design tends to be a little too maze-like, and there's lots of boring backtracking, but the annoying jumping puzzles from the first game are gone.
The biggest problem with Dark Alliance 2 is that it doesn't measure up to the competition. It's a 2-player game, while Dungeons & Dragons Heroes (on the Xbox) and Champions of Norrath (on the PS2 and Xbox) allow four-player play. Then again if you plan to play solo, or with a single friend, that shouldn't keep you from coming to the city of Baldur's Gate's aid once again. --Andrew Bub
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