by Rob Kentworth

Created on: March 24, 2010

When people hear of Baldur’s Gate: Dark Alliance 2, they’d be forgiven for thinking it’s a roleplaying game in the same vein as the classic Baldur’s gate by BioWare. However, so that you’re dissapointed in case you decide to pick it up, you’d be wrong to think so. It’s essentially a spin off and it is a hack and slash game where you kill hordes of enemies and collect the items they drop. Of course, there’s also the requisite character levelling system as well, though again, this is different from the pen and paper version of Dungeons and Dragons. A lot of the ability names are the same though. Also, don’t expect a lot of side-quests in the game. There are one or two optional tasks, but there’s hardly a lot of them.

So, now that that’s out of the way, a story is present but it’s not the game’s selling point. In fact, it’s quite far from its selling point as it is rather bare-bones. It is there just to give a reason for the action happening. Basically, at the end of the first game, the heroes defeated the evil plaguing Baldur’s Gate but it turned out that they hadn’t stopped the threat completely. That is where this game comes in, with a powerful vampire now threatening the city. It is of course up to you, with a new cast of heroes, to defeat the threat. While only one character is controlled by you, it’s assumed that the full complement of heroes defeats the enemy for story purposes.

While the story is pretty weak, the gameplay is quite good. Your character can attack enemies and depending on his skills, the attacks will be chained together in combos. You can also block attacks and while I mentioned the game’s levelling system etc. is different from the pen and paper version of Dungeons and Dragons, it does still feature things such as AC (armor class) and the same character attributes like strength.

Upon each level up, you’re given points and you can assign them to a variety of skills. Towards the end of the game, you’ll be pretty much maxed out though and if you aren’t, you won’t be far off. So, the character levelling choices aren’t too great when the endgame is considered. However, what is great is the item creation system. By buying runestones and specific gems, you can modify the accessories, armors and weapons that you wield. It is pretty in-depth with quite a lot of possible modifications available to choose from. So, you can really create the type of character that you want, though the character will still be limited in terms of skills. I.e., does the character favor ranged combat, magic or melee? The question is valid because their skills tend to focus to push them down one path.

The game’s graphics are really rather nice, as is the presentation and sound. The water effects are particulary great.

At the end of the day, the game is the best hack and slash title for the Playstation 2 or rather, one of the best. It’s pretty much neck and neck with this game and Champions: Return to Arms.

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