Written by Jeff Buckland, 2/2/2004
Played on:
Xbox
Interplay and Snowblind Studios released a surprise hit in 2001 with Baldur's Gate: Dark Alliance, the action/RPG that took the world of Baldur's Gate and infused it with a Diablo style of gameplay. Its excellent graphics on the PS2 were almost unmatched to date, and the action was fast and furious. The two-player cooperative mode was plenty of fun, and it was an easy to pick up game - for these reasons it was both a critical and commercial success, spawning ports to both the Xbox and GameCube. It also managed to start up its own mini-genre of games, as D&D Heroes, Champions of Norrath, and even Interplay's own Fallout: Brotherhood of Steel are trying to ride on the coattails of BG:DA's success.
Interplay only just released Fallout: BOS a week or two ago, and after a couple of delays that made them miss the holiday season, the sequel to BG:DA is out. This time around, the original three characters have been scrapped in favor of your pick between five new playable characters. These are all pretty different from the first game's three, and many of the skills are totally brand new. While the label says Black Isle is the developer, this is really only in name; none of the original Black Isle employees that were responsible for Planescape: Torment or the Icewind Dale series worked on this game.
The controls for BG:DA2 are almost exactly the same as in the first game, but we do get a couple of improvements. As before, the left stick controls the character while the right stick rotates the camera (and the camera can also be zoomed in now, but only a tad). A is your attack button while X opens doors and picks things up. Y jumps and B is used for triggering a spell or special ability. The white and black buttons are your health/mana potion buttons, and the right trigger allows you to block.
What's new to BG:DA2 is the new shift-type function that's set to the left trigger. When you hold this down, the A, X, B, and Y face buttons become shortcuts to four more abilities you have set up, thus solving my biggest control gripe from the first game - using the D-pad to switch skills. This allows you to set up four skills that can be easily accessed with the press of one trigger and one button.
The engine used in Baldur's Gate: Dark Allaince was surely impressive for its time - while the GameCube port had some frame rate issues, both the PS2 and Xbox versions looked great. It's now been over a year since the Xbox port of the first game was released, and the engine hasn't seemed to have changed much. While there isn't quite the wow factor we had in the first game, the art is genuinely what makes the sequel a pleasure to look at.
As with any self-respecting fantasy game, you'll be traversing quite a few different kinds of environments. Most of these look convincing and as good as one would expect out of the Xbox, but I do have a couple of gripes. First, the city of Baldur's Gate itself feels very dull and empty. Almost all of the side streets are (quite conveniently) blocked off by barrels and crates, and we are left only with one section of the town with a scant few exits off of it. I'd really like to see the whole city depicted in full 3D - but we'll have to wait for Baldur's Gate 3 (if it ever gets made) for that. Second, we see way too many goblins this time around; in fact, the game simply relies on one or two types of enemies for far too long at a time. Expect to be fighting only about two kinds of enemies at once for pretty much the whole game.
The animations for all five characters are great, and many of the monsters are well animated. The two-player mode can become a little confusing, as enemies will now work together in a group and even get "buffed" by priests in the back. Add onto this all the special effects flying around, and you might find yourself swinging blindly while trying to get behind the enemy's front line. Still, it's all in good fun, and it does look good pretty much all the time.
This game sure does play a lot like the first one, and I have no complaints about that at all; aside from a few familiar faces and other bits and pieces, it's the same gameplay in a brand new set of levels with mostly new skills, spells, and enemies.
The plot in BG:DA2 follows directly after the first game's cliffhanger ending, and actually does continue on the same storyline but with these 5 new characters at the helm. Eldrith's tower is now being taken over by Mordoc, a vampire trying to destroy Baldur's Gate. You'll start out on the road to the city, and within a couple of hours you'll be doing all kinds of quests involving the city's various denizens.
