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Fun game

5 Rating: 5, Useful: 0 / 0
Date: June 24, 2008
Author: Amazon User

This game is great fun if you are into RPG's. The only bad part is that the maximum number of players is two. I like to play with my three older kids and with this game two have to sit out and then switch. Other than that it's perfect and just hard enough to keep you engaged but not hard enough to stump you and frustrate everyone. Worth the money.

Magical Fun

5 Rating: 5, Useful: 0 / 3
Date: January 29, 2007
Author: Amazon User

This game has all the things a boy would like, blood and gore!

Not too good...

2 Rating: 2, Useful: 1 / 3
Date: May 02, 2006
Author: Amazon User

If you like wimpy over-head view games you'll like this one. The characters are so small they are almost undistinguishable from each other. The worlds are hard to find your way through. Unless you have a walkthrough it would be nearly impossible to find your way through this game. And even then it's still almost impossible not to get lost. I quit after only a few sessions. Because the fun level is almost zero. You can play with a friend. And then both of you can get lost and not have fun.

Baldur's Gate Coulda Been a Contender...

3 Rating: 3, Useful: 17 / 17
Date: January 15, 2006
Author: Amazon User

Baldur's Gate Dark Alliance is basically a version of Diablo with a Dungeon & Dragons makeover. While it implements only a small subset of the D&D rules, there are many game elements -- feats, creatures, weapons, attribute buy-up, etc -- that would be very familiar to someone familiar with the D&D rules. All of those rules are implemented in a 3rd-person-from-above-perspective, graphical interface which Diablo seemed to invent, but which is often copied in RPG style games. In my opinion, this is not a negative -- that interface formula has proven to work well for this style of game, and there's no reason to invent an inferior wheel to avoid being labeled a Diablo clone.

Here are the positives of this game:
- Unlike most RPGs that claim to be multiplayer, this game actually allows a second player to participate in the adventure in the main game mode to the same degree as the first player. Usually, "multiplayer" turns out to be some limited, deathmatch mode thrown into the game as an afterthought.
- The water and shadow graphic effects are outstanding. Clearly, the developers thought this as well since you need to wade through water in half the scenes. The way the water ripples, and how the waves propagate and reflect is really quite a nice piece of eye candy.
- You can 'import' a character into the game you're playing, even if it was saved while playing another mission. This ability to develop and then keep your character for other adventures is a great feature. If only there were other, harder editions of Baldur's Gate to reuse my characters, I'd call this the crowning achievement of the game.

But here are the game's negatives:
- The game is very short. At 'normal' difficulty, I'd estimate I only had 10 hours of play time into the game when I suddenly found that I'd defeated the entire game. And that was at a conservative pace... less patient players might finish the entire game in a single sitting.
- There is not much variety in the three character types. Even though you may choose to be a warrior, an archer, or a mage, towards the end, all three are best served by using the very powerful melee weapons that become available along the way. The mage, in particular, does not receive comparable upgrades, and the bows also fell short of their melee counterparts. Baldur's Gate should have implemented D&D-like character creation to create better differentiation between characters. Seems like it would have been easy to do.
- The box sets an expectation that D&D rules are implemented, but they are very loosely and inconsistently applied. There are certainly recognizable D&D elements, but I suspect that hard core D&D fans will be disappointed. It would have been nice if the various creature types had been identified by a label (even though I think I know what most of them were).
- The replies to computer characters ("NPCs") don't seem to affect the story progression in any way. There is really only a single story line to follow, and either you find all the requested items, or you don't. Whether you find everything or not, you can still finish the game. It seems to me that one of the basic premises of D&D is that there can be consequences to your actions, but that is not the case here.

Nevertheless, my son and I had a lot of fun playing this game up until its premature, abrupt end. Had some of the basic negatives been fixed, and if the storyline had been expanded to make the game last for a month of play, this could have been one of the all-time best Gamecube titles. It leaves me wondering which is the bigger crime: 1) the total absence of greatness; or 2) wasted, unfulfilled potential? In the case of #1, I just feel like I wasted some money. In the case of #2 and Baldur's Gate, I think I feel even more disappointed than a mere dent in my wallet. Sigh... Baldur's Gate, you coulda been a contender, but in the end, you turned out to be a bum.

normal people beware

1 Rating: 1, Useful: 2 / 42
Date: August 15, 2005
Author: Amazon User

I played this game once and it was realy bad and nerdy. this is a game that nerds (the ugly kind with long leater coats and plactic jewels that call themsleves lords of daeath an stuff.) play when they arent playing dungeons and dragons. amazon save these young kids life and post my review,

Such an incredible disappointment. BG in name only.

1 Rating: 1, Useful: 14 / 25
Date: November 09, 2004
Author: Amazon User

(...) I have gotten hours of enjoyment from Baldur's Gate & Baldur's Gate II for the PC. This game bears no resemblence to them whatsoever. It is purely hack-n-slash. The case claimed "Three customizeable characters." I have no idea what they meant by that. You can be a Human archer, Dwarf fighter, or Human (female) mage. I don't know if stats were pre-programmed or rolled, and I don't care. You can't even pick their names or the color of their clothes. The closest they come to "customizeable" is that when you advance a level you can distribute points to different skills and every fourth level you can add a point to an attribute. But by the time the game is (quickly) over, you should have just about every skill at almost 100% and about 3 points added to different attributes.
This game reminded me of "Diablo" (the first Diablo, the crappy one), without the imagination or "Adventure" for the Atari 2600, with better graphics. It features complete linear progression with no side quests (there are three or four assignments that resemble side quests but are fulfilled entirely in the course of the main quest) and only ten or so NPCs that you can talk to (most of which are in the room where the game begins), three of whom are the people in each area (the whopping THREE areas) from whom you buy and sell stuff. It features a very small city with streets surrounded by buildings you can't enter and filled with people you can't talk to. Anyone who thinks this game resembles D&D at all (asside from the rules, perhaps) must have had a bowl of Jello for a DM (really unimaginative Jello). I could have come up with a more interesting game of D&D rolling my own wandering monsters with a page of blank graph-paper.
I kept playing only because I hoped that it would get better somewhere, it didn't. The last boss was easier than the previous three and the battle with her was over so quickly (hack-heal-hack-heal-hack-slash-slash) that I figured that it was simply an intro into a real battle that I hoped would be the intro into the real game. I was wrong. The game end is a cutscene which at first you hope is going to tell you about the real game awating you but turns out to be foreshadowing of another GameCube Baldur's Gate game. Baldur's Gate for the GameCube came out in 2002 and Baldur's Gate II for the GameCube doesn't yet exist, that should tell you something about the appeal of this game.
If you like hack & slash games, you still shouldn't get this. Black Isle should be ashamed of themselves for putting their name on this product and lowering the quality of an otherwise wonderful Baldur's Gate series.

Get it

5 Rating: 5, Useful: 5 / 20
Date: October 09, 2004
Author: Amazon User

This game is awesome. When you start out you get attacked by people. Basicly you have nothing. As you move to the fist level you are in the basement or something like it. Along the way you pick up money and awesome weapons and gain sweet powers. THis is the best game ever and is even better with two people. It is also funny because things attack you but sometimes they are stupid. GET THIS GAME OR ELSE!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

I agree with the others

5 Rating: 5, Useful: 2 / 19
Date: February 27, 2004
Author: Amazon User

Very good game if you like D&D. Yep. Very good game.

An easy, worthy replica of D&D!!!

5 Rating: 5, Useful: 4 / 6
Date: January 28, 2004
Author: Amazon User

This game is sooooo adicting! Here is a rating list:

CONTROL:
8.9

GRAPHICS:
8.2 (It's too dark!)

FUN:
9.7 (VERY ADDICTING)

ORIGANALITY:
9.0 (Really it's based on D&D, so give it a break.)

OVERALL:
8.8!

So much FUN!

5 Rating: 5, Useful: 1 / 5
Date: January 10, 2004
Author: Amazon User

This game is adictive! The sound and visual effects are outstanding. The story line is not boring, the weapons and magic abiliries are really cool.

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