Baldur's Gate: Dark Alliance (2001)

Baldur’s Gate: Dark Alliance has always been one of my guilty pleasures. There’s something oddly charming about its simplicity—and, admittedly, about how unapologetically sexualized every female character is. I even realized I finished the first episode in co-op about fifteen years ago, though I barely remember any of it.

What surprised me this time around is how brutal the game actually is. Like most ARPGs, it’s essentially an economy game: the goal is to bring more value out of the dungeon than you spend going in. Dark Alliance comes dangerously close to breaking even. Playing as the Archer really highlights this. Your basic attacks do pitiful damage, so you rely on flame arrows—which cost mana—and arrows in general, which don’t drop in sufficient quantities. On top of that, you need healing potions because the built-in regeneration barely keeps you alive.

Loot drops are stingy. I might have found a pair of +1 gloves, but I was still better off just buying leather armor from the vendor. Even the “town portal” scrolls you need for shopping runs aren’t cheap. It often feels like you’re paying for the privilege of clearing dungeons rather than being rewarded for it.

Things got especially desperate in the sewers. The only way I managed to kill both the rat miniboss (of course there’s a rat miniboss) and the bugbear boss was by boxing myself in with crates they couldn’t path around, then slowly turning them into pincushions.

I started playing on the original Xbox, then remembered it was ported to the Switch and moved over. That said, I think I actually prefer the original’s low-resolution look—it somehow fits the game better.

The biggest issue, though, is that Dark Alliance is simply not very engaging in single-player. Experience gain is painfully slow, leaving you stuck with a single skill for far too long. Without the momentum of co-op, it’s hard to find the motivation to keep going.

What a game. Some of my best memories co-op in middle school. Aged extremely well! While it is not the most sophisticated game, I believe that's what makes it stand out. Doesn't try to complicate systems and gear, but just feels good to play. I was also pleasantly surprised by the story, as that's not something I was paying attention at all to when I played it a few decades ago.

The Gauntlet is still a great challenge! Maybe someday I'll try Extreme...

My 4 star review reflects the co-op experience. Truthfully, single player I would give 3/5.

I first played this game when I was in middle school. At the time, there weren't really any games like this on consoles. There was Gauntlet Legends on the n64, but overall the options were scarce and not exactly complex gameplay. Gauntlet was a ton of fun, but ultimately repetitive with very simplistic gameplay. But with 4 players those flaws didn't bother me.

I had played Diablo and Diablo 2, both great games that still hold up, but I wasn't a computer gamer at the time so the accessibility to these games was limited to LAN parties in my friend's basement. Those were the days... his house looked like a tornado had swept through multiple times while carrying a few dumpsters that liberally spilled their grotesque and rotted contents. Old food, trash, and pure chaos. What an atmosphere for slaying hordes of demons! I still remember we would take occasional breaks by going into the backyard to jump on his big trampoline. On one of these breaks, I stepped on something sharp and rusty. I almost lost my foot due to a horrible infection! The joys of childhood.

Anyways, back to this game... despite the simple gameplay my friend and I got soaked into the slot machine gameplay loop. Snowblind Studios took the gameplay loop of Diablo and successfully transposed it to the console, albeit significantly dumbed down. Diablo pioneered preying on the human psychology. There's something quite cathartic to explode an imp with a fireball into gobs of gore that rain items. I honestly didn't remember much about this game except for the last dungeon. This made revisiting fun.

I think the graphics are pretty decent, especially given when it came out. I do find it amusing how many people feature the big booba elf in videos for this game. The devs probably spent too much time on those absurdly bouncy physics. A younger me definitely appreciated that. Gameplay is pretty simple as mentioned plenty of times before, but what I will say is this game does put a greater emphasis on tactics. There are lots of ambushes and enemies typically have tactical positions. For example, early in the game, there is an entire wall of kobold archers. There are multiple stacks of large boxes that naturally provide cover and with the barrage of arrows, you will surely take refuge. Once there, you may notice a big box that looks slightly different from the stacks. If you walk into it, it moves. Thus, you can push and use this box as cover as you slowly take out the kobolds. Of course the AI is still pretty stupid. The kobolds don't move or react to you pushing the box. They will keep blindly shooting at the box... still it's cool to see this emphasis on tactics over mindlessly slashing. While Diablo has greater complexity in character builds, combat is honestly about as simple, if not more simple, as BG, but without the need for tactics.

Side note, my favorite moment was in the final tower. Suddenly a Kobold blitzed forward with an explosive barrel in front of it, pushing it! I used my lightning sphere but it was too late. The barrel exploded killing the kobold, my friend and myself! We couldn't stop laughing. When we reloaded, we didn't see the kamikaze kobold again... did anyone else encounter this? Was it a fluke where the kobold model got caught on a barrel and was able to push it? Or did it intentional do this devilish move? Either way it was hilarious and caught us off guard. Kudos to the kobold who owned us.

That said, the skill system is pretty lackluster. Especially for a wizard. Unlike in BG1, the Wizard's spells at level 1 are completely useless. In fact, none of your spells are remotely good or as effective as using a melee weapon until you get lightning sphere. Praise the lighting sphere it is fucking awesome! I only played through this game once, so I didn't get to see if Meteor swarm was good. Another issue I have with skills is how vague their descriptions end up being. For example, Whirlwind doesn't tell you how much damage it does, only that it hits multiple targets... all I found on the internet about it was "It's awesome." Which is good to know, but some details about how it's awesome would be nice.

Still by the end my friend and I were sucked in like I was decades ago. What made it clear to us was how anxious and annoyed we got over having to drop great items while in the final dungeon. Once you enter the Onyx Tower, you can no longer access a vendor and there are like 4-5 areas you need to clear through. Thus we had to keep opening our menu, checking stats, weight and gold value, drop an item and move on... what's silly about this was we knew the game was ending soon so it was pointless for us to care about these items since their value was irrelevant. Yet we were sucked into the slot machine game design. Those devilish game designers...

Overall, if you have a friend for couch co-op this is definitely worth your time and will be fun. Sure it's simple, but it got most of it's mechanics right. And besides, people come to these type of games for the phat loot and it delivers in spades... though mostly in the final dungeon which can be a bit frustrating.

Loved this game back on the PS2 and was so excited for the re-release on PS4. If you loved the old one, not much has changed and the game is still great. The developer however does hate modern gaming additions such as trophies/achievements and the PS4 trophies are just awful and uninspired. There is only 5 trophies and no platinum.

Video about me being sad/mad at the devs