The Flaming Adamantine Sword of Defending and Speed +5...I Don't Understand it...But I Love it

This week, a friend and I were looking for a good game to play on the ole' PS2, which of course had to be multiplayer. We'd had our fill of sports games and needed something else. Baldur's Gate: Dark Alliance sang it's sweet melody to us, and everyone in the store thought we were crazy, reguardless we just had to try it out. My friend had played the original Baldur's Gate and had said how good it was, and since it was co-op multiplayer we couldn't pass it up...and we weren't sorry.

Graphics: 9.5/10

This game is pretty...REAL pretty. Right from the opening screen as you watch the foliage in the background sway realistically, it actually looks like you're peering through a window. The water effects are downright stunning, with ripples and splashes that shouldn't even be allowed in a video game. Everything washes with a smoothness that really made environments worth looking at. Light bends in through the windows, and fireballs brighten areas briefly before exploding. Tiny maggots and bugs crawl on the floor and splatter as you run across them. Organs fly out of foes as you decapitate them. The spell effects are done great, like the blue glow of the classic magic missile. Flaming swords flicker with fire and frost weapons have small snowflakes that fall from them when swung. The monsters in the game are impressive and the characters look great and change in appearance depending on weapons/clothing/armor worn. There was never a slow down and never a jumpy frame, everything ran great.

Sound: 9.0/10

I can only hope I give this a fair score because I was paying so much attention to the graphics! The sound however is very breath-taking. The melody sung by the ghost of an Elf at the Elfsong Tavern is actually beautiful to listen to, and the music itself within the game fits it very nicely. Good music too, very orcestrated. The voice acting is quite good. Everything from the long tales you'll hear from the NPC's to the quick spellcasting phrases that come from the Sorceress you can play doesn't sound cheesey or out of place. The creatures all have their proper sounds as well. Huge iron golems creak and groan as their metal moves to try and flatten you in the ground. The background sounds are impessive as well. I really noticed this when in a massive ice cave, you can hear the ice crack and strain around you very realistically.

Control: 9.0/10

With what you can do, the controls are done very nicely...and all thought some of them can get frustrating to learn (gah...why did they have to have triangle be the default "drop" button in inventory and the circle key "back") once you do, you're good to go. The left analog controls your character, from a very slow walk (pressing it lightly) to a run (pressing hard) you've got full motion, while the right analog stick controls the camera, which you can move 360 degrees so you don't miss anything. The buttons themselves are relatively simple in combat, with X the attack, O the Spells/Specials, Triangle the Jump, the D-Pad is used to select spells/specials from a list that appears when you use it and dissapears when you don't, the L2 button makes you drink a mana potion, the R2 button makes you drink a health potion, and the R1 button is used to block an attack with a shield or weapon. My friend and I found these buttons quite appropriate, although sometimes getting the right spell or special ability out in the middle of a vicious combat can be tough.

Gameplay: 9.0/10

The gameplay is both exciting and easy. The big downfall is that you can only choose from 3, Pre-Generated characters, a Dwarven Fighter, a Human Arcane Archer and an Elven Sorceress, althought each one does offer their own unique talents. With myself as the Sorceress and my friend as the Archer we found our ranged abilities very handy and I became very good friends with the spell ball lightning. We both felt balanced compared to one another, when my ball lightning was laying down the law to half a dozen baddies, his multi-arrow shots and improved criticals were tearing through swarms of critters, or ripping graphically large creatures (therefore easy to hit with all the arrows) in half. If you had never played Table Top D&D, you wouldn't really think anything of the gameplay the game has, but if you're like me, a D&D player you notice that they do things a bit differently then in the D&D of old.

For one, the restrictions on the classes are very watered down. As a sorceress, I should have never been allowed to wear full plate armor, hide behind a huge shield, wield an awesome weapon and cast cool magics, but I could. Of course I wasn't complaining and you can wonder what benefit there would be as an Archer or Fighter since the Sorceress can wear just as good armor and wield just as good weapons. The answer is the strange (but very effective) feats system. As you gain levels you gain a like number of points to spend on spells and fancy feats (special abilities). So while I was spending my points on ball lightning to beat down the foes and meditation to get my mana back faster, my friend was getting improved critical for the big hits, hail of arrows for lots of shots at once, and Endurance to up his carrying weight for all of the awesome loot we'd find.

The simplicity of the gameplay lies in it's arcade-like style. This is more of a hack-n-slash they a RPG, but fun nonetheless. You'll meet all kinds of creatures from the Table Top, like the Displacer Beasts, Bulettes and Ogres, all wonderfully rendered. Generally you get a quest here and there of "Find this and Give it to Him" and you just happen to run across huge mobs of angry creatures that need to be taught a lesson. You go into an area, you get attacked and you rip some bad guys apart. However, we were required to think when we came to a part where floating tiles would drop as we stepped on them, and we had to find the secret to getting across the pit alive.