Game: Baldur’s Gate – Dark Alliance
Developer: Snowblind Studios
Genre: Hack-n-Slash/Action Role-Playing game
Releases: 2001 (Playstation 2), 2002 (Nintendo Gamecube, Xbox), 2004 (Gameboy Advance), 2021 (Nintendo Switch, PC, Playstation 4, Playstation 5, Xbox One, Xbox X/S)

One rule for life that certainly proves to be true on a regular basis is that you are always able to learn. That can be the case for both the important and the mundane. Here is an example: Back when I wrote my rather nostalgic review for “Champions of Norrath” in February of 2022, I said that the game was prime “Diablo”-esque action for the Playstation 2. And this sentence is still the case; but I thought that it was basically the only game that managed to bring the monster slaying formula to the console; at least successfully, since I am definitely not counting “Fallout: Brotherhood of Steel” as a positive mark. Turns out, the Playstation 2 had a “Diablo”-esque dungeon crawling and monster slaying title in “Baldur’s Gate – Dark Alliance” all the way in 2001; and not only did it use the “Dungeons & Dragons” license, but it was from the same studio that made “Champions of Norrath”, Snowblind Studios. I only learned of the game from the news that it got a remake in 2021 but with an emulator on my computer that can run the rom, I decided to give this blast from the past a go.

But before we can venture into the world of Baldur’s Gate, we need to pick a character. The choice of characters, however, is actually fairly limited: A human archer named Vahn, a dwarf fighter named Kromlech, or the elven sorceress Adrianna are the only options at your disposal. You would like to play some other race/class combination like an elf archer or something else entirely? Well, tough shit, this is what you get. This screen alone gave me flashbacks to some really old Pen&Paper role-playing game books I have seen, in which races like elf and dwarf were equal to classes; the material “Baldur’s Gate: Dark Alliance” worked with was not that old apparently, but the limitation reminded me of those times and was funny to me. I like to get close and personal in my videogame experiences though, so I had to pick the dwarf despite the fact that I normally do not play dwarves if given the choice of something else.

Regardless of what character you have chosen, their adventure will start in the city of Baldur’s Gate. We cannot know the exact reasons for their departure from home, what the character expects, or how they got to the city in the first place, but with a small fortune in their pockets they all want to try their luck in the big city. Unfortunately, due to arriving at night in some shady part of town, your character of choice gets mugged pretty much as soon as they enter the city. The city guard strolling past stops the thieves from also taking your life on top of your coin, but with nothing in your pocket in the city there is only one option that comes to mind: Confront the thieves and get your gold back. The guards tell you that the Elfsong Tavern might be a good place to stay the night despite being short of money; and that is where your quest begins. Talk to barkeep Alyth, meet the patrons, and you will find a way into the sewers to start your “investigation”; by which I mean smacking everything into a pulp and gaining experience that way.

In terms of fighting, “Baldur’s Gate: Dark Alliance” is a classic “Diablo”-style action role-playing game. That means that the gameplay boils down to the following: You get a task and in order to fulfill it you need to kill everything that stands in your way. This is not me criticizing the game mind you, I am simply stating how it is. You start killing some rats in the sewers simply because they happen to attack you, which will turn into more intelligent ratfolk soon. The thieves are next, which even employed some bugbears for muscle, and all of which found themselves at the sharp end of the axe Kromlech wields during my playthrough. This is also how the story is told: Kill enough opposition to reach the next relevation. The bandit chief is not in truely in control but works for a Beholder which the bandits worship as a godlike entity? Well, in that case we need to smack that multi-eyed freak aswell.

In classic role-playing manier, your character has various stats to work with. The Attributes should be familiar to anyone who played “Dungeons & Dragons” or similar role-playing games before and they all provide small bonuses in “Baldur’s Gate – Dark Alliance”: Strength increases both hit chance and damage, Intelligence increases your energy meter, Wisdom increases overall experience gain, Dexterity improves your armor value, Constitution increases your hit points, and Charisma gives you more favorable prices at merchants. You gain one additional attribute point per four levels, so you can even customise your character a little bit when it comes to attribute bonuses. Now, that is obviously not exactly what those attributes would do in the pen&paper variant, but I feel like the developers at Snowblind did a fine job translating those stats into a videogame world.

Despite the fact that I mocked the lack of character choices at the start of the game, I have to admit that the three characters each play very differently from another. With the dwarf fighter, I had only three active skills to choose from; none of which I actively leveled. Instead, I relied on the sizeable amount of passive bonuses like additional health points, improved health regeneration, more armor, higher crit chance and better crit damage and whacked everything in my path with the standard attack. Combined with full plate armor, I steered 1.20 meters of armored fury that could facetank most things in the game at some point. Adrianna works quite differently from that: Apart from the health regeneration bonus, she has none of the aforementioned passives that Kromlech has access to; but she makes up for it with a sizeable amount of spells to cast in the direction of anything opposing her. This obviously means that you cannot simply run straight into the enemy faces and swing a mace around but rather that you have to shoot from afar and be ready to reposition if things are getting hairy.

The game developers were rather benevolent in some cases though. The first act has some scenarios in which you need to jump over pits and do jumping puzzles in order to progress. Failing to hit the other side or the saving platform means that you fall into the dark void, which will kill you instantly. However, in order to minimize the frustration from those challenges, there are save points placed in-between each of the sections, which means that you can save your progress after finishing one part instead of doing it all over again if you fall down at the end of section three. This is also true for resource management: During the last level, you cannot recall to buy more supplies. The developers, probably fearing that some players would be stranded without the necessary health potions, mana potions, or arrows to progress, stuffed the entire dungeon full with destructible objects like crates and vases to give the player ample ways to restock when necessary; even going so far as to make +5 amulets and rings that increase health and mana regeneration rather common loot in that area.

What honestly surprised me when playing this game was how polished it felt. I went into the title with no expectations whatsoever but the game turned out to be quite fun and bring a surprising amount of depth with its leveling system. In my head, I immediately made comparisons to “Champions of Norrath” and “Champions: Return to Arms”, both Hack-and-Slash games that I have great nostalgia for and that I played quite a lot back in the day. After a few hours of “Baldur’s Gate – Dark Alliance”, I concluded that Snowblind learned from their blunders in “Champions of Norrath” like wonky enemy AI, dropping frame rates and subpar level design where you could still see the lines of the level building blocks they have used; only to find out that “Baldur’s Gate – Dark Alliance” came out in 2001, which is three years before “Champions of Norrath” hit the store shelves. The game just feels better, even though I still played the two “Everquest” Hack-and-Slash titles and liked them. I rarely had the money problems that could arise in “Champions of Norrath”, I found solid gear by looting but also was able to regularly buy better stuff from new merchants, and the entire idea of using a “+1” or a “+5” on weapons and armor makes it a lot easier to determine how good the equipment in question actually is.

The campaign only took me around seven hours to finish, but with the characters being so vastly different there is certainly a reason to replay the game. Furthermore, by playing the “Gauntlet” mode, you can unlock a new “Extreme” difficulty and upon finishing that mode you get to play with fan favorite Drow “Drizzt Do’Urden”. Overall, “Baldur’s Gate – Dark Alliance” is definitely not a title that I regret playing; and it definitely still lives up to the positive reviews it received all those years back. Like I said earlier, I played the game on a PS2 emulator (which worked like a treat), but if you want to spent some money and like high resolution you can also opt to buy the newer port on Steam for 29.99€. If you are a potential customer due to the usage of the “Dungeons & Dragons” franchise or like Hack-and-Slash games, this could be a solid game to invest some time into.