Baldur's Gate: Dark Alliance is an Action/RPG that pushes many different gaming boundaries. It ranges from solid controls to a decent variety of weapons and spells. Let’s not forget the three unique character classes you can choose play as. Even better would be its top notch graphical presence. Keep in mind; with all its great features and incentives to play, this title does have its own flaws.

Now for gamers familiar with this genre you will quickly notice a list of titles which this release seems to mimic in many ways with elements from titles such as Dungeons & Dragons, the Forgotten Realms, Baldur's Gate, Gauntlet, Eye of the Beholder and even a bit of Diablo. Yes, that is quite a wide variety of games, but it takes the best elements of each game and mixes them in a fashion that leaves Dark Alliance somewhere on its own plane of existence. Sadly though, for everything good this game has to offer, it has flaws that make the greatness of this game seem merely above average. In a moment I will get to all that. But what it really boils down to is Interplay rushing Snowblind Studios to release a title that really needed more development time.

Starting off you will be able to play either co-op or as a single player. It doesn’t really matter because you can import your character into another player’s game, and vice versa. This is definitely one of my favorite features this game had to offer! When selecting new game you are given the choice of three characters to pick from: a magical elf, a human archer, and the axe swinging’ dwarf. Each had its own strengths and weaknesses. Out of the three classes only the elf was female. After selecting your character, you witness a quite tragic cut scene; your character is assaulted from behind in the dead of night near some run down tavern and to add insult to injury, the attackers mug you! Guards appear from a watch tower and save you from being beaten to death, while the villains avoid being captured (Yes, as you may have expected these foes will fall under your blade later on in the storyline, god bless RPG’s!).

After being nearly beaten to death, you enter the tavern. What do we notice first? Why, the female bartender of course! This is also where you hear the spoken dialogue (Extremely well done!) for the first time, and yes it can be found with just a click on any of the numerous NPC’s throughout the game. Now we have a dang good reason to have our gaze fixed on the ale slinging lady. That is the enlarged upper torso of the female bartender (all I can say is, wow!); she sticks out like a runway model chilling with trolls. Have no worry; all the female character models are just as appealing! By the way, (yes ladies) the men look like Fabio digitalized. Anyways, this is where the story begins. She will introduce herself, give you information, and tell you what’s going on at the moment, finally sending you off on your first quest.

After being nearly beaten to death, you enter the tavern. What do we notice first? Why, the female bartender of course! This is also where you hear the spoken dialogue (Extremely well done!) for the first time, and yes it can be found with just a click on any of the numerous NPC’s throughout the game. Now we have a dang good reason to have our gaze fixed on the ale slinging lady. That is the enlarged upper torso of the female bartender (all I can say is, wow!); she sticks out like a runway model chilling with trolls. Have no worry; all the female character models are just as appealing! By the way, (yes ladies) the men look like Fabio digitalized. Anyways, this is where the story begins. She will introduce herself, give you information, and tell you what’s going on at the moment, finally sending you off on your first quest.

If you beat the game on all three difficulties you will unlock a new game mode called, ‘Gauntlet’. In this mode you play as the fourth character in Dark Alliance, which is the Drizzit, a dark elf that is by far the deadliest character in the game. But if you want to play him in the regular story mode, you must first beat the Gauntlet mode with him. Even though he must face an unreal number of creatures that were found throughout the game, he seems well suited for huge swarms of enemies. I won’t spoil anything by stating what his attacks and such are, but he’s definitely worth playing the game a few times over. The object is to defeat all the foes and reach the exit within a specific time limit.

Dark Alliance’s view is isometric and you don’t have any other option to view it differently. But this doesn’t harm the game at all; it really pulls off the ‘Diablo look’ well, while utilizing its own concept for attacking and casting spells. Each and every character model has an insane amount of extra detail. The character’s lips even sync up with the spoken dialogue. This might seem minor to the average gamer, but if you pay attention closely you will notice how few games actually sync lips with spoken dialogue. Almost all of the previous generations of games resemble a 1970’s Bruce Lee movie.

The female character models rival that of DOA Xtreme Beach Volleyball. It’s quite obvious; the backbone to this game was its graphics. The landscape and environments were given just as much detail and realism, and they look utterly amazing as a result! The landscapes changed rapidly; first you were in the tavern cellar, than you found yourself scaling mountains, next freezing in the tundra ice (the snow animation was nothing extraordinary), and finally a swamp (while you walked through the pond, you could see water rings). I never seen so many landscapes thrown at you so quickly, each had as much detail as the next.

The only weakness that Dark Alliance possesses graphically is the average animations. The ice sword/enchanted items that froze creatures and weaker foes shattered under your attack in a single hit. The fire enchanted weapons created a flame effect around the enemies, nothing extraordinary, or even innovative for that matter. I wanted a lot more detail behind each attack and more variation in the graphics shown on the items when you viewed your character in game. The spell animations did little to impress me when weighed next to the rest of the games graphical fruit. I can’t say the spell animations looked bad; they just didn’t seem to fit next to how well everything else looked. Perhaps it was just all the other graphical elements that threw me off, and that could have been why I began to assume more eye candy was lurking around each and every corner. For the most part I was correct; a good example on this was how each boss looks down right sinister! The beholder was rendered just as ugly as he had ever been in any previous Forgotten Realm title.