Baldur's Gate: Dark Alliance transports the rich lore of the Forgotten Realms into a satisfying action RPG experience. Players choose from three classic archetypes – archer, sorceress, or fighter – and embark on a quest to cleanse the region of evil. While the narrative lacks the depth of its tabletop counterpart, the hack-and-slash combat remains fast-paced and satisfying, particularly in co-op mode. With its detailed environments and faithful adaptation of Dungeons & Dragons 3rd edition rules, Dark Alliance offers a nostalgic dose of dungeon-crawling adventure.

This game is really fun if you have friends to play it with, and drops down a full star point as a solo experience.

In terms of theme, it's below average early 2000's fantasy. The character designs are sexualized in a way that's more insulting than titillating, or they're just ugly bread-fed knife eared nerds. The plot exists and if it's engaging to you, then you're a happier person than I am. For the time that it was released, I think that they did a decent job in terms of bringing these characters into a 3d world. They just didn't have great direction. I also can't remember any of the music in the game.

This game felt incomplete or rushed in some places. The lack of sidequests in the second area was conspicuous, and a lot of the hacking and slashing takes place in long hallways without much to interact with outside of an occasional switch or trap.

What saves it is that as a co-op game, it rules. In many ways, it feels like it was built for co-op and single player felt like a mandatory inclusion. Weight restrictions feel awful in single player, but sharing an inventory between two people feels much better. Class design/balance isn't great on its own. For example, a solo playthrough with the archer class is awful because your character doesn't have enough speed, even with feats/upgrades to kite any enemy in the game. But, if you have someone else standing in front of you, you can sit there and turret down a mook without having to chug potions. Even just having someone to talk to during the huge, relatively empty hallways makes going through this 10 hour game feel its length, and not double.

This is an unnecessary addition to the Baldur's Gate "canon", but if you've played Gauntlet: Dark Legacy for the billionth time and are restricted to one of the many consoles this game was ported to, it's still a fun time.

This is a trophy hunting review

This game is mixed feelings for me. First off, the company that ported this game is a damn joke. Anyways, this game is amazing and one of the most overlooked games in the PS2/GC/Xbox era. It has been ported and plays great. As far as trophy hunting goes, it's a joke. Only five trophies for basically completing each difficulty and gauntlet. If you wanted to cheat, you could complete this in 30 minutes. I wouldn't recommend it though. The 100% would take about 20-40 hours but would be immensely worth it. One of the best dungeon crawling ARPG with rich lore.

Glad to finally get this off the backlog, now I can focus on some other stuff. I enjoyed the game, but it's very flawed. I still think that it's good though, just very repetative at times. The boss fights epecially leave much to be desired, especially the final boss. Not really sure what to make of the ending, it was ok I guess. Not many options for the player, very linear RPG. However, this game has good combat, intersting characters, and interesting story, and really cool and well thought out locations. I recomend it to anyone who would like this style of game, but probably not to anyone else.

Score: 3.6/5
Letter Grade: B