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18 of 18 found the following review helpful:
 Finally here!!!!Feb 07, 2004
By Phil
When I first rented Baldur's Gate 1, I stayed up all night with my sister and we destroyed the game, loving every second of it. We beat all the settings, the gauntlet and extreme mode. After that, we were left to wait, wondering if a Baldur's Gate 2 would be coming. Our wait is now over. And it was well worth it.Gameplay hasn't been changed much from the first one. Its still the go kill every one set up. This time, however, there is a vast quantity of new spells and feats to mess around with. Kromlech (the dwarven fighter from number 1) had, like, two feats he could use. Niether were very effective. On the other hand, Dorn, the massive barbarian, has just as many fighting feats as Ysuarn, the elven necromancer, has spells. Very cool. The story line by itself is only fair. Its when you know what happened in number one can you fully realize and appreciate what's going on. There is finally some depth in character for our heros, all of them prompting NPC's to say different things if different people talk to them. The biggest addition to number two is the weapons creation system. The possibilaties are endless. Add six rune stones, four aquamarine stones and four jet rocks and you get the
+5 Mighty Cleaving Axe of Cold Fire. Insanely cool (or hot?). Yes, there are now five playable characters. A barbarian, necromancer, cleric, rogue and monk. They all have special abilities only they can get, meaning you have to play the game five times through to get full experience. And, if you have a friend to play with, you can fool around with different combinations of characters that will make you adapt to eachothers style of fighting. The artificial intelligence is way better than it used to be. The archers and spear throwers will actually go to a strategic location, such as raised ground or behind a partially broken wall. Some enemies will attack you in certain formations, making it harder for you to maunuver. There are some old enemies, but alot more new ones. If you liked the first Baldur's Gate, the second is the same thing, only its on fire going 100 miles per hour through a cave with all manner of monsters jumping out at you. This game is perfect for any fan of the series or hack and slash games in general.
29 of 34 found the following review helpful:
In trouble again...Mar 13, 2004
By Marc Ruby™
"The Noh Hare™"
An hour into playing Dark Alliance II I realized there were some major differences between it and the first in this series. Graphics were better, play was better, the characters were more varied... and better. Sporting a tremendous number of character abilities to develop and a nifty new weapon system Dark Alliance II was an order of magntude better. After three hours of play I had discovered the other big difference - I was still playing. Dark Alliance I was so short that you could barely get a spel out before it was over. You arrive in Baldur's gate as one of five characters - barbarian, dwarf, cleric, mage, or dark elf. Broke and in immediate trouble you start out with small quests to accumulate the needed cash and experience. Soon you start turning yourself into a master of hack and slashery or a spell casting machine. The adventure widens, developing into something that actually resembles a plot. Darkness gathers and you find your quest for fame and gold has turned into a struggle to stop evil from overwhelming Baldur's Gate and taking the rest of the world with it. The settings are complex, finely detailed, and beautiful. Animation is surprisingly natural for the scale. For once, the fighting system is easy to adjust to and fun to use. Once mastered, even the complexities of character and weapon development work well. The game rewards patience and stealth as well as brute strength giving the player multiple ways to manage the characters, each of which has a few special quests to keep the story interesting. I would like to have seen the game be even larger, but with twenty or more hours of play to complete there is plenty to do. I would also have liked more puzzles to balance the fighting. For a second effort, though, this game is brilliant. Far better than the norm for this genre.
40 of 49 found the following review helpful:
 an inferior sequel that offers more of the same, only easierNov 21, 2004
By Michael J. Tresca
"Talien"
Baldur's Gate: Dark Alliance II is a curious name. It's like calling a movie Part Two: The Sequel. Dark Alliance was a chapter in Baldur's Gate's history and this game continues what was started in the first, including many of the same characters and voice talent.
To wit, all the efforts in the first game to prevent the teleporting Onyx Towers from falling into the wrong hands was for naught. Mordoc Selanmere (a vampire) has located the towers on the Shadow Plane and manipulates both the Harpers and the Zhentarim into bringing it to the Prime Material Plane so he can teleport right into Baldur's Gate itself and turn all the citizens into shambling undead.
Our three heroes from the first game (the elven sorceress, the human archer, and the dwarf) have been captured and apparently are in for a long torture session. Meanwhile, five new heroes are recruited to the cause:
* Borador Goldhand: a dwarven treasure-hunter
* Alessia Faithammer: an aasimar cleric
* Vhaidra Uoswiir: a drow monk
* Ysuran Auondril: an elven necromancer,
* Dorn Redbear: a human barbarian.
My wife chose Vhaidra and I played Ysuran, because they were the most interesting characters. I mean, come on, Dorn Redbear sounds like a Klingon.
Vhaidra is known mostly for her sarcastic comments and the inability to walk without crouching like Elmer Fudd. Ysuran is identified mostly by his bare nipples, which he seems to have a pathological need to display at all times. It must be a necromancer thing.
The heroes must journey from place to place to retrieve certain items at the behest of various employers, whom ultimately all happen to be connected. The same merchant sells and buys all things with the same annoying and repetitive banter. The twist is that finding masterwork equipment and then augmenting them with gems can improve items. In this way, you can end up with an Exceptional Helmet of Viper's Quickness.
Also new to the Baldur's Gate games is the notion of prestige classes. After reaching 20th level and doing enough research about their past (which always costs gold, of course), the characters can join prestige classes. Ysuran's can join Shadow Adept and Vhaidra can join Assassin. These classes give you new nifty abilities. The only problem is that by the time you're 20th level, these abilities are marginally more effective at best.
The Baldur's Gate series uses a simplified version of the Dungeons & Dragons game system to good effect. All spells, feats, and class powers have been turned into feats. At each level, characters start with a certain number of points in certain feats. For example, Vhaidra starts with 1 dot in Armor Proficiency, Sprint, and Unarmed Combat. One dot in Armor Proficiency means she can only wear light armor, like leather armor. Role-players, look in horror upon that which is possibly Dungeons and Dragons 4.0!
We played the game on Medium difficulty, which was probably a mistake. Ysuran is capable of surviving just fine by himself, because of Skelly.
What, you don't know who Skelly is? Why, he's the skeleton that arises from Ysuran's Animate Dead spell. Unfortunately, Ysuran doesn't really animate any dead-Skelly just rises out of the ground and does not require any actual corpses to create him. Another missed opportunity for gaming coolness.
The world hates Skelly, but he doesn't seem to care. Every monster in the game has an inexplicable desire to kill Skelly (again), but Skelly just whacks away at them with his bare fists. Fortunately, Ysuran's protection spells extend both to his undead as well. Which really makes them unstoppable. There were a few situations wherein the boss monster killed Vhaidra and Ysuran prevailed with just Skelly and the Life Drain spell.
If Skelly makes the game less challenging, the Life Drain spell makes it a cakewalk. In essence, Life Drain inflicts damage and heals Ysuran. However, Life Drain doesn't require any targeting-Ysuran merely needs to point in the direction of his victim and red darts of energy flow out of his foes towards him. Yes, I ate several cookies while Ysuran sucked up the souls of his enemies like a Shop-Vac.
Because you can craft magic items, things quickly get out of hand. With enough money, Ysuran had a +4 helmet that protected him from 15 percent of fire, cold, and acid damage. And then because he was such a wuss, I gave him a ring that gave him a +4 bonus to Strength so he could carry all the crap Skelly found.
There were some challenges, like the Elemental Plane of Air, where Skelly and Ysuran often fell to their doom. Although really, how long did it take for them to hit "doom"? It's all Air, right?
Dark Alliance II seems to be dumbed down a bit. There are no longer ammunition limits, so ranged weapons effectively fire forever. Stocking up on arrows kept the archer in the first game in check. Here, it's all bolts, all the time.
The graphics are more or less the same, although my wife appreciated the fact that most of the main characters didn't seem modeled after certain movie stars (remember the bartender of the Elfsong Tavern, Lady Alyth?). And no, you can't strip down the drow chick to her underwear like you could with Adrianna in the first game.
For reasons I cannot comprehend, the map function was moved to the touch pad instead of pushing down on the stick. Since spells are up and down on the touch pad and the map requires pressing to the left (right switches from ranged weapon to two-handed weapon to one-handed weapons), more often than not I brought the map up in the middle of a combat. Please guys, if ain't broke, don't fix it!
Baldur's Gate II is an inferior sequel that offers more of the same, only easier. It's probably more entertaining in a single-player game, but it was definitely not balanced for two players. Restricting the necromancer to a single-player might have been a good start.
Although I feel obligated to tell you that Skelly thinks that's a stupid idea.
7 of 7 found the following review helpful:
Awesome game, especially fun in coop mode with 2 playersJan 23, 2004
This game is tight from start to finish. It stuck with the winning formula from the first Baldur's Gate Dark Alliance and made it better, adding things like: more characters, improved graphics, larger levels, more spells, a unique item creation system, etc. I've been a gamer for over 20 years, and I know a fun game when I play one. Don't listen to the naysayers who expected this game to be different from the first one. If you liked the first game, you'll love this one.
6 of 6 found the following review helpful:
The Good, The Bad and The UglyJan 22, 2004
BGDA2 is a mixed bag. It does a lot of things right, but it also messes up others. Here is on short the story: The Good:
- 5 characters to choose from, plus 2 secret ones equals a lot of replayability! This time they have around double the number of skills from BGDA1. Also, secret skills can be 'discovered', once all the specific character quests are completed.
- unlimited arrows and bolts! No more quivers to carry around.
- weapons and armor can be upgraded in a workshop (like in Diablo, only that here you pay for it). This means you can craft your own weapons and armors.
- Easy plays like Easy, not like in the first game. Also, gaining levels is much easier. It took around 5 minutes to gain first 2 levels and it continues to be as easy. Spells don't cost much either, so you'll be powerful early in the game.
- using L and X,A,Y and B, you can set up up to 5 spells at a time
- characters are much more balanced than in the first game (where the sorceress' Lighting Ball was too strong). All classes play different, yet all seem to be as good and fit all playing styles. The Bad:
- too many levels are huge mazes in very bad lit areas, where is hard to make sense who you are fighting or even where they are. This forces you to use the map, which makes it even harder to see around (in coop the map sits in the middle of the screen). The map is also needed for finding the secret areas, which means you have to use it all the time.
- bosses are very forgettable. In the first game, you could clearly remember every boss. Not here though. Most bosses are made easier, so most of the time they won't present a challenge
- Hard setting is still easy. Only Extreme presents a challenge.
- Finding the merchant in BG may be difficult (he's not shown on the map and he sits outside, in a place hard to see unless you rotate the default camera)
- Upgrading weapons takes a lot of money and stones. The system is a bit unintuitive - for example, making a +4 Strength weapon requires 8 Rune Stones and 8 Jacinth stones (those stones alone cost 40000 gold in total) and the number of stones increases exponentially for better items ... The Ugly:
- Graphics! Forget the gorgeous BGDA... This sequel has poor textures, which came as a shock. While the characters look definitely better, the textures used for everything else are very poor. Black Isle designers also have no clue on using light sources - most levels are very dark (darker than Drow Underworld, for example). Overall, i would recommend this game. While not as good as Diablo 2, I think is better than BGDA1 and Dungeons and Dragons Heroes and offers enough replayability to be worth the full price.
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