izigame.me

“Someone is going to make your product obsolete.
Make sure it's you.”
~Edwin Land

There are games that make history. Games that even years later people should play regardless of their age and personal preferences. Baldur's Gate was one of such games. On the other hand, there are games that, while doing their job pretty well at the time don't really pass test of time. Baldur's Gate: Dark Alliance was one of those. Long story short, it was a consoles-oriented 3D Diablo clone, similar to, say, DarkStone. It looked good (hardware demanding too, thanks to which porting it to GameCube proved to be quite a challenge), it was co-op-oriented and lots of us had fun playing it back in the days just because of all that. But at the same time there was literally nothing in it to make it worth playing today for those of us who don't have the “nostalgia glasses”. With nothing unique and lots of much better choices today... You know how it is. No matter how much fun you had with your Walkman, something's telling me you won't use it nowadays. Time does make things obsolete. But hey. The story of Dark Alliance ended with cliffhanger. Our heroes entered the portal and arrived at the new place, where they were ambushed. Naturally, the sequel was planned and with enough improvements, Dark Alliance II had all the chances to become a thing. So... Let's take a look, shall we?
Unfortunately, it's impossible not to notice that something is wrong with DAII right away. And not because of the old characters being out of the game (having a new roster in sequels is a pretty common thing for such games), but because of the new guys feeling... Cheap. I mean, yeah, it was obvious that the first Dark Alliance was a direct nod to Diablo with its warrior, archer and sorceress, but seriously, the Barbarian? Necromancer? Wonder where I've seen those already... Oh, that's right! In Diablo f*****g II! Sure, you may say that only the lazy one didn't imitate BLIZZARD back in the days, but with a sequel to Dark Alliance being a game by Black Isle? The Black Isle that gave us Fallout and Planescape: Torment? It just feels... Wrong. And to make things even worse? The classes are downright broken. Even though there are five characters now (only by default, since like in a previous game you'll be able to unlock more), I've only mentioned two and I did that on purpose. See, aside from Barbarian and Necromancer there's pretty much nobody. Just because of how OP those two are. Pick those for your co-op run (Dark Alliance is still a co-op-oriented experience and yes, it's still all about the split screen, we'll return to that later) and that's it. No better choice, no “buts”. Yet they've decided to imitate BLIZZARD. Who used to be known for their juicy classes and the balance. Pathetic. Simply pathetic.
And you know what? Bad things don't end there. Gameplay-wise, Dark Alliance II is more of exactly the same. And when I say “exactly”, I mean exactly. Up to the point where Black Isle re-used the same old assets made by Snowblind Studios for the first game. Which is both funny and sad, since it ended up leading to lawsuit against Interplay (publisher). Not only they've used Snowblind's Snowblind Engine without the permission, they've actually used lots of the old models! Treasure chests, the explosive barrels... All of that is exactly the same, thanks to which DAII doesn't really feel like a sequel. More like expansion or something like that. But you know what? It's not necessarily a bad thing. The original DA suffered from some obvious problems and simply fixing those had all chances to provide us with the superior experience. How many of those did Black Isle fix? One. They did make the game (somewhat) bigger, while adding more optional objectives (somewhat akin to what we had in Game Boy Advance version of the first game, which, believe it or not, was quite solid and even better than the original in some ways). Everything else? They either didn't address it at all or made things worse.
One of the biggest problems with the first Dark Alliance was the fact that enemies didn't respawn with dungeons being the same every time. I mean, come on. Clearing the randomly generated dungeons again and again with no end was one of the most satisfying things about Diablo. “One more dungeon!”. That's what it was all about. DarkStone got it. Dark Alliance did not. Hence despite even being a PlayStation 1 title, DarkStone felt better. Cutting out the co-op in console version was a huge mistake, preventing it from being much bigger hit on PS, but we're not talking about DarkStone here. You've got the idea. No randomly generated dungeons, no way to grind for experience. Well, technically, you can export your character to an earlier part of the game and it looks like the game was made with that in mind, but honestly, it's just stupid and not fun at all.
Another big problem was “Ha-ha! Gotcha!” part. Like our spellcasting lady had a big chance entering the final boss room and learning that her preferable selection of spells simply doesn't work. How were we supposed to know which spells will work on final boss? Well, we were supposed to guess. DAII is all about that. You invest points into certain spells, then boom! It turns out that after a certain part of the game you get a new, much better set. Means you've pretty much wasted your points. Well, not wasted wasted, since for whatever reason, there are more points than spells in this game (yeah, it's that ill-conceived), but you know what I mean. You opened a certain door? Well, guess what, you weren't supposed to. Good luck running away from an unkillable boss. Which brings us to another problem. A new one this time.
Whoever designed this game is an ass. The boss I've mentioned above? You actually supposed to run away from him at some point. Think about it. There's a pretty long part, in which you're supposed to explore the whole dungeon level, while running away from a boss. I know, they tried to imitate Resident Evil 2 with its Mr. X. But first, DAII is not a survival horror game and uses totally different mechanics, and second – it's so terribly made that it feels awful. Imagine exploring the Catacombs with Andariel constantly kicking your butt. And you not even being able to completely avoid damage without investing into a certain spell first. Again, good luck guessing which one.
And that's just the thing about this game. It's ill-conceived, it's clunky and... And I guess there's quite a lot of people now hating me for saying that. Because, like I said at the beginning of this review, it did its job back in the days. And while during the next generation it was hard to impress people with games like The Lord of the Rings: War in the North, during the PS2 / Xbox times (no GameCube version this time), DAII still stood strong enough. It does not now. It aged poorly and while not being able to provide us with anything unique, for the new audience it counts as obsolete. Especially since it ends with the cliffhanger too and the third game was never made. You don't have the nostalgia glasses? You don't need this. The real reason for me giving this game a thumb down, though, is the fact that even Snowblind Studios did much better job back in 2004. While still having their engine, they've made a new game. This time in a different licensed setting – EverQuest. So-called Champions of Norrath made a big next step forward and finally went online. Which made Dark Alliance II obsolete on its very release. Dixi.