User Rating: 8.4 | Baldur's Gate: Dark Alliance II XBOX
Diablo in 3D is what describes this game the most. It is a game polished to perfection, and the smooth framerate and great attention to detail can take your breath away. It is clearly the visuals that stole the most of the developers time here, and plenty of great details like heat blurring from torches in the hallways, monsters that are really seemingly burning if you hit them with flaming weapons, and waves spreading from the water as you wade through it are awesome! It does have faults though, and most noticeable is the linear gameplay. What I enjoy the most about RPGs is freedom to choose my characters own path. This does not apply here, you are pushed from one mission to the next, and there is a very limited numbers of side quests. There's also a very limited set of spells and weapons, compared to Diablo, which still is superior when it comes to gameplay and depth. Unlike Diablo, the levels here are not mapped out at random. This means the replay value of the game is really quite low, unless you dive into the multiplayer option (which I never tried out), or fancy playing through with all the different characters. On the bright side you have many different difficulty settings, and new cool characters will unlock as you beat the game on various levels. In short, this is a great action game, although a bit repetetive, and an OK RPG game.
