Once again the forces of evil make an unholy alliance, and once again, heroes are summoned ...
STORY: The three heroes that slew Eldrith The Betrayer are captured by a powerful vampire lord, who has made an alliance with quite a few rotten apples, including a red dragon. New heroes must take their place, and destroy the forces of evil. Among them, are a human barbarian, a moon elf necromancer, a drow monk, and a dwarf rogue.
GRAPHICS:
Just like in the previous installment, Baldur’s Gate looks beautiful, although you can’t really tell the difference, since both games are visually pleasing. I can’t help but feel that there wasn’t any sort of improvement though.
Characters still look amazing beautiful, with a decent animation. Monsters still look awesome. Backgrounds possess phenomenal detail and are rich in colours. Gore abounds, with blood and organs splattered all over the ground when a monster is defeated. Flames, rivers, rocks and leaves, everything looks great. Dark Alliance 2 implemented a new zoom-in feature, letting you see the characters and the backgrounds more closely (but that also gives away the illusion of everything looking life-like, since the polygons are remarkably fewer than you think when you look closer). Everything looks great, just “dated” great.
MUSIC / SOUND EFFECTS:
In Dark Alliance, there would be long pauses between music clips. Here, music has a constant “replay” feature, so you hear music all the time. You’ll hear quite a few clips from the game’s predecessor, and a few new ones too. Music has the mood, but not the vibrancy I expected from such a game. Everything’s fine in the sound department, though not all sounds are heard as natural as I would like.
GAMEPLAY:
The “Diablo formula” is starting to get seriously old. There is a serious need of jumping attacks, evades, more complicated and advanced combos and an upgraded block system. The game is fun, sure, but if you’ve played the previous game, Dark Alliance 2 has nothing new to offer, besides a new storyline and monstrous compendium.
You walk around with your character, slay everything that comes in your way through button mashing (using a block now and then, if you wish to feel like a veteran fighter) and use a couple of special abilities too. Thankfully, the magic-wielding characters are more balanced here, and you won’t need to resort to melee as often as you did on the first Dark Alliance.
You level up, you buy new equipment (there is quite a collection of weapons, armor and magic artifacts, as well as weapon upgrade options), you complete a few side quests, and you beat the game. That’s about it. As for the difficulty level, it depends on the setting you choose.
OVERALL:
While the first Dark Alliance had me super-thrilled, this one just fails to surpass its predecessor in many ways. Equal in every aspect, Dark Alliance 2 will probably be enjoyed just as much as the prequel, unless you feel the need to play something “more” this time. And that’s the best comment I can give for the game.