Against my better judgment I picked up Baldur’s Gate: Dark Alliance, BGDA, two days ago from a local electronics store. To start with, the entire story behind release of the game really worried me. There seems to be no news for months on the game, and then without fanfare (or any reviews) it hits the store shelves. I don’t know as much about gaming, but if a movie came out that way I would most likely stay away.

That said; let me say that I am extremely glad I did. It has kicked Mario and Luigi Superstars off my box and already caused some sleepless nights in my house.

I am a huge fan of Diablo and dungeon hack and slash type games. (That comes from playing Rogue constantly instead of doing my CS assignments in the computer lab at UCLA in the 80’s.) I have enjoyed the two LOTR games on the GBA, but found them to be a little bit repetitive in terms of monsters, especially their lack of good boss monsters. Otherwise, I’ve had a hard time finding a good Diablo alternative for my GBA which is my favorite platform.

Baldur’s Gate: Dark Alliance is definitely what I have been waiting for. The game play and the story line are as close to Diablo as I have seen on the GBA. Having now played completely through the first of five levels and part way through the second, I found the story line as very well set up. Each new area becomes available as a logical progression from the past areas. The monsters progress nicely with the availability of new items and increased capabilities. There are a number of mini-bosses spread throughout the levels, and even a good pre-boss character at the end of the first level that surpasses any of the main bosses in LOTR. The main boss was a great reminder of my old D&D days as well as the right challenge for a first level boss.

The controls are extremely well set up. I’d say BGDA is the easiest control set up of any of the types of games I’ve seen on this platform. With the GBA’s limited number of buttons, the toughest thing to do in this type of game is to allow the character access to a good variety of equipment and attacks. BGDA achieves this by focusing on allowing the most meaningful activities to be controlled by just one or two button clicks and putting the rest of the commands into one integrated menu system. The process for restoring health and manna is actually better than any other game, including console and pc games, of this type.

Speaking of PC games, this game looks great. They seem to be at least the quality of the original Diablo, if not quite up to the level of Diablo II. You don’t have the rich color variety of Diablo II and you don’t get the humongous number of monsters on screen that Diablo had (at least not in the early levels,) but the monsters and the main characters are every bit as well drawn.

I have only three complaints. 1) The sound is minimal to say the least. I thought there was no background music, but I realized it is only brought out during the deeper levels of a dungeon. Even so it’s minimal. 2) This is my biggest complaint. This game uses a traditional isometric viewpoint and the camera angles are usually great, but when you go behind a wall your character and any monsters are blocked from view. This is unacceptable in a game of this quality. Much simpler isometric environments (like the Harry Potter games) have this issue figured out in spades. That’s why I gave this game a lower mark on graphics. 3) Last but not least, I bought this game before the review because I am about to take a one week trip to India and I have plenty of plane time to play. The problem is the game is so much fun; I may have finished the whole thing off before Saturday’s flight. At least there is Mario and Luigi Superstar to fall back on.

All in all, the best version of a dungeon crawl that I have ever seen on a GBA, and already one of my favorites ever.