Virtual 100 – Game 23
I can finally say, 20 years after it originally released, that I have beat Baldur’s Gate Dark Alliance II. Which is weird, when I think about it, because for a very long time I considered the first BG:DA one of my favorite games ever. I held that game in such a weirdly high regard, mainly because it was one of the first games of that kind I had ever experienced, and kind of my soft initiation into western RPG gaming. Up to that point, I had only ever dabbled with SNES RPG’s like Final Fantasy and Legend of Zelda. But anyways, I’ve already covered all that in the BG:DA write-up.
I eagerly anticipated BG:DAII when it came out. Of course, back then the internet reporting on gaming sites was pretty sparse, and we only ever kind of knew about things unless they were physically printed in a magazine. I admit I didn’t even know the sequel was gonna be a thing.
I remember seeing it on the shelf at Blockbuster and being like “holy shit there’s another one?” and snatching up the rental box like it was the last donut. I tapped my feet all the way home, man I couldn’t wait!
I played about two or three hours of the game and then it just kinda sat on top of my TV for the rest of the week. I remember playing the game and being like, “This is… kinda boring.” Thinking back on it, it was a pretty hectic time of my life. Early 20’s. Trying to get a career started, trying to meet chicks. Gaming didn’t have quite the social hook it does now, and it wasn’t really that important to me. Not nearly as much as Bikini Night at the bar.
So when I saw that the BG:DA games, Dark Alliance II in particular, were getting remastered a few years ago, I was like, “Sweet!” Then I saw the price tags on them and I was like, “yeah no.” They sat on a digital shelf for a while, before I picked them both up on sale.
My playthrough of the first Dark Alliance went, well.. If you read my write-up of the first one, you’ll know. It was a product of its time. But Dark Alliance 2, this was something new to me. I had only ever experienced the first part of the game. I was excited to get started.
The interesting thing is, I remember clearly that the game didn’t exactly set the world on fire. Whatever lightning was captured in the bottle with Dark Alliance, didn’t strike twice with the sequel. I remember reviews being middling, and my own reaction to the game kind of mirrored that sentiment. But surely I was wrong. Maybe I was just burned out on playing the first one through about nine times.
After playing through the entirety of Dark Alliance II, I can honestly say that this game actually kinda sucks. At the best of times, it’s mind-numblingly average, and at its worst it can be downright aggravating. They changed a thing or two up just a bit, which honestly gave me hope for the game. But in the end it just seems like a half-baked gash grab.
Combat in BG:DAII is identical to the first. It consists of two attack buttons— a melee and a magic/special— and a block button. Magic and special moves can be scrolled through by tapping up and down on the D-pad and then using that skill by pressing the B button. There is an additional quick menu that can be accessed by holding the LB button and pressing the corresponding face button. Thanks the to the game never explaining exactly how to map those skills, I played through about 80% of the game not knowing they were there or how to utilize them. For the record, you have to tap through the skills on the D-pad until you’ve highlighted the one you want to map, then you have to press the LB button and the face button you want to map it to, while the skill is highlighted. If you wait too long, the skill menu disappears and pressing the button combo won’t do anything. You have to scroll through, and then press the combo fairly quickly for it to work. For the record, I played the game on a PC using an Xbox controller, so your mapping may vary, but it should still be the same general layout.
There are five character classes to choose from, and when I say that, I mean five characters and their classes. You can’t mix and match. If you want to be a Cleric, you have to be Alessia. If you want to be a monk, you have to be Vhaidra. I chose Alessia, the Cleric because she had the innate ability to heal herself. I can’t help but feel this was probably the worst decision. Not only is Alessia horribly dull to look at, but her armor and skill set are just as boring. She has one offensive spell, a fire-based one, that is good for an AOE attack, but toward the end of the game becomes pretty weak in its base statistics.
Weapons and armor work a little bit differently in this game as opposed to the first one, and at first I was like “awesome!” because the first game had horrible loot drops. The sequel here introduces the workshop, where you can improve weapons and armor by applying runes and gems to them, each with their own respective buffs. The problem is that these upgrades can get pretty damn expensive, and the only loot you’ll ever get are base weapons with the occasional enchanted weapon (that is likely less powerful than what you already have). What I mean to say is that if you want to hang in the later game, you’ll be upgrading all your shit.
The problem is, once you upgrade something, you can’t continue to upgrade it. You have to undo the first upgrade, which will allow you to keep your gems but will destroy all the runes. Let’s say you had a +5 sword that just isn’t doing the job anymore. You want to make a +10 sword. Well you can’t just add five to the sword you already have, you have to break it, which means the five runes you already had on it are gone. You’ll need to buy ten runes now, assuming you didn’t already have some (which you likely don’t— the game is pretty stingy with rune drops). So that cost money. Then, you have to have an equal number of gems to the number of runes to get the actual level. You can’t throw ten runes and five gems on a sword, you’ll only get it to level five. So that means you’ll need to have ten gems. If you don’t have ten gems, you’ll need to buy some. THEN, the upgrading process itself can cost money. If you want any weapon or armor that’s worth a damn, it’s going to cost you upward of 30,000 gold, at least. That’s in addition to the gems and runes you had to purchase.
You have to keep in mind, the money in BG:DAII is finite. This isn’t an open-world game. There are some side quests you can tackle for some extra leveling and money, but by and large, once you go through an area, you’re done with it. Grinding in the traditional sense is not really a thing here. You’ll have to gather every bit of loot you can, whether they’re shitty weapons and armor, jewelry, or even potions that you don’t use, and sell it off. That means many, many, MANY trips back to town. It also means being pretty damn picky about what you want to level up. The game gives you a +10 level cap to upgrades, but I could personally never afford to get anything higher than a +5. There just isn’t enough gold to go around.
Now, keep in mind, this is one single playthrough on Normal difficulty. There might be some consideration for higher difficulty levels with higher money drops, but I honestly can’t be bothered to find out.
I couldn’t really tell if the enemy levels scaled with my character or not. I think they were set, though. Some of the areas you could choose to visit in any order you want, and at times I felt like I chose a higher level area, because I’d be wittling away at enemies slowly, and then go to another area and just wreck shit. The enemies themselves don’t have any level information on them, so it was hard to say. The thing is, your character levels, and the enemies level, but the gear doesn’t. Once you start getting Flawless drops, that’s as good as it’s gonna get. So if you’re holding out for a better loot drop instead of spending the cash on the upgrades, you’ll be waiting for a long, long time. And that base stats, even for Flawless level items, aren’t great.
What really throws an extra wrinkle into the mix was when Act III rolls around, and your character is tasked with going to the different planes to obtain… something. I forget what it was. An artifact or a key or some shit. Anyways, it was all just a cheap gimmick to give the developers an excuse to throw your character into the stereotypical fire world, ice world, air world, and earth world. So when you go to the Plane of Fire, your Flawless +5 Sword of the Inferno that you just spent a shit ton of money upgrading is completely useless. Cool. Oh, what? You don’t have any other +5 weapons with a specific countering element to use? Oh, and you’re broke now, because that fire sword cost 40,000 gold? Sucks to be you.
This was roughly around the time I regretted being the Cleric. At least the Necromancer or the Mage might have had some other useful spells. She doesn’t really have anything except for a few stat buffs. That flying ghost sword thing is a joke.
I was actually pretty surprised at the bland graphics, not only in their simplistic character models, but also just the general ugliness of the levels themselves. And this isn’t a technology limitation either. Not only do I feel like the first BG:DA looked better, but the other D&D ARPG, Dungeons and Dragons Heroes, looked better as well, and it used the same engine and came out a year earlier. It’s not really a technical thing as much as an artistic choice. The maps in Dark Alliance II are just bland and boring. The most interesting area is literally one of the first areas in the game, where the character is in a forest setting and it’s raining and lightning. That’s as visually interesting as it gets. I’m serious. Everything else except for the Fire and Ice maps are just brown and gray.
There is no ramp-up. No ‘w0w’ moment. Dark Alliance II is all kinds of average from start to finish, and aside from some really aggravating end-game bosses (that fire dragon can fuck right off), it struggled to elicit any kind of emotion from me. I think I’ve put more emotion into bitching about it in this write-up than anything else. Which is probably a sign that I should wrap it up.
