Baldur's Gate

The Good

'Baldur's Gate' does a fantastic job of capturing the spirit of the pen and paper AD&D roleplaying game. In my younger days, when I had more time and more geeky friends like me, I used to play AD&D on paper. This game brings back a lot of warm, fuzzy feelings.

The real time combat system does a fantastic job of taking the turn based combat of the pen and paper game, and actually making it fun for the PC crowd. The ability to pause and reissue orders in mid-combat is a great idea, and allows one to retain the feel of a turn-based system, but with the sense of urgency you get from a real-time system.

'Baldur's Gate' offers a great variety of monsters, spells, and magic items from the AD&D world. You'll encounter everything from oozes and slimes, to skeletons and gnolls, and AD&D fans will delight in being able cast magic missiles and fireballs at them all. Thief abilities are also well implemented in the game. You'll find that without a skilled thief, you'll be setting off a lot of lightning and fireball traps in the various dungeons.

The game's story is good, and AD&D veterans will be familiar with the references to various deities and well known NPCs (Drizz't makes a brief cameo). The story progresses through several chapters, each advancement triggered by a certain event or location reached by the players party. The battles are usually challenging, but don't generally wear on or get tedious.

**The Bad**
It must be mentioned that this game has a few serious bugs that no patch seems to fix. There are random crashes and lock-ups from time to time, and there are more severe flaws as well. After defeating the final boss and completing the game, the game makes a final save for you to load after installing the expansion pack, 'Tales from the Sword Coast'. Well, in my case, after defeating the final boss, the so-called 'final save' put me back at the beginning of that final battle. No matter how many times I win, I am never able to save my progress after that point. Essentially, I went through the entire game, only to never be allowed credit for finishing it. This is important because you can export your main character into the sequel, and the experience points from the final battle are never awarded to you if you encounter this bug.

Another problem I had with 'Baldur's Gate' is the character creation process. The means by which you create a character is fine (for the most part), but you only get to create the main character. The rest of your party is filled out by NPCs along the way. While I hated this idea at the outset of the game, I did understand the decision better by the games end. Having a large number of NPCs to choose from to fill out your party is intended to add replay value to the game. But how many people are going to play a 40 hour RPG with a fairly linear story a second time? I would rather have been able to create my entire party from scratch. Having created all of your characters (like in the original 'Pool of Radiance') gives you a greater sense of attachment to them. I always felt like my NPCs may be leaving at any moment, or I may need to switch them out for someone else. Who wants to spend half a game leveling up your ranger and equipping him with nifty magic weapons and armor, only to trade him away for some random new NPC?

There are also minor gameplay issues that bother me. Where is the rule in AD&D that says you can't wear magic armor AND a ring/cloak of protection? There is no such rule, and I don't like that it applies to this game. Also, the NPC mages that you encounter that will join your party are almost always specialist wizards, and almost always lack access to one or more very important group of spells. Again I ask, why can't I create my whole party? Illusionists are useless, and I would never create one, but I sure got stuck with one in my party for a while.

Also, there seem to be too many magic items out there in the world. It takes away from the special feeling of finding a Wand of Fire when I am already trying to make room for the four that I have. Rings and Cloaks of Protection seem to pop up everywhere too, especially late in the game. Of course, as I said, if you have magic or ankheg armor, you won't be able to wear them anyway. (Argh!)

**The Bottom Line**
Because so many RPGs are so very bad, and this one is mostly good, I would have to recommend it to any RPG fan, even with its flaws. I would make it a double recommendation to fans of pen and paper AD&D, if you can bring yourself to look past some annoying rules inconsistencies. Uptight AD&D purists will probably not be able to accept those problems. Overall 'Baldur's Gate' makes for a pretty enjoyable roleplaying experience, but not a perfect one.

The Good
I'd been waiting for a good D&D game since the old "gold box" SSI games. Baldur's Gate delivered by making a pretty good campaign-adventure to play here (the expansion pack made it sweeter). I really liked how you are able to learn the controls and play of the game (which is all in real time) while in a relatively safe environment (the initial town).

The Bad
I didn't like some of the NPC's in the game but that's just personal taste. Also, I found that by the time I got my party powerful enough to enter the city of Baldur's Gate, I lost interest in the game. I've talked to a few others who said the same thing. I don't know why this happened unless I just got old. : )

The Bottom Line
Bottom line: this is a good D&D computer game using 2nd Edition rules.

The Good
Baldur's Gate nailed one thing perfectly: the atmosphere of the game world. There's just so much to see and do as you trek across the wilds of Faerun, and there are dozens of quaint little inns to visit across an assortment of villages and towns. Every NPC that will join your team has a neat little backstory, and they will complain if your virtuous behaviour or lack thereof conflicts with their morals.

Every yard of every zone you can travel in seems hand-painted, and some corners of the world are so cozy you almost wish you could crawl inside the game world. Many an inn had that effect on me, as the glow of the roaring fire lit the common room while a bard played a lively melody, and Dwarvish ale flowed liberally from the taps.

One of my favorite features in Baldur's Gate are the hand-drawn character portraits. Some of your female companions are just plain hot, and I find myself gravitating towards an all-girl party just for that reason. But, many of the male characters are stalwart foot soldiers, so there's still plenty of room for them too.

Plotting is done with a light touch, as you're never required to do anything in particular to advance the plot, until you are good and ready to do so. Which is nice, because open-world design has got the be the peak experience of gaming. You can travel the land wherever your heart desires, and you will come across all sorts of strange beasts and commoners in need of protection from such creatures.

Leveling is a slow affair, which makes it all the more rewarding when you finally do hit level two, which could take a few days. The assortment of classes you can choose from is excellent, and every character feels unique in the abilities and proficiencies.

The Bad
However, the bread and butter of gameplay, combat, can be rather tedious at times. Unless you spend a great deal of effort leveling up your characters well ahead of where you need to be, each battle spells potential ruin for your party.

A critical hit to a character may bring them under -9 hit points, causing them to explode in a shower of giblets. That character can never be restored. This is avoided by putting the game difficulty down a notch where death in this manner cannot occur.

If you try and sleep in the wild, half the time you will be ambushed, and as likely as not one of your mages will be targeted, killed in one hit, forcing your to re-load.

Re-loading wouldn't be such a chore but for a minor issue. Whenever you do so, the music restarts from the beginning, which may become wearying to your ears very quickly.

Essentially, all this forces you to be extremely careful, never letting your weaker characters get jumped, and healing anyone who takes so much as a scratch of damage. This really interrupts the flow of the game, and if you aren't completely won over by the good aspects of Baldur's Gate, you may be turned off entirely.

However, there is another approach that is slightly less harrowing. If you are willing to admit when you are outmatched, you can simply forgo exploring an area until you are really ready. There will always be an abundance of areas that are fairly straightforward for whatever level you happen to be.

The Bottom Line
Baldur's Gate stands as a landmark achievement in video gaming, and remains one of the strongest role-playing titles ever released on the PC. It made its mark just as 2D game environments were on their last legs, and as a result its hand-drawn style is as much an artistic achievement as a technical triumph, thanks to the quality of visual elements, as well as the lush orchestral score.