Baldur’s Gate: Dark Alliance Review

Evil Stirs

What do you do when faced with foes that could destroy the world as you know it? Will you turn the other cheek and wait for a hero, or will you step up? Slice through your foes and bring peace to the realms in Baldur’s Gate: Dark Alliance.

The Past Comes to Light

Baldur’s Gate: Dark Alliance has quite the history. A lovechild of the hack-and-slash and RPG genres, Baldur’s Gate: Dark Alliance was developed by Snowblind Studios and then published in 2001 by Interplay Entertainment. It was the first game to use the Snowblind engine, nicknamed the Dark Alliance engine. It was developed specifically for perspective correctness in top-down third-person games.

The game was originally released for the PlayStation 2 and Xbox consoles before being ported to GameCube and Game Boy. Fast forward to 2021, and a 4k port of Baldur’s Gate: Dark Alliance released for modern consoles such as the Nintendo Switch, Xbox One and PlayStation 4. A port for the PC released later in the same year. Skip forward again to 2023, and Interplay Entertainment launched a mobile version of the game for $9.99.

Heroes of the Realms

To start a game, players must decide to play the single-player or multiplayer version. Only by connecting two external controllers can players pick the multiplayer option. On the same screen is an option to play through a tutorial, which teaches players the necessary basics of the game.

Next, players need to choose a difficulty level. There’s easy, normal and hard. Finally, players need to decide if they want to play as a human archer, dwarven fighter, or elven sorceress. Once that’s out of the way, the game can start.

Your story begins by arriving at Baldur’s Gate, a town off the Sword Coast. You walk around, excited to start a new life. Unbeknownst to you, a group of thieves stalks you from the shadows! They pounce and would have finished you off if not for the observant town guards. The thieves run scared as they approach, and the guards send you to the Elfsong tavern to wait out the night. Determined to get your items back from the thieves, you talk to the barkeeper in hopes of getting a lead.

From there, your adventures only grow in their fantastical nature. You start off exterminating rats in the cellar for passage into the sewers, then discover that a new Thieves Guild is attempting to resurrect the dead in the crypts of Ilmater. Thwart their plans before infiltrating their ranks and maneuver your way past complex traps within their hideout. After you defeat the Thieves Guild’s head honcho’s, you find a magical gate that teleports you to another location within the Forgotten Realms. This marks the end of act one, and going through the gate starts the next act. There are a total of three acts, and each act takes place in a new location.

Players continue to fight the good fight to the end of the game, which will present them with what I found to be an ending that begs for more. Your character’s story doesn’t end here, and players can find out what comes next by playing the second installment in the Dark Alliance series. Unfortunately, it isn’t available on mobile devices just yet.

Supplies for the Road

Baldur’s Gate: Dark Alliance offers players a couple of options when it comes to controls. You can use the basic touch controls or connect to an external controller. I used the touch controls when playing, and I found that everything worked well. Others have mentioned bugs and touchy controls, but I never experienced any of that. Players touch and drag on the left side of the screen to move, and the right side has nine buttons all corresponding to different actions.

Sound overwhelming? I promise it actually isn’t. The buttons are spaced just enough that you won’t accidentally click the wrong one while leaving enough room to see your character. The attack button is the largest, which means it’s unlikely you’ll click something like jump in the middle of a battle. The downside to touch controls is that it can be harder to quickly swap from a melee weapon to something ranged or a different spell while in the middle of combat. I found it easier to back off around a corner, swap, then leap back into the fray.

As mentioned earlier, players can use both a melee and ranged weapon. A small triangle just under the attack button swaps modes, and there’s a triangle under the spell button as well. The elven sorceress has the most spell options, but as a tradeoff, she can’t use certain weapons like the Warhammer. I chose the sorceress and have greatly enjoyed using the spell Burning Hands to become a living flamethrower.

Baldur’s Gate: Dark Alliance does a good job of scaling player strength along with enemy difficulty. This means that while you’ll never be overpowered, you won’t be underpowered either. Loot dropped at a steady rate, and players can sell whatever they don’t use to buy new items from shopkeepers. Players can’t carry around anything and everything and must adhere to a strict weight limit. Fear not, for the limit increases as you level up.

In addition to increasing the carry weight, players also earn points to use to unlock new spells or abilities. Points are awarded depending on the level number achieved. For example, if you just hit level 12, you now have 12 points to spend. Customization options are different depending on what character players chose.

A Journey’s End

Baldur’s Gate: Dark Alliance features professional voice acting to accompany a nostalgic RPG feel. The mobile version of the game features the same voice acting as the original, as well as the same art style. Action-packed background music accompanies the player as they journey onward, and sound effects are well-placed and play properly when prompted.

The storyline is very linear, and it was nice to take a trip into the past and play something with a simpler storyline. It was also cool to see exactly how much storytelling in video games has evolved over the years. Character motivations are simple and transparent, and quests are simple and straightforward. There are a few side quests available, but players need to really hunt these down. There’s no way to tell if talking to an NPC will give you a quest or just a random tidbit of information, which wastes a bit of time.

Those who played the original Baldur’s Gate: Dark Alliance may notice a couple of differences in this version. For example, the player characters have names in the original game. The human fighter goes by Vahn, the dwarven fighter is Kromlech and the elven sorceress is Adrianna. The title screen is also different, with the mobile version offering additional buttons labeled Achievements and Exit Game. The game’s story remains the same, however.