What do you get when you mix AD&D elements, Black Isle Studios, and an awesome story to back it up? You get what you see before you, Baldur's Gate. All you AD&D fans who are familiar with the Forgotten Realms will recognize Baldur's Gate. Baldur's Gate is located on the Sword Coast north of Amn but I'm not the person who knows the location since I knew about this AD&D world through this game.
Graphics - Beautifully drawn art and nothing short of what I expect from Black Isle, the makers of Fallout and Fallout 2. Each screen you walk is presented to you in lush, beautiful colors and the monsters themselves are well drawn. You might be sucked into this world believing you are living in it.
Sound - Each major NPC comes with their own voice and are acted out nicely. The music has a lot of suspense especially during major battles. There's a lot of ambience like the sound of birds in the area which fits nicely.
Control - Baldur's Gate adopted the RTS way of moving your guys around. That is highlight and click them where you want them to go. Since you have a party of 6, it is sometimes a task trying to keep up by moving all 6 of your guys into position. Since the battles are all in real time, you have to be quick on your toes. Well not necessarly since the game comes with a pause feature which will pause the game, and you can set orders to your guys giving you a breather. If you played games like Starcraft, you know what I'm talking about by highlighting and clicking on where to move.
Gameplay - As I mentioned above, everything happens in real time with a pause feature. But for those of you who like old school turn-based, you can tweak the settings to have it stop every round of your guy so it's kind of like turn-based. Everything evolves around your main character. If he/she dies, gameover since the story cannot go on with the main character dead. This also brings up a problem in multiplayer (yes you heard it right, you can play up to 6 players online). If whoever created the game and they die, it's basically gameover for everyone. Black Isle had their reasons for putting this in but it just nags me. In multiplayer, if one of your buds talks to someone, the whole game pauses and see what the your friend is saying. This goes the same for talking to major NPCs and shops. This does get annoying sometimes since you might be doing something and all of a sudden text pops up in your face. The last annoying thing is the experience cap. Black Isle had a reason for doing this because they plan to throw in campaigns that will boost your level by one or two just like the AD&D expansions. But there are some people (like me) who want to go past that cap all the way to max level.
Aside from the minor annoyances, this RPG is very good (and very hard if you don't know what you are doing). This game will keep you at your computer for days at a time since the world is vast and will take some time for you to explore everywhere without dying in the process. So grab this game and a couple of your buds and take an epic ride of your life.
BALDURS GATE 4 IN 1 COLLECTION PC XP/VISTA DVD-ROM BRAND NEW FACTORY SEALED DVD CASE Publisher: Interplay Platform: Windows xp/vista ESRB/Age: (T) Mat...More at eBay
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