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Baldur's Gate
Written by: Grant Hatchimonji
Baldur's Gate was one of the first classic RPGs for the PC platform and is still an incredible gaming experience today.
There are tons of quality RPGs available on the PC nowadays, but everything great comes from something. “Baldur's Gate,”¯ one of the first great RPGs on the system, created a foundation upon which all future games would be built. Setting the standard for PC RPGs to come, this game stunned audiences with its impressive story and dialogue, its graphics, and a sprawling world for players to explore, with a litany of side quests and characters to engage in.
Though the story can get a bit convoluted at times, it is quite intriguing, with many plot twists and surprises. You play the role of a son of Bhaal, the god of murder, which obviously doesn't make you very popular with a lot people. Beyond the fact that many people are after your head, however, there are also mysterious happenings afoot on the Sword Coast region (where the game takes place) as its iron source begins to deplete and existing iron is of poor quality, crumbling upon use. This leads to a crisis for the city of Baldur's Gate as its inhabitants struggle without a ready source of iron. Eventually, the crisis is revealed to be a part of a greater conspiracy and it's up to the player to expose everything and save the day.
Considering that “Baldur's Gate”¯ is a game that relies so heavily on plot and dialogue, it's not too surprising that the game has superior writing, dialogue and voice acting. This is no cheesy production; the game is presented as a truly epic tale, and the delivery in the passages involving voiceovers (as well as the text based ones) is quite believable. There are so many unique characters with different voices and personalities that you can come across and together, they create this feeling of a complete and genuine universe through which the player traverses.
The isometric perspective used in “Baldur's Gate” works well with the game's Infinity Engine, always keeping character models at a fixed distance. That's not to say that the character models don't look good; they do, and their animations—as well as the effects from spell casting—look fantastic for the game's time.
Combat is excellent too, giving players a bizarre hybrid between real-time action and turn-based action. Everything takes place in real time, but the game also stays faithful to basic Dungeons and Dragons rules by having all characters still roll dice to hit or make saving throws. But all of the “dice-throwing,”¯ so to speak, is automatically done and takes place behind the scenes, allowing for regular paced combat that is still centered around D&D rules. Beyond this, you can also pause the action at any time to manage members of your party and tell them to either move, take potions, cast spells, or change the target he or she is attacking.
Without a doubt, though, the greatest part of “Baldur's Gate”¯ is the open-ended nature of the game. The city of Baldur's Gate itself is sprawling, with tons of different venues, characters, and quests to come by, but then there is also the entire realm of the Sword Coast beyond the city's walls that the party may explore. In most cases, the game doesn't put any rush or sense of urgency on the player with time-sensitive quests, so you're free to roam around and explore to your heart's content before moving on to the next stage of the plot. And believe me, there's tons for you to see; so much so that you could play the game for 10 to 15 hours and only be halfway through the main story arc.
Unfortunately, these quests can often lead to disappointment in that you'll only be rewarded with a handful of gold and some experience points, as opposed to some sort of unique or rare item. With many other RPGs, especially those that take place in the Dungeons and Dragons universe, one of the greatest parts of the game are all the unique items and treasure you can come across. But with “Baldur's Gate,” the assortment of items is rather limited; for instance, most “special” weapons only come in the +1 or +2 variety, with only a few having special abilities, like greater damage against shapeshifters or a greater backstab multiplier. There really isn't a huge amount of items to be found that aren't just “[insert item here] +1,” and this is rather disappointing when considering the sheer volume and variety of exotic weapons and items that are available in other RPGs.
Another issue with the game is the lengthy load times. Most areas (save for the impressively large parts of town in Baldur's Gate) are relatively small, but moving from one to another always calls for a loading time. To top it off, everything is read off the CD, making load times even longer as you wait for the disc drive to spin and read all of the necessary data. Also, in many cases, going from one area to another requires you to swap out the current disc for any one of the other four discs that the game's data is on, which is a huge pain. The ability to install some (if not all) of the game data directly onto the hard drive would have been a great feature here, but unfortunately this is not an option.
“Baldur's Gate”¯ is an original, classic RPG for a reason. It has spectacular gameplay, an engrossing story, interesting characters, and great graphics and effects (for its time). While there are obviously drawbacks to playing a dated game like this in a day and age when other RPGs have become so much more advanced, there's still an excellent experience to be had by going back to the genre's roots.
Score: 8.9/10
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