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Features

• Type: Single and multi-player RPG
• Developer: Black Isle
• Publisher: Interplay
• Adventure through a hudge game world on 5 CD's
• Create your character from 6 AD&D races and 26 total classes
• Have a party of 6 NPC's full of personality
• 7 big chapters, non-linear adventure
• Pause the game to tell characters what to do

Requirements

Miniumum
• Hard disk space: 300MB without multiplayer, 374 with multiplayer
• Windows 85/98
• 4x or better CD-ROM
• 2MB SVGA video card
• 166 Mhz Pentium procesor

Recommended
• 374MB Disk Space (About 2GB+ is nice for a close to complete install)
• 250mhz processor
• 4MB SVGA video card
• 8x CD-ROM driver

Review

When you first create your character, you'll be amazed at all the options you have. First, you select the gender, which doesn't affect your abilities at all. Then you choose your race from 6 AD&D races: Halfling,Half-Elf, Elf, Dwarf,Gnome, and human. All the races of different abilities and looks, and classes closed to them. Next, you choose your class, and you may not be able to choose certain ones based on your race. (For example, dwarves are resistant to magic, but they also can't cast it, so that blocks the mage class. Humans can choose any class.) There are no unique classes to any race exept human, and they can choose any class, with no modifiers to their class' abilities.

There are 26 classes, all taken from AD&D: Fighter, Ranger, Paladin(human only), Cleric, Druid (prety much a nature cleric), Mage-and all the specialist mage categories based on the schools of magic: Abjurer(protection magic), Conjurer(summons things), Diviner(detection), Enchanter, Illusionist, Invoker(mainly battle magic), Necromancer, and Transmuter (magic that alters objects and reality-alteration, for those who played Daggerfall) Those are all of the specialists. Next, there's Thief, and Bard (a jack-of-all-trades, yet a master of none, sort of a criminal, can cast spells and play lucky songs).

After that you roll your ability scores, and they are Strength, Constitution (physical health, hit-points), Intelligence (reflects mage's spell casting), Wisdom (common since; reflects cleric's spell casting), Dexterity (reflects armor class and thieving abilities) and Charisma (the higher your charisma, the nicer people are to you, and you get better stuff from some quests). Then, if your a thief, you apply points to different thiefly skills. You also choose which weapons your proficient in, and you can only choose certain ones, based on your class. You then select your face, and see what your character looks like, and you choose hair color, and major and minor clothing colors. You also select an alignment; how your character generally acts.

The reason I explained character generation so much is because that goes to show just how much you can customize your character, and the non-linearness of the game. But by non-linear I mean that during the whole game your free to explore about 85% of the game world at all times. There are about 100 or more sub-quests, so you differently have a life out of the main story. And there are always different paths to take and things to say in the quests, so you get to act like your character. But some of the quests are, for example, just helping a travelling merchant get across a bridge where there's a cave bear on the other side; not very long. But all of the quests are hand-made. Some of them are pretty involved, however. One such example is when you find a not-so-intelligent stranger in a small town, and he asks you to help rescue a lady that he is journeying with to ascend to man hood. You journey to a ruined castle that is all gnoll fortress, and get either hack your way into it, or sneak past the gnolls with a thief, and rescue the lady, and they join your party.

Now for the main story. An overveiw of it is that your a mysterious orphan, who's past is a mystery. Your foster father tries to save you from people who want you dead, but this mysterious armored figure kills him. You flee. Soon, you journey to the mining town of Nashkel for one reason or another (some party members want to go there, or you hear rumors about it) You learn about the problems in the mine, which, along with an odd increase in bandit raids, is causing the iron shortage, that is putting the Sword Coast (the section of the world the game is in) at risk. You find out that a person being commanded by a man name Tazok was having kobolds taint the iron, rendering it useless. The good iron was being stolen by bandits in caravan raids. You find a letter leading you to a man named Tranzig, who is the messenger between Tazok and the man in the mines. You get the information about where the bandit camp is, and you go and attack it, finding the bandit's plan. You go to stop the bandits, and you begin to discover the armored figure's plot to take over the sword coast, and acend to god status. He has nearly taken over the city of Baldur's Gate by killing nobles and replacing them with shape-shifters. He will soon become a Duke at Baldur's Gate, so you bust his initation party, and kill his henchmen he flee's and the plot advances from there. But why did he want you dead? Play the game and find out! (no, I won't spoil the whole story for you, and the top description was very brief, even skipping some parts.)

I'll get into gameplay. You basically control your party like you do in a game like Starcraft. You can click on one person, or select your whole party, and click on a place for them to move, and they move there. If somebody has a red circle around them, if you click on them, the characters you have selected automatically attack. There are a few semi-complicated things, but overall, the control is easy to use, and the game is easy to get into. My only complaint is that the pathfinding system for characters could have been better, but that's just about it for the control.

Your party is also very well detailed, even though you don't HAVE to take anyone in. Unlike other RPG's, the NPC's in your party always act by their motives and personality. They argue with each other, compiment each other, insult each other, and sometimes even get in fights! But they only really get in fights if they are opposite. For example, once I had a evil necromancer and a paladin in my party at the same time. They always insulted each other, and, eventually, the paladin killed the necromancer. Say good-by to that party member! But that doesn't usually happen, and it happens more often if your charater is an oppisit to that NPC. If the party member joins your party with a direct purpose in mind, if you stray from that too long, they will complain, and, eventually, leave. There are many characters, however, that are simply dedicated to your cause, and will stay that way unless you act too much against their beliefs.

Combat is, overall, fairly well handled. But there are some flaws. For one thing, on enemies that aren't easy, combat takes forever. This is one inconsistancy to the AD&D system. In AD&D, you almost never miss so much. To be fair, though, the enemy misses as much as you do, so it doesn't increase the difficulty of the game; it just makes combat take longer. The only other problem is that there are some insanely hard parts. In a few cases, I was forced to exploit the game's programming to skip combats. In one case, when your trying to capture plans from the bandit camp, the people guarding the plans are near impossible. One of ther people there is one of the last bosses in the game! (Tazok) Ok, he does run after some time, but still, I had to resort to sending in my worst character to get the plans, so he just ran to the just before he got killed. Then, he read the letters. I figured out that to end the chapter, I had to get one more member of my party in that room after I had taken the letters. I did that, thereby bypassing one the less-then-ballanced parts of the game. The other bad thing is that when you lower the difficulty, you get less experience points!

Above was my complaints about combat. Now, I'll say the good parts. You can equip you character with tons of weapons, including all different types of swords, throwing knives, axes, bows, magic wands, maces, etc. Your ability to use your weapons are governed by the weapon profiencies you choose at the start of the game. You can choose bows, large swords, small swords, missile weapons (crossbows, throwing knives and axes, slings), spiked weapons (maces), and blunt weapons. You can have several "quick weapons" out, depending on you class, and just click the button to switch weapons. That way, for example, you can throw knives at the hob-goblins that are charging you, and then switch to your trusty axe when they get close enough for melee. You don't have to click for every attack, you just tell you characters to attack once, and they keep swinging until you tell them otherwise, they panic, or the enemy dies. You can even give your party members scripts, or actions to take in fights, if you don't want to order them yourself. You set what they are most likely to do. For example a script called Wizard Offensive will have your character assault the enemy with all their offensive spells, then attack with a melee weapon. A great feature in the game is the ability to pause the game to tell your characters what to do, and then unpause it to have them do it. This works great in combat, so you don't have to worry about managing all you characters at once. When the enemy dies, they collapse, and, of course, you can take their stuff.

The graphics of the game are great. While they aren't 3-D, look at the screenshots showing the town and waterfall to see what I mean. They are crisp and clear. Sometimes, espacially in dungeons, the game can get too dark, and sometimes you can't see what your doing due to other objects obstructing your veiw. When this happens, your character is shown through the object, but you still don't now what's gettin gn your way when your trying to move behind a building, for example. The characters are the only thing that you may have a problem with. You character's face in the game is genaric based on your race, not what face you picked in character creation. And some of the characters look, sortof, well, blah. (bet I'm the first person to use that in a review :)But most of them look fine. The towns can look kindof lifeless due to pre-rendering, put that will only be a problem if your picky.

Now your probobley wondering about multiplayer. You can import your personal character into a multiplayer game, with no effect on him/her. The multiplayer game has the same content as single player, as you solve the same quests, get the same items, etc. The difference is that some or all of the party characters are controlled by real people. You can select any chapter to start play on. The host of the game, or "leader", can choose what each person can do, like wether or not they can pause the game, talk to people, etc. Multiplayer is very fun, and it's free and easy to get into. You just click on the GameSpy icon, and your taken to a screen showing all the games available. Just click one and your taken in. Even if you want just multiplayer, I still recomend Baldur's Gate.

Screenshots

The Inventory Screen	Adventuring	Character Creation

Links

• Baldur's Gate at Interplay - The official site of the game.
• Baldur's Gate Chronicles - A very informative site with all the latest news.

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