Baldur's Gate

The Good
Baldur's Gate's plot is brilliant! The graphics are really good, especially considering the game's age, the gameplay is good, and it has a very user friendly interface. Overall it's a very good game.

The Bad
There were a couple things I didn't like. No matter how long you play, your character still remains pretty weak. I also didn't like the limitation on the number of people in your party, and the limitation on magic items.

The Bottom Line
This is a great game! I would recommend it.

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
Oi, pretty much everything is good in Baldur's Gate, but I'll try to keep it short. Well, the character generation is easy and pretty, and yet still detailed enough to make it interesting and fun to play around with. As for in-game stuff, I must say that the control interface is really great, as it gives you the option to assign keys to every action, every spell, every item....you get the point. It's easy and fast, even if you stick with your mouse (but why oh why?) and choose not to use the keyboard commands. Design-wise it is very very tight, with an excellent storyline and non-player characters with personality. You notice their personality as you do things or ask them to do things for you ("Sleep lightly, Taskmaster!", whispers Montaron, whenever you ask him to do something). On top of all this, there are tons of fun and quirky details, which adds alot to the atmosphere.

Combat is a breeze aswell. It takes place in real-time, and all you have to do is click (or press a key) and things will happen. Very simple and neat. But what makes it great is the 'pause' option. By pressing space you'll pause the game while you assign actions to your party. This is essential in most larger battles, as it's real easy to loose track of things. Great feature. As for the graphics and the sounds, they're both great. Really nice isometric world with all the right animal sounds, plus the usual howling and growling.

All in all, Baldur's Gate is a well-designed, detail-rich game with pretty spells and bloody sword-fights. And heaps of quests to finish! Almost the perfect role-playing game (if you're into that kinda thing).

The Bad
The only thing that really annoyed me in the long run was the travelling. Though the system is better than most games (Baldur's Gate has divided the world into several smaller areas, giving you a mix between point-and-click travelling and instant travel), it can still get tedious to walk the realms. But that is such a minor complaint when everything else is so darn good.

The Bottom Line
A great role-playing game that should satisfy everyone from a neophyte of the genre to the hardened AD&D fanatic. Simply stunning.