Baldur's Gate: Dark Alliance - Shrunk Down, Full Power

24/09/23

Look, it’s impressive enough that I’ve been putting out reviews this last month. As you’ve very likely seen, I, like many, many other people, have been trapped in the wonderful embrace that is Baldur’s Gate 3. I’ve just begun diving into Act 3, but I’m not going to be surprised if it ends up as my favorite game of the year. But this is the Game Boy Abyss, and I love tying reviews into various whatevers, so to mark the release of Baldur’s Gate 3, today I’ll be playing the sole Baldur’s Gate title released for the GBA, Baldur’s Gate: Dark Alliance, a game that whilst a stripped down edition of it’s core, console counterpart, still manages to provide a satisfying loot-based adventure all the same.

I’ve actually been playing a few dungeon crawlers lately, chief among them Nox, an old Diablo-like from the start of the 2000s. Nox, whilst having its own charm, felt like a mirror image of what dungeon crawlers could’ve been without Diablo, but it wasn’t quite what I was looking for. It was then, to my delight and genuine surprise, that not only had I never played Baldur’s Gate Dark Alliance before, but there was a totally equivalent, fully-functional demake for it on the Game Boy Advance. Because of course there are more and more of these blasted things to play. (I kid, I love doing these reviews). Overall, I think my thoughts on Dark Alliance for the GBA are pretty positive; I’ve got my quibbles with it, but at the end of the day this really is just a shrunk down version of the home console version, and the fact they made it embody the same experience on a handheld is pretty damn impressive, no matter how you twist it.

Dark Alliance for the GBA is a pretty straightforward game; after choosing your class, which are your basic Warrior, Sorcerer, Archer archetypes, almost instantly you’ll be descending into dungeons, armed with whatever you can find, slashing and hacking at whatever bugs and demonic creatures come your way. Dark Alliance is an extremely single-minded game; you are here to kill and carve a path to your objective, beat some bosses, and save Baldur’s Gate and the Sword Coast. There is… some form of a narrative in the game, but it’s nothing more than a framing device to get you moving, as each Act (of which there are three) seem to focus on totally different threats with very little throughline between them. Ostensibly it all comes together to be the work of one particular foe, but I’ll be blunt; I’m not playing this game for the story (I’ve got Baldur’s Gate 3 for tha), so it’s all just extraneous nonsense that just kind of exists, and that’s fine. There’s also no customization of any kind for your character, beyond your class; you’re just Local Human Man, which I find more than a little amusing just based on the fact that there is a woman on the cover. Unless my eyes don’t work and that’s someone else. Which is… quite possible, actually.

But you’re not here for a story (or at least, I hope you aren’t) - how does the combat *feel?*. In a word… satisfying. Simplistic, to be sure, but very, very satisfying. No matter which class you pick, your gameplay experience will vary little. Tapping the R button will cycle through your three forms of attacks; melee, ranged, and your spells/special abilities. Classes diverge the most in their skill system; every time you level up, you’ll earn skill orbs seemingly in number to the level you’re now reaching. Each class has its own unique skill set and special abilities that’ll fit the ‘fantasy’, so to speak, of the character - like the Archer getting the ability to fire multiple arrows in a single burst, for example. There are also a number of passive skills that raise your various parameters, but the game’s length will generally have you filling up the majority of your skills by the end of the game and don’t really feel like they contribute much to the fantasy of actually playing the game, but it’s fine.

As for the actual *actual* combat… It's a hack and slash. You;ll be running up to melee range, slapping them around with your sword, or putting some distance to pepper them with bows or spells. And that’s that, really. Dozens upon hundreds of enemies will charge you, but one at a time you’ll cut a bloody swath through their ranks, only whipping out the big bad skills when the real players come to town who’ll take a few more hits to bring down. There are also a handful of bosses padded out throughout the game, but honestly they’re a bit of a letdown, frequently feeling more like normal enemies with a slightly expanded moveset. I never really felt that I was in danger of losing to them, especially when they do enough breakable barrels around the arena to keep you supplied. That’s not a bad thing, to be fair, but it can dull the danger, so to speak. But yeah, overall the combat is pretty satisfying, especially as someone who delights in nothing more than seeing those big ‘ol damage numbers clamber upwards.

As with all these games, the loot is one of the most important elements here, and for what it is… it’s fine, I guess. Look, where Dark Alliance succeeds is in its genuine feeling of getting stronger as you move through the game, and that’s both because of the skill orb system and the loot. You’re not going to be getting any crazy Diablo or Borderlands-tier effects with your magical items sans some elemental abilities, but there were enough moments where I’ve killed some random enemy, or smashed open your average barrel, and I found a sword or bow that pushed my damage to new heights. Going from taking a couple of slashes to carve through some rabid lizardmen, to finding a blade that’ll essentially take them down in a single moment is euphoric. Armour doesn’t quite hit the same sweet spot - I never felt I was actively taking less damage, but also I never felt like I was taking *more*, if that makes sense, giving it an acceptable, if not overly satisfying ‘happy medium’ that keeps you alive.

Taking place across the three acts, you’ll be adventuring and carving away at a pretty decent variety of locales. The streets and depths of the titular Baldur’s Gate, dwarven mines, small forest settlements - it’s nothing crazy, and I’d go so far as to say relatively uninteresting, but at the very least it’s not a single biome/tileset you’ll be seeing for the six hours it took me to beat the game; the actual length of the game might be a point of contention for some people, but with that shorter length, it’s more impressive the pace at which you adventure through these locales. I wish there was a bit more to flesh them out; side quests do exist in this game, but they’re pretty ancillary to the main experience and for the most part were ‘go here, kill this or pick up that’ and then you’ll just get a basic reward of gold and EXP. I’m not upset that it's a relatively brief experience, but I think a bit more reason to explore these locales, possibly in the form of optional loot dungeons or just little side quests would’ve padded out the game without it feeling bloated.

One big issue that cropped up a few times was the game’s lack of a map, and this is mostly due to just how large each of these areas are. With the game’s relatively zoomed in nature and how you’ll be backtracking here and there after completing tasks or acquiring keys, it can be *very* easy to get somewhat lost in these games, especially in sections where you’re looking for a number of items or characters. It only really cropped as an issue in two levels - the snowy mountain, and the final dungeon, as these are both genuinely massive areas in which it is very easy to totally wander past and miss whatever your goal is - it’s not a dealbreaker, and I can imagine it not being as much of an issue for other people, but it’s one of the sole relatively major faults I found with my time in the game.

There’s also, oddly enough, very little music in the game, outside of a general ‘intense theme’ when you’re in certain areas or battling bosses. Normally I’d chalk this up as a negative, but wandering these dungeons, slaying foes, all in an almost eerie silence… It's a very particular vibe that this game manages to pull off that really works for me. As an isometric, pseudo-3D dungeon crawler, the game looks fine, and even good in a lot of its area designs, but a lot of the model-sprites are just incredibly undefined and hard to work out exactly what I’m looking at. Though, on the other hand, I did take a glance at the actual home console version of the game, and the GBA version is actually really close to how those games looked years before - just blurrier and more stripped down, of course. Pretty cool thing to do, if I do say so myself.

Look, Baldur’s Gate: Dark Alliance isn’t the most amazing dungeon crawler around. But at the end of the day, this is a demake, and considering the constraints they had to work with in the form of the GBA’s admittedly weak hardware, I think the developers did a bang up job replicating the pureness of the dungeon crawler whilst having to cut away much of the bells and whistles. It’s got issues, especially in the map and its general level of simplicity, but if you’re looking for a solid, satisfying, albeit simplistic, dungeon crawler on the GBA, this might not perhaps be the preeminent choice, but it’s still a damn, damn good one. It might be the only Baldur’s Gate - and perhaps, the only real Dungeons & Dragons experience - on the GBA, but if you’re craving at the bit for more content after Baldur’s Gate 3, you could do much, much worse.

Just don’t play the recent Dark Alliance. Eurgh.

Thank you so much for reading my review of Baldur’s Gate Dark Alliance on the Game Boy Abyss! Had a great time playing and writing this one, even though I constantly felt the urge to abandon both these tasks to, y’know, actually play Baldur’s Gate 3. I’m… I’m deep in that game, man. Either way, we’re getting close to game #50, and I don’t expect next week's review (woof woof) to take me long… oof. As always, you can find me over @lemmy7003 on Twitter or you can email me at cckaiju@gmail.com or mgeorge7003@hotmail.com if you have any questions or requests. Thanks again for reading, and I’ll see you in my next review!