Game Title: Balder's GateReview by: Naoki HirataCompanies: TSR, Black Isle (division of Interplay), Bioware Corp.Type of Game: Roleplay/AdventurePrice: originally: $40 ~ $50 Currently: about $20~$25If you do go buy this game, buy the golden edition, because you get Fallout as well.Minimum stated Requirements: 166 Mhz Processor, windows 95 w/ directX 5 or better, 16 Megs of RAM, 500 MB of Hard drive space, 4X or faster CD - ROM, 2 MB SVGA, keyboard, and mouse.Actual hardware: You can get it to run on a 150 Mhz processor with 64 megs of ram. I tried on a 100 Mhz, but the characters end up "moonwalking"Recommended: 200 Mhz Processor w/ MMX, 32Mb of RAM, 600 MB of hard drive space, 8X or faster CD-ROM, 4 MB SVGA card for 24 & 32 bit effect.Game Overview: Balder's Gate is an Advanced Dungeons & Dragons gameset in the Forgotten Realms Campaign Setting. The game isplayed in a pseudo-real time environment. Knowing the rules to AD&D, will help you out a lot when you first start to play this game. Fortunately, it does not alienate those who do not know the rules, by putting them in the manual. The very beginning is a tutorial, which helps you learn how to play the game. When you think that you are ready, the story begins.Story Line: The main story is based around your character that you created. Supposedly your character was adopted by this well known mage. You don't know much about your pasthistory, other than that your foster father had raised you. As you follow the quests, you realize that there's some kind of conspiracy.Player's Role: The objective for the player is to learn more about the character's past history, as well as unravel this conspiracy. This is achieved by follow the story line and doing the main quests. There are side quests that the player can choose todo. There's also different view points of different characters. The player can choose to have up to 6 people in his party. The player will have to "roleplay" to gain a character's companionship.Installation: Installation is fairly easy, provided you have the disk space and at least the minimum required hardware.User Interface: Well, thought out GUI. Going to the inventory screen will cause the game to unpause. They did this to add more realism to the game. A person would not be able to fiddle around with their backpacks while in the midst of combat. Game Play: For the most part, the game play is a matter of clicking on different objects. The game is heavily mouse dependent. You can set quick keys to make life easier. There is also an internet/multiplayer option, but if the main character dies, then so do all the rest of the characters.Scoring: Scoring is based on experience which allows you to gain more levels which in turn allows you to have better and/ormore abilities. Another measure is gold pieces, which allowsyou to buy more special items. The reward at the very end of the game, I believe is a special movie clip. Movie clips are played occasionally, depending on where you go.Artwork: The artwork is set in the fantasy realm, and is very well one. It also has occasional computer generated movie clips.Sound & Music: It has realistic sounds, such as people talking in a bar, footsteps, screams, etc. There's also background music when in fights, bars, and different settings.Special features: Can import pictures, sounds, and create scripts for the AI of the characters.Manual: There comes a manual with this game. The game playsection is fairly small. Most of the manual is detailing the rules of the Forgotten Realms Campaign. There's a bit of explanation behind places, items, monsters, and people.Bugs: Not sure.Fun part: Killing monsters is most of the fun part, because it allows you to gain more experience/levels which allows you to do more. There's some quips and things that keep youentertained as well. The quests also help with experience. The story line is fairly well done, but with the few choices to select as dialog, it becomes limiting, and linear.Bad part: Too much redundancy and monotony of walking from one section of an area to another.Comparison: I believe it is better than Diablo, but not as good as Ultima Online and EverQuestWhy?: It's better than Diablo because it has more complex quests, more things to do, different selection of dialog. You can also get a party to help you defeat monsters. With the party you can use strategy to defeat different monsters. You can also create AI scripts or use the default AI scripts to have the characters automatically respond to the environment.Ultima Online and EverQuest are two online games. They have more unique characters, and it's never the same each time you play, mainly because other people that play it change the surroundings as well as the "game masters" (thepeople who update the game on the servers). Balder's gate relies too heavily on one (main) character in multiplay.Target audience: Most likely teen/adult audienceDesign Mistake: If your main character has a full inventory, a character trying to give him something will drop it. In most cases this is good, but in the case where you are moved to a different area due to the game scene, this causes you to walk back tothe area and pick it back up and then walk back to the next story area. I also do not like the fact that a scroll can take asmuch space as a plate mail armor in a backpack. Also you can save the game before copying a spell into your spellbook. That way if you fail you can load the game again and then retry until you succeed.Strengths: Good sound, music, and artwork. It's a revolutionary concept game design for future roleplay for a single person, compared to the design of the older RPGs designed for the PC. The AI scripting for different party members makes it unique in its genre.Weakness: There's too much monotony of "walking".Worth: The game is worth purchasing for $20~$25. Especially if itcomes with another game. Sequel: Tales from the Sword CoastMore Info: Goto the website at www.blackisle.com You'll find details such as the design concepts for characters and things of that
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