Game Title Balder s Gate Review by Naoki Hirata Companies TSR Black Isle division of Interplay Bioware Corp Type of Game Roleplay Adventure Price originally 40 50 Currently about 20 25 If 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 game set in the Forgotten Realms Campaign Setting The game is played 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 past history 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 to do 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 or more abilities Another measure is gold pieces which allows you 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 play section 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 you entertained 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 EverQuest Why 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 the people 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 audience Design 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 to the 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 as much 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 it comes with another game Sequel Tales from the Sword Coast More Info Goto the website at www blackisle com You ll find details such as the design concepts for characters and things of that nature
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