Baldur's Gate: Dark Alliance II

I'll be straight with you: I went into Dark Alliance II hoping for a forgotten gem and came out with something more complicated than that. This is a 2004 PS2 hack-and-slash that has been ported to PC with a resolution bump to native 4K and not a great deal else. The remaster label gets thrown around loosely here, and the gap between what's been done and what needed doing is wide enough to swallow a troll. The five playable characters are genuinely the best argument for spending time with this one. You have Dorn Redbear, a barbarian built for blunt-force tanking in heavy armor; Vhaidra Uoswiir, a Drow monk whose unarmed kit rewards mobile, kiting-focused play; Ysuran Auondril, a moon elf necromancer who can throw AoE spells, summon undead allies, or bend enemies to his will depending on how you build him; Allessia Faithhammer, a cleric whose Cure Wounds support and protection spells shine hardest in co-op; and Borador Goldhand, a dwarven rogue whose crossbow range and lock-picking give him a different pace from the melee crowd. Two unlockable characters - Drizzt Do'Urden with his twin scimitars and the assassin Artemis Entreri - round out the roster for second-run players. Each class carries around 30 abilities to learn, upgrade, and mix, and the spread is different enough that a Necromancer and a Barbarian playthrough barely feel like the same game. That variety is the real replay hook, especially paired with Extreme Mode and the class-specific quests that open up in Act III. The crafting and enchantment system also holds up reasonably well. Baldur's Gate city acts as a hub where you spend gold on gear between expeditions, and the custom weapon and armor creation - using gem types to socket and stack effects - adds a layer of min-maxing that kept me at the vendor screen longer than I expected. It is not Path of Exile depth, not by a long stretch, but for a 2004 action RPG it was ahead of its time, and it still scratches a particular itch. The semi-linear structure, with multiple quests available simultaneously and some non-linear sequencing within each act, means the pacing is less repetitive than a pure corridor crawler. Here is where honesty bites. The melee combat is clunky in ways that modern ARPGs have quietly made us forget were ever a problem. Your character can swing at air while an enemy shuffles half a step sideways, and there is no lock-on system to stop you from looking foolish against a pack of Red Fang goblins. Spellcasting fares better - AoE spells feel genuinely satisfying - but melee-primary classes like Dorn can start to feel monotonous well before the credits. The story is functional at best: a vampire lord named Mordoc threatens Baldur's Gate through the power of the Onyx Tower, and the writing has all the depth of a first-level homebrew campaign. Do not come here for Forgotten Realms lore revelations. The co-op, which is clearly where this game lives, is local-only on consoles; PC players can use Steam Remote Play with a friend, though latency can be a factor. Online co-op was never properly implemented, which in 2022 is a genuine omission. The verdict on who this is for comes down to one question: were you there in 2004? If yes, this port will scratch a specific itch with minimal friction. If you are coming in fresh from Diablo IV or Last Epoch, the gap in combat polish and build depth will be hard to ignore. A single playthrough runs roughly 10 to 15 hours; going back through Extreme Mode with an unlockable character can push that past 50, but only if the core loop has already grabbed you. Couch co-op with the right person remains one of the most comfortable ways to spend an evening with a dungeon crawler, and on that specific criterion Dark Alliance II still delivers. Just do not expect the port itself to have done much of the work for you.

Monika · Scout Team

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