YMMV / Baldur's Gate: Dark Alliance

• Alternative Character Interpretation:
  • Eldrith's story actually plays both sides of this. On the one hand, it's difficult not to feel sorry for her when she simply wanted to beat back the Black Horde and keep Baldur's Gate safe from them for good, her duty to the city she loved proving her downfall when those she kept safe abandoned her and turned their swords on her to chase her into the March of Chelimber to die, the only memory of her being that she was a traitor to the city. However, on the flipside, one has to remember that the player is told that Eldrith became possessive of Baldur's Gate and saw it as her own, and she had disobeyed explicit orders NOT to chase down the Black Horde so as to not lose any more men and then was surprised when, shockingly, the trapped creatures fought for their lives. One can't quite blame the dukes for not sending out any more men when her own was already being massacred, and when she flew into a rage and attacked the city with intent to murder the dukes for not backing her up, again, when she defied orders, they were merely trying to keep the city safe from a woman who had lost all reason. Eldrith's character invites sympathy, yes, but at the same time she does evoke SOME disgust at just how far her stubborn pride took her.
  • The theory that Karne was a huge jerk to his four Zhent lieutenants in the elemental planes chapter because their mission to guard the pillars was meaningless and he fully expected them to die against the player, with whom he was already planning to form an alliance; he was pressing each of their buttons because he knew he'd never have to deal with them again.
  • A minor one, but the Big Bad and The Dragon, Mordoc and Xanhast, seem like close friends and confidants save for a brief altercation near the very end of the game, when the latter makes an ill-thought comment and Mordoc angrily snarls at his thrall to be silent, before composing himself and returning to his usual self. Was this a glimpse of Mordoc's true, low opinion on his enslaved minion, or indeed merely a fleeting moment of anger?
• Anticlimax Boss: Sleyvas, despite being a Karma Houdini from the first game, is quite a pushover when confronted in battle: while he is a strong spellcaster, the small size of the room leaves him an easy prey for melee builds.
• Ass Pull: Luvia's powers when you fight her come a little out of thin air, and so does her Blob Monster form. Some of her attacks seem to make use of the chemical items which alchemists in D&D can create (similar to those the Dwarf rogue uses), which fit with her being a Mad Scientist. The spoilered ability, not so much.
• Breather Level: Compared to the other three elemental planes in 2, the Plane of Water is surprisingly easy: unlike the Plane of Air, there's no near-omnipresent risk of falling to your doom, nor does it contains annoying Rust Monsters like the Plane of Earth or highly-lethal lava pits like the Plane of Fire. The worst things inside are the sturdy jellyfish monsters, who take a lot of damage before dying. The boss fight against Illudra at the end is tough but nothing too hard to handle.
• Complete Monster: Mordoc SeLanmere, the White Prince and Pale Knight, from the second game, is a powerful vampire lord who assists the Spirit of Hatred in attempting to wipe out the city of Baldur's Gate. When she fails, Mordoc steals her powerful fortress, the Onyx Tower, and slowly begins murdering and converting others to the undead to destroy Baldur's Gate for his Mulhorand allies. Mordoc proceeds to transport the Tower into Baldur's Gate and sets about to kill or turn every living thing in the entire city into zombies, using their lives to enhance his powers to near godhood.
• Crowning Moment of Funny:
  • In the sequel, if you play as anyone other than Vhaidra and attempt to speak to her sister at the Purple Wyrm, she at first haughtily and silently ignores you. If you persist in questioning her, and mention the fact she is a drow, you get this response: "I? Why no, I am merely a darkly-skinned gold elf. I laid out too long on the sparkling beaches of Evermeet."
  • Also, anytime Dorn speaks to Randalla, since he always hits on her.
  • Another moment in the first game. When asking Sleyvas how to defeat the tribes of lizardmen, he tells you to kill Sess'sth, their king. This wouldn't be funny by itself, but the way he describes him is simultaneously insulting and matter of fact.
  Sleyvas: Find our king, Sess'sth. Very strong, very angry, but stupid, like big tree.
• Crowning Music of Awesome:
  • The Elfsong is quite a beautiful song; the flavor text from the game describing it as haunting and that those who sit and listen to it are "lost in its call" is absolutely apt. Another beautiful song is It's Raining In Baldur's Gate. The final boss theme has to take the cake, though, as one of the most epic, rousing, heartbreaking songs in all of video games. Other good boss songs are The Orb Of Undead, Sess'sth's, Xantam's, Ciraxis', and Ilavarra's.
  • The sequel also has great music such as Aizagora's Female Vampire (name is spoiler), Zarad's, Harnac's, and The Basilisk's.
  • The sequel also has more great music, but they are currently impossible to find on the internet.
• Demonic Spiders:
  • Green slimes encountered in the sewers. They spit green globs at you continuously, which do high damage; they're not that hard alone, but the game loves to put them in groups of up to ten. Running straight at them is suicide, so the best tactic is to get a bow and snipe them from a screen away where they can't see you. It's also painful that they appear early in the game. The souped up version, which is blue, is practically a relief to see because they almost always appear alone, so they end up being easier. They also return in the sequel yet again in the sewers, which are also early in the game.
  • The Trolls in the sequel. They're really strong and can be killed only with fire or acid. This actually makes things easier for non melee characters like Ysuran and Alessia.
  • Ettins and Hill Giants may be slow and cumbersome, yes, but they can hit extremely hard and end your character in a few attacks, should he be unlucky enough to be surrounded by two or more of them.
  • The giant Onyx Golems on the third floor of the final dungeon are slow but capable of killing even melee-oriented players in a few hits of their tridents. To make things harder, you encounter two of these things right as you enter the floor, which means you're in trouble from the very beginning.
• Disappointing Last Level: For the first game, the entire Act 3 has only one NPC and no sidequests, although the GBA version does add a small populated human village at the beginning. It's otherwise a linear slog until The Very Definitely Final Dungeon, Onyx Tower.
• Game-Breaker: One of the most dangerous stats in the game is not strength or agility, but Charisma. Charisma does nothing except make merchants 1) offer to sell you items at a discount and 2) buy items from you for more money. If you have a high enough charisma level however, the two effects meet, and you will find that you can buy an item to a merchant for less money than he will give you if you sell the item back to him. Simply buy stuff from him and sell it back to him repeatedly and you have unlimited money. At that point you can just buy and enhance the best equipment the merchant has to offer every time. The game tries to avoid this with a clumsy price-capping mechanic, but you can bypass this by repeatedly donning and removing an item with a charisma bonus.
  • The Save System is one also. With the way the game handles character data and save files, it's entirely possible to save before turning in a quest, collect the reward, make another save, then simply reload the old save, and import the character from the newer save. Now you can "complete" the quest and claim the reward all over again with the XP from the last time you did it. There are also NPCs that offer XP for gold (up to 34,000 total), and exploiting this method allows you to bump a character several levels at a time for the first 10-ish levels, and still make a large dent in your XP bar well passed lvl 20. Granted, you'll need a lot of gold to do this method even once.
  • The save exploit can also be used to duplicate items by simply dropping them on the ground, importing the character from an older save, then picking them up again.
• Goddamn Bats: The Rust Monster. They're usually innocuous, but if you're wearing metal on you (weapons or armor) they'll go after you and eat the item, which can't be reobtained.
• Narm: If you value your ears, don't listen to the Italian version of the game: the voice acting is goddamn awful and dull. For example Lyran has a ridiculous, eunuch-like high-pitched voice and the tall, Amazonian Alessia sounds like a 15 year old girl.
• Nightmare Fuel:
  • The Crypt, from the first game. What really sells it, besides the dim lighting, undead creatures springing out of the floor and the creepy music playing in the background, is Cam Clarke's performance as Fayed as he describes in detail the horrors he witnessed there prior to your arrival. Also doubles as a Tear Jerker when he talks about how his fellow priests and priestesses were killed.
  • Bloodmire Manor. It's indeed a creepy place with rather unsettling statuary, infested by undead, monster dogs, giant insects and bats. And let's not mention Luvia's Laboratory.
  • Mordoc's castle is situated in a dark, undead-infested battlefield, and it's full of living shadows.
  • Dragonspear Castle is also rather creepy and unsettling, especially the ruined outer courtyard which is Always Night (and always raining).
• Porting Disaster: Zigzagged some, but it's VERY heavily up to the player how disastrous it is as the GBA port of the game feels much less polished than the console versions. There's only the one character (a human male who sounds like Vahn), but instead you pick his class from Fighter, Archer, and Mage, adding in Elven Fighter (a fighter/mage hybrid) after beating the game once. The map function is gone, so it's very easy to get lost unless you're mentally able to keep track of where you're going. Recall potions are not available, so you must make a LONG hike back to the act's respective merchant to sell off your useless gear once you're overloaded and then make your way back to where you left off, possibly getting lost again without a map. There IS a slightly expanded portion of Baldur's Gate, allowing you to visit the southern area, but this really just comes at the cost of the Crypt segment being replaced. Several other locations are also noticeably absent. It is a decent dungeon-crawler for the GBA, but it feels more barebones if compared to the original.
• So Okay, It's Average: Of sorts at least. Overall, the games scored relatively well, generally around a 7 or 8 out of 10, a pretty respectable score, and it is a fairly good dungeon-crawler for the Gamecube and Playstation 2, though more mediocre for the GameBoy Advance due to how stripped down it is by comparison. However, this is likely to be the mindset of players who played the main games first as combat is not party-based (though there is an option for co-op), the character the player chooses isn't a customizable avatar for the player nor do they have various optional situations based on alignment or class, and though the story is fairly broad, it doesn't have quite the same epic scale as the others. Obviously up to the player, but the games are better when credited for their own merits since they are spin-offs as they are fairly average compared to the more robust base games.
• That One Boss:
  • The Orb of Undead isn't too hard on single-player, but on two player it becomes much stronger. Without hit and run tactics its minions will swarm and kill you.
  • Also the undead Pirate Captain in the Sea Cavern, who not only can take a massive amount of punishment and dish it out with his flintlock pistol, but he can and will revive the other zombie pirates in the area. Unless you're playing as Allessia or have a Disruptive weapon ready, you're in for a hard fight.
  • Aizagora the Red Death loves to spam fire-based attacks like there's no tomorrow, occasionally dropping highly-damaging meteors or casting Magic Missiles. Furthermore, she's insanely fast and likely to spend most of the battle flying on the other side of the cave while dropping meteors on your head.
  • The Nightcrawler guarding the entrance to the Keep of Pale Night wouldn't be such an aggravating foe if not for two attacks: a paralyzing scream which stuns you wherever you are for a few precious seconds and a "cloudkill" effect which summons a purple cloud around the player, draining his health empty if he doesn't get out of the way asap. Cherry on the cake? The boss battle with Mordoc on the third level of the keep features two Nightcrawlers fighting alongside him, as if he wasn't a pain to deal with on his own. Luckily, Mordoc can be baited towards the entrance of the room without allerting the two giants, making the battle more manageable.
• That One Level: The Elemental Plain of Air has tiny rock platforms with Bottomless Pits on either side, strong winds that always push you near the edges, and Air Elementals that hurl rocks at you with a nasty knock-back effect. You'll have to be very careful.
• Underused Game Mechanic: The jump function is seldomly used throughout the entire series, and only one dungeon in the first game requires it.

---