Balder's Gate: Dark Alliance 2 is the sequel to the highly successful action RPG Balder's Gate: Dark Alliance; developed by Snowblind Studios. Snowblind is no longer in the picture, with Black Isle Studios taking over development. By all accounts, the gameplay in the sequel has only gotten better. I didn't get a chance to play the first Dark Alliance, but I really enjoyed Dark Alliance 2. As a rabid RPG fan I should warn you, gamers looking for a deep RPG experience should look elsewhere, as Dark Alliance 2 is all about action. If you've enjoyed dungeon crawling action RPG's in the past, you're probably going to enjoy Dark Alliance 2. Dark Alliance 2 doesn't do anything revolutionary for the genre, but it does have some very neat features that make it a lot of fun to play.

You begin Dark Alliance 2 by selecting 1 of 5 unique adventurers, each with their own story, abilities, and play style. I'll start with Dorn, a barbarian, basically your standard melee tank who gets through the game slashing apart everything in sight. There's also Ysuran, a mysterious moon elf necromancer, who starts off weak, but becomes very powerful as the game progresses. Allessia, a cleric of helm, who excels in smiting the undead. Vhaidra (my favorite character) a dark elf monk who tears her enemies to pieces with spinning kicks and flying punches. And finally Borador, a greedy dwarven rogue who is an excellent shot with his crossbow. As you probably guessed, your experience in playing Dark Alliance 2 differs greatly depending on which character you choose to play as.

As you advance through the game, your character will gain ability points each time they level. You can choose to spend these points on new skills, or improve old ones. Thanks to these abilities, each character has a different way of dealing with enemies. Learning to use each character's strengths and weaknesses, and developing them as you go along is a big part of the reason why Dark Alliance 2 is so much fun to play. No matter which character you choose to play as, you'll be spending most of your time with them crawling through dungeons. Because that's really what Dark Alliance 2 is all about: Dungeon crawling. So, if you enjoy collecting sack's full of loot and searching every last corner for that final gold piece, you'll be right at home in Dark Alliance 2.

The only area in which I felt Dark Alliance 2 really suffers is its story. The plot is totally forgettable, and I'll say the same for the dialogue. It makes me scratch my head when I think about why Black Isle bothered to hire voice actors to voice such boring, unoriginal, non-playable characters. If you were hoping (as I was) that the plot development of your characters would be better, I'm sorry to report that it's totally insignificant. I understand why they made five different characters for you to play as, but I don't understand why they didn't go the extra mile and make their storylines interesting. The only differences between the storylines of each character are a few minor changes to their dialogue in certain places and a single quest npc. If more time and effort had been put into this area of the game, Dark Alliance 2 would have been a much more memorable gameplay experience.

The graphics in Dark Alliance 2 are very solid in both Xbox and PS2 versions of the game, with a slight edge given to the Xbox. Though the graphics won't be called revolutionary, they are clean, clear and just plain easy on the eyes. The environments you can explore are all quite impressive, with the unfortunate exception of Balder's Gate itself. The city of Balder's Gate found in Dark Alliance 2 is a small and boring sandbox. In fact there are only a small handful of npcs that speak at all, and they are all tied to the storyline. The other townspeople simply wander around bumping into each other, speaking not a word. Thankfully, the developers of Dark Alliance 2 did a much better job on the game's monsters. There are probably a hundred or more different types of monsters to battle, many of them quite interesting.

My favorite part of Dark Alliance 2 is the magical item crafting system. This crafting system allows you to craft weapons, armor, or jewelry, using magical gems you can find as you progress through your adventures. Crafting these items is a huge part of the game and a big reason why I kept playing. I felt a continuing desire to find more gold, which I could then use to fund the crafting of cool new equipment for my character. Dark Alliance 2 also features an interesting system for naming these items. A name is automatically chosen for each item depending on which gems were used in its creation. For example, using gems infused with fire and ice on a mace will get you: "The Mace of Cold-fire". This system is pretty neat, though personally I would have preferred the ability to name the item whatever I want, as you can in The Elder Scrolls III: Morrowind. This is only a minor issue though; all in all, the crafting system is outstanding.

I have thoroughly enjoyed myself every time I've played through Dark Alliance 2. It even inspired me to pick up some other, very similar, titles. Unfortunately, none of these have been able to stand up to the great overall presentation and fun of Dark Alliance 2. RPG fans who don't mind a light storyline with some heavy dungeon crawling will definitely enjoy this game, as will those who routinely enjoy more action-packed games. Forgotten Realms fans will get a pleasant surprise when they complete the game, as guest character Drizzt Do'Urden becomes available. Even better, those who bite the bullet and complete the game on "extreme" difficulty will unlock Drizzt's mortal enemy: Artemis Entreri. These special bonus characters were just icing on the cake for me, and are a much better reward than the game's totally incomprehensible ending. The bad ending didn't surprise me though, by that point I'd learned: Dark Alliance 2 is simply about action, and plenty of it.