Baldur's Gate

Game: Baldur's Gate
Platform: PC
Release Year: 1998
Stephen's Rating: 9/10

Box art from Baldur's Gate.

Black Isle's Baldur's Gate is an RPG adventure game based on the D&D universe. Released at a similar time to Blizzard's Diablo, it had some stiff competition. As it turned out, the two games had vastly different appeal and both have their own place in video game history.

Basic Plot
Some time prior to the beginning of the game, Bhaal, the Lord of Death is killed. He ensures his immortality by spreading his essence across hundreds of mortal souls. The main protagonist (you) is one of the "Bhaalspawn".

At the start of the game however, you have no idea any of this has happened. The game begins with gathering your belongings and following your caretaker Gorion out of the small town of Candlekeep. In transit you are ambushed and Gorion is slain. The rest of the game is about unearthing the reasons why Gorion died and unraveling the nature of your true identity.

Gameplay
The view is top down on the action. The game is divided into areas. Each area is ultimately a square shape and is initialy "blacked out" until you explore it. There is a world map which is used to travel from area to area.

 World map. Each icon on the map is a unique area that can be explored in the game.

Before starting you get to choose the characteristics of your character including race, class, alignment, and how they look. This vastly impacts how you play the game. These characteristics are based on the D&D universe.

Combat occurs either in real time (there are "turns" which play out in real time) you are able to pause the action at any time and re-assign activities to each member of your party. This is critical to surviving in the game and allows you to take the time to truly strategise each moment of combat and then sit back and enjoy how it pans out.

 Entangle spell and combat. Party portraits are on the right hand side.

There is a vast horde of enchanted weapons and armour scattered around the world, many dozens of spells that different character classes can learn,  non-magical abilities for other classes, an alignment system which impacts some of the story aspects of the game as well as how non-player characters interact with you.

Positives

The game is beautiful to look at and the music provides a fitting ambience. Unlike Diablo each map is hand crafted and drawn from scratch. You may not be getting a new experience each time you re-play the game, but each corner of each map is uniquely designed and special in its own way.

The game is challenging. Boss fights are few and far between but sometimes require significant preparation in terms of levelling up, studying the fight, and collecting equipment. If, however, you are finding the game too tough you can drop the difficulty slider in the game options.

 Character inventory screen.

The story is fantastic. Right to the very end of the series I find the whole scenario intriguing.

The world is open ended and you have free will to explore wherever you want to go. There are entire areas of the game with no plot purpose other than providing you an area to explore or perhaps to find a new weapon or piece of armour. A vast game in all meanings of the word.

Negatives

In comparison to Ultima VII I found the characters less memorable (with the exception of Minsc). Likewise there is a lot of text which is required if you want to follow the story, but it quickly becomes tiresome reading page after page of it.

Memorable Moments 

Minsc. He is hilarious. 

If you start the game as a caster class such as a wizard the game is exceptionally difficult at first. I'll never forget going back to this game after playing through the sequel, and casting magic missile. One tiny ball of 1d4 damage emerged, whereas before I was firing dozens of them at a time.