A genuinely good CRPG which brings the Forgotten Realms to life.

Baldur's Gate (BG) by Interplay has finally been released after what seems like an eternity in development. Judging from the fact that most stores sold out the day they received it, it seems a great many people didn't wait to read a review before purchasing. Chances are then that if you're reading this you had some trepidation about the game. Considering Interplay's track record and the fact it was released just in time for Christmas your feelings are understandable. You can set aside your fear because Interplay has delivered a solid, engrossing, CRPG worth the wait.

The game is set in the Forgotten Realms, a land familiar to anyone who has played AD&D. Even if you've never touched a twenty-sided die an excellent 158-page manual will introduce you to the world you're about to adventure in. While it might seem like a large tome the vast majority of it is devoted to describing the Realms, the spells, and explaining the various rules which are in play behind the scenes. The mechanics of gameplay are simple and intuitive enough that they can be explained within a dozen or so pages.

All action, except for inventory management and item transactions (renting a room, buying equipment, et cetera), takes place on the main screen. The largest portion of this screen shows the world and your characters. While it's viewed from a skewed perspective similar to Diablo all likeness stops there. The game is made up of 10,000 (!!) individually rendered screens and presented in life-like 16 bit color (higher if your video card can handle it). What that means is that instead of three bushes and four buildings being repeated throughout the game world every single object is unique. There's an abundance of little graphical touches that add immensely to the immersiveness. Butterflies flitter over fields of flowers, hawks screech overhead (in a bizarre bug they sometimes fly backwards), and the sky darkens as rain moves in. BG takes place in accelerated real time (at a 10 to 1 compression ratio) so you'll also get to experience a true day/night cycle.

Surrounding the playing field are various buttons and boxes. The buttons call up various parts of the game, from the automap of the area (uncovered as you explore), to a journal that keeps track of quests and deeds. Some buttons also allow characters to cast spells, change weapons, or use special and/or thieving abilities. The boxes are for readied items such as a potion or scroll that a character can use at a touch of a key. Finally, on the right side are portraits of your party members; exquisitely done paintings, which when clicked upon will bring up the stat and inventory screen for the character.

Moving, attacking, conversing -- it's all easily done with either a mouse click on the main playing area, or hitting a hotkey (sometimes followed by a mouse click). It's quite possible to play with nothing but the mouse. Pop up tool tips appear over practically everything eliminating the need to hunt through the manual to find out what a button does. Right clicking on objects will bring up a small text blurb explaining the item. It also gives how the item functions in the game so you don't have to worry about keeping a stack of AD&D books nearby.

BG begins with creating your character. While your party can include six members, five are computer controlled and received as the game progresses. For now all you need to worry about is your player character (PC). All the basic races and classes from AD&D are here. Non-weapon proficiencies don't make an appearance, and neither do kits. After your PC is made a spoken word prologue sets the story. It explains that you don't know who your parents are but a kindly old man has raised you like his son (much like three dozen or more fantasy novels) in a place called Candlekeep. The first hour or so of the game is set there.

Your "father" tells you to prepare for a journey without giving an explanation. You can then purchase your equipment, practice using the interface, and in a homage to Fallout kill some rats. Throughout this area there are plenty of NPCs that will give you gameplay advice making the beginning somewhat of a tutorial. Once you leave Candlekeep the tough guy who keeps making an appearance in the BG magazine ads ambushes you and your father. Apparently he's interested in you for unknown reasons. After a brief but spectacular magical battle your father is slain but not before he tells you to flee. Thus begins the game proper.

Finding out why you were ambushed, why you're being hunted, and avenging your father's murder forms the backbone of the game although there's plenty more to do than just that. Progression is not set in stone as BG is a non-linear adventure. You begin with a few areas that you can travel to, which in turn unlock more areas to explore. There are dozens and dozens of small quests to be completed, the majority being the standard "fetch some item for me" quest found in most CRPGs.

During these quests you get to travel to exotic areas, meet interesting people (and beasties), and usually kill them. Besides hostile encounters you can deal with shopkeepers, priests, mages, and commoners. You can also meet "class" NPCs that can join your party if you so desire. Because there's no time limit, and there's such a huge number of activities to do, the game will take a casual player several weeks to finish. Even a hard-core gamer would be pressed to finish BG in under eighty hours.

As mentioned earlier the game takes place in real time, albeit real time in which a day is equal to two of our hours. This might lead you to wonder how combat is handled. Combat is thankfully not like Diablo where the most important factor is having a strong index finger. Battles use the pen and paper initiative system which means the more specialized you are with your weapon, and the quicker the weapon is, the more attacks you can make in a round. How fast you can click has nothing to do with how well you fight.

You can also pause and issue orders to your party, which helps to keep battles from becoming too chaotic. The problems found in BG are small and mostly confined to some scripting errors within the quests. This is completely acceptable considering the mammoth size of the game and some of the errors will actually benefit you. Game crashing bugs are noticeably absent.

BG includes a multiplayer option but it has a "every game needs a multiplayer component" feel to it. The only difference between multiplayer and single player is that real humans instead of the AI can control the rest of your party. While the sentiment of a human party with a CPU DM is nice, the length of the game and normal multiplayer problems (read lag) hamper the idea.

Until computers can think like a human no CRPG can take the place of a real role playing experience. After all RPGs are about role playing and not roll playing. BG does an admirable job of trying to create the experience on your monitor though. The majority of rules survive intact which makes the jump from paper to processor that much easier. The world is lively enough, and gorgeous enough, to let your imagination take a break and allow you a glimpse into the world of Faerun. There's plenty of value here with scores of quests and more on the way with the expansion pack.

The plot and quests are intriguing enough to make you care about your character and party. This is a game where the real world slips away when you play, and hours fly by like minutes if you're not too careful. For many of us finding a good AD&D game is next to impossible because of work, family, and all the other joys of adulthood. Baldur's Gate gives us that game again, whenever we want. If you're an AD&D fan purchase should be mandatory, and even if you're simply a CRPG fan this is one game that needs to be added to your hard drive.

Reviewed by Scott R. Krol.