BALDUR'S GATE & TALES OF THE SWORD COAST

                 Reviewed by Stefan Herber

Good news RPG fans - you can now buy this combo for all of œ14- 99
at most Internet and mail order outlets. As I guess it's about 200
hours of game time that has to be a bargain. I must confess that I
haven't looked forward to playing a game so much for a long time -
a "traditional " RPG with stats, character generation, sub-
quests, gnomes, elves - I don't know whether that says more about
me than I might like - from the firm that has given us "Fallout"
and its wonderful sequel. I suppose it was inevitable that I would
be disappointed - and so it turned out.

Firstly you can only generate one character - the remainder of
your team you pick up on the way. However they do all have stats
and can develop, albeit very slowly. Weapon expertise in
particular never seems to go very far. Secondly there is a limit
beyond which one cannot develop any further - the mission pack
allows further increases over the actual game but even this is
finite. I'm not clear whether this is because of the impending
sequel or just a ploy on the part of the developers to prevent the
final battle being too easy. Secondly the game has my pet RPG hate
- monster reincarnation. Does any reader appreciate this in a
game? None of the major enemies reincarnate it has to be said but
enough of the minor ones to become extremely annoying at times.

Secondly -the combat control had me baffled most of the game and
only more or less made sense towards the end. As there is a lot of
combat, most of it unavoidable, this is a glaring flaw. I still
prefer the turn based method where one has time to instruct each
player what to do rather than "real-time"; to be fair the system
in Baldur is a variation of the former but as mentioned one that
takes some time to fully understand (if I ever understood it).

But there are plusses - many of them. The overall plot is quite
gripping; the game looks good even if it may be the last RPG with
no 3-D acceleration; the levels are challenging without being too
large; and there are vast numbers of sub-quests to keep your
attention. There is some character interaction although I would
have liked more in this sphere and it'll certainly keep you
engrossed for a good while. Overall I don't rate it as high as
either of the recent "Fallout" games and indeed I didn't even find
it as compelling as the last M&M epic - but it's good. I suppose
on a 1 - 10 scale it would get 7. And at the latest price how can
anyone resist?













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