It’s out on July 20
Baldur’s Gate: Dark Alliance II, a classic dungeon crawler from the PS2/Xbox era that was fairly rare on the secondhand market, is finally coming to modern platforms soon.
Black Isle Studios has revealed that it’s coming to PC, Nintendo Switch, PS4, PS5, Xbox One, and Xbox Series X just like its predecessor. All prior content will be intact (including the two secret characters), as well as four difficulty levels, and two-player local co-op. Black Isle also confirms that the game is Steam Deck verified.
As always, re-releasing old content, especially classics that were out of print and faded into the rarer/pricier used game circuits, is great. Dark Alliance II has historically been one of the more sought-after PS2/Xbox games of that generation; though prices have gone down to more reasonable levels after the re-release was in the mix.
But while both Dark Alliance games have their charms, the real crown jewel would be the two Champions of Norrath titles. That subseries improves upon the hack-and-slash foundation with a ton of depth and polish — not to mention that they actually have offline and online four-player co-op out of the box.
Four-player play was fairly revolutionary at the time in terms of console dungeon crawlers, and given the huge focus on online play and isolation, it still kinda is! My wife and I have randomly been popping Champions of Norrath into our PS2 for nearly two decades, and bringing that series to modern platforms would be a way easier means of doing that!
