The Boyfriend and I love to play games together, but there aren't a lot of multi-player adventure games we can do together. The Boyfriend found one that had a lot of promise--Baldur's Gate Dark Alliance on the Gamecube.It's based on the Forgotten Realms setting from Dungeons and Dragons. You can choose from one of three characters and then essentially hack and slash your way through different landscapes. Sounds fantastic right?
Well there are some bad game design issues I had, but I am only going to talk about one that really frustrates me. Mainly the experience points issues I had. In Baldur's Gate you gain experience points by killing a monster. You can do this with magic, with arrows or with melee combat. So I'm a magic character, a female elf, and The Boyfriend is a melee person as a male dwarf. Essentially I stay back and cast spells on enemies as The Boyfriend kicks their ass.
And this is where the mechanics are starting to piss me off. So because I have a lot of long range attacks, and for some reason the damage isn't as good as the weapons that The Boyfriend uses, I am more than half the experience points behind him. The Boyfriend gets a lot of the last blows, and hence more kills under his belt. It won't matter if I've kept them cooking with burning hands for the entirety of the battle. I get nothing if I don't give the last blow. But that's not what my character is designed to do! My character is designed towards support, especially since my spells do not compare to the damage that The Boyfriend's weapons can do consistently.
As we progress in the game the gap is getting wider, and to top it off some of the spells will go out of their way to hit The Boyfriend! Why would magic missile hit him when I'm casting it? WHY? The mechanics are just annoying. I also haven't figured out the targeting system, and allegedly there is one.
I understand that there would've been a slight gap merely because the boyfriend has more video games under his belt than I do. But this gap is getting wider and it has nothing to do with skill. It has everything to do with the fact that I'm not getting credit for the kills I know I'm contributing to overall.
Also, since I'm not a melee person, I can't level up as fast supplementing the magic with some close combat. Especially as the monsters get harder to fight, me being in the middle of melee is a horrible idea.
If I do pick up the game again, it won't be for a while. I just need a break. Trying to catch up with experience points feels like an exercise in futility right now, and it's not something i want to worry about. Thanks to crappy game mechanics, the game isn't fun anymore.
Don't forget the part where jumping puzzles are designed for one player, not two... or the part where you have to navigate a maze with things that have instant kill lasers and keep getting stuck because a) two people can't fit in the safe spots and b) safe spots are far enough apart that you can't move because you are tied to the same screen.
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