Any gamer that enjoys the games in the Diablo series should give Baldur's Gate: Dark Alliance 2 a try. It is basically a clone of the Diablo series, but with one benefit that Blizzard will never be able to match: it is set in the Dungeons & Dragons setting of the Forgotten Realms. This gave the developers a wealth of recognizable pre-existing content to use in their game that always felt absent from similar games.
Some of this content is the legendary characters made famous by the novels set in the D&D universe. There are two secret characters that fans of the R.A. Salvatore novels will be overjoyed to unlock and play.
Who Are The Secret Characters?
There are few characters from the D&D novels as famous as Drizzt Do'Urden. This drow ranger left his home in the Underdark to escape the evil society devoted to the spider queen, Lloth. Once on the surface, this kind-hearted dark elf found friends and a higher calling to protect the surface world and the innocent beings that live there.
Drizzt's greatest foe has always been the infamous master assassin named Artemis Entreri. The fights between these two rival some of the greatest duals in fiction - we're talking about epic sword duels along the lines of the Anakin vs. Obi-Wan fight at the end of Episode 3. Both of these characters are unlockable secret characters in Baldur's Gate: Dark Alliance 2.
Unlocking Drizzt Do'Urden
Drizzt is by far the easier of the two secret characters to unlock. The player must simply beat the game on the Hard difficulty setting. This will unlock Drizzt Do'Urden. The player can then start a new game, then import Drizzt from the Gauntlet.
This character cannot use any weapons other than his scimitars, Twinkle and Icingdeath, and only has two combat abilities, Otilukes Icy Sphere and Repulsion. Icy Sphere shoots an icy sphere at enemies that does decent damage, and Repulsion knocks back all enemies close to Drizzt.
Unlocking Artemis Entreri
Unlocking Artemis is a little harder. To unlock this secret character, the player must beat the game on the Extreme difficulty setting. As one can image, this is extremely difficult. Once accomplished, the player can use the same method of importing a character to select Artemis.
Much like Drizzt, Artemis cannot use any weapons other than his sword, Charon's Claw, and a Dagger of Defending — even though in the novels his offhand weapon was a dagger of life-stealing. Artemis is also limited to three combat abilities, Arterial Strike, Ash Blade, and Poison. Both Artemis and Drizzt have such powerful starting weapons that the combat abilities are almost pointless; these two characters were designed for up-close encounters with their signature blades.
Baldur’s Gate: Dark Alliance 2 remaster was released on July 20th, 2022 for PC, PS4, PS5, Switch, Xbox One, and Xbox Series X/S.