Directly below is a game REVIEW, for HINTS and TIPS for how to do quests, get certain items, find NPC's to join your party, etc... 
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Baldur's Gate truly follows the Forgotten Realms role-playing game system rules.  Like Might and Magic VI, this is a non-linear role-playing game in the true sense of the word.  This game also has the added advantage that you can play it over a network (LAN or even the internet).  On the downside, it is not 3D graphics, although the 2D graphics are pretty damn nice.  You play this game in the third person perspective, in a very similar interface to Diablo, which allows you to use entirely different tactics that those that you are forced to use in some RPG's; for example, you can send your warriors into hand-to-hand battle, and keep your archers and mages at the back, throwing spells and arrows into the fray.  It also allows you to do some very cool things with characters that have special abilities - for example, thieves can 'hide in shadows' which basically means that no-one can see them.  By being able to split up your party, you can send your thief off, into another room for example, but invisible to the monsters there, and it can then sneak past them to the treasure, or whatever, without having to fight!
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.. Character creation is done with the above screen picture, and, once you have created a character, the in game character sheet will look something like the one to the left.  It is VERY realistic - the amount you can carry is determined by your characters strength; if you go over that amount, then you are encumbered, and walk much more slowly, and if you try to carry to much, you cant move.  Rather than trying to calculate the exact masses of objects, which would be WAY to complicated from both a programming and a playing point of view, you are limited to carrying 16 objects in your backpack (although some similar objects can be piled together and counted as 1, for example arrows and potions).  As for items, the picture speaks for itself - you can wear rings in the 2 ring slots, a cloak in the cloak slot, boots in the boots slot, a shield in the shield slot (although if you do you can not then equip a two handed weapon), a belt in the belt slot, an amulet in the amulet slot, a helm in the helm slot, a gauntlet in the gauntlet slot, and body armour in the armour slot.  The better your armour, the lower the rating number so 10 is the worst and -10 is about the best (in this picture it is '6' in the shield type shape), although your armour rating is also effected by other factors such as dexterity.  The figure next to this (in this picture 8/8) it the number of hit points you have, over the total maximum hitpoints you can currently have.  I could go on, but you probably get the picture by now that it is all WONDERFULLY detailed.
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..This is an in-game screen - although it will vary depending on where you are (in a city, indoors, in the wilderness, in caves, etc..).  The 6 portraits on the right are the six members of your party - although "you" yourself are only one person (the single character you created at the beginning of the game), and you can recruit other party members throughout the game.  You can just play your one character, or control upto 6 - the advantage of playing one character is that you get more experience for that character, the advantage of playing more characters is access to their skills, but the experience points are split evenly amongst them.  This is where networking comes in - you can EXPORT your main character any time you like; this basically means you can take a 'snapshot' of the character you created, and store this copy in one of a selection of categories.  You can then later IMPORT that copy into a new game (basically you start off from the beginning again, but this time with the character you exported - with all his/her experience, and items), AND/OR, you can import this copy into a multiplayer game over the internet, or a local network game!!

Summary: If you don't already own it, then this is the next RPG to go for.

Please note: these are actual screen shots I captured from Baldur's Gate, a BIOWARE product, in collaboration with TSR and Interplay.
 

For Hints & Tips:

Want to know more about the game? bgchronicles (Baldur's Gate chronicles) is an invaluable source of data, as is the newsgroup alt.games.baldurs-gate.
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