Xbox Live Arcade game.
1200 MS points
Score: 4/10
I’ll preface this review with this statement: This game reminded me of an arcade game from the late 90’s. Meaning: if this were the late 90’s, this would have been a great game.
D&D: Daggerdale attempts to bring more action and less stat adjusting to D&D. The game literally leaps over any story just to drop you into the action almost immediately. The context is an evil mage has built a tower, inside of a mine, and plans to lead an army against Daggerdale from it.
You have to find a way into the mine, break into the tower, climb the tower, and kill the mage. Anything else beyond this simple plan is mainly D&D flavor that may have more meaning to someone who either reads the books, or plays the tabletop game and has more knowledge on the races and factions mentioned. To me and most anyone else the names are meaningless things to hang the little dialogue on and create a false urgency.
The action is really the one thing they did get fairly well. The classes break down as: Wizard, Rogue, Fighter, and Cleric.
Each class has its own unique abilities that make it interesting. Wizards blink, Rogues tumble, Fighter can block with a shield, and the Cleric has a group heal (which gives xp [experience points] if he heals someone in co-op).
The classes also have their own unique spells which will be what you rely on more than anything as you level up. Each class starts with two to three basic spells or abilities. You earn points for each level that can be used to purchase more spells or higher ranks of spells, at increasing costs. The higher the rank means you can “charge” up the spell and it has added function or benefit.
I tried each class briefly but, then stuck with the wizard for a more extended play. I played through the first few levels by myself to get a feel for everything. The controls were a little odd but after a while I got the hang of them. The targeting is a form of auto target and lock on targeting that’s done automatically. Casting a spell, hold down the button and push the left stick in the direction of the enemy you want to hit. It will create a small red circle under that target locking the spell on that enemy. The odd part is that if another enemy crosses the path of the first one, your target circle will quickly change to that enemy rather than the first.
This caused a few times where I was trying to hit a healer at the back of a group of enemies and casting a spell that hits a front line unit instead. This really isn’t that big a deal since the enemies are quite dumb and move toward you slowly. You can maneuver around them easily and try again. The combat is basically this same formula over and over with varying enemy types. Even playing with more people in co-op, the difficulty doesn’t really go up.
Speaking of the co-op, unless you plan to play with friends or you consider loot stealing a kind of mini game in itself: don’t bother. Playing with random people, you either grab all the loot yourself or you lose out. Even at the chapter endings where a large chest appears for each player, a single player can run to each chest if they are faster than their fellows and steal all the loot.
Playing with a friend on the other hand is somewhat more enjoyable, but again it just makes a really simple game even easier to grind your way through.
The good points:
Simple loot grinding hack and slash set in a semi D&D-oriented game.
The action can get more interesting as the spells and abilities get more powerful.
The bad points:
The story is non existent; the dialogue is annoying with a low grunting noise rather than actual voice-overs. They actually have the non-player quest givers grunting during cut scenes while dialogue slowly types in above their heads.
The spells get more interesting, but all they do is throw more enemies at you so you can kill more of them more efficiently with your upgraded spells. So not really changing the difficulty of the enemies doesn’t really evolve with your levels. You fight the same basic three or four types that almost mirror the character classes themselves.
Overall: As I stated in the preface, if this game was 10 years ago it would have been an awesome game that would have swept arcades or been an awesome PC game in the vein of Diablo or Titan Quest. As it is, if you’ve got $15 bucks to spend on a game and can’t think of any AAA titles you missed out on from the bargain bin, then sure, you can spend a weekend grinding through this game. It IS a grind through, and the random background loading after quests causes confusion as you look for something else to do only to have the screen fade to black and come back at the same place you were standing with new quest givers nearby.
Score: 4/10
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