Monday, October 10, 2011

Dungeons and Dragons: Daggerdale

By Ben Backen


Dungeons & Dragons: 4th Edition is a radical revision of the long-running tabletop RPG franchise. The game's ghostly parts have become physical, its procedures easier for new players, and each section perfectly balanced-- features that cannot be matched by other developers. The game is very manageable and adaptable.

Dungeons & Dragons: Daggerdale is an occasion for Bedlam Games and Atari to offer "an accessible version of Dungeons & Dragons: 4th Edition to life," a mission which they failed to achieve-it is a boring, horrible hack-and-slash RPG.

The objective is to end the oppressive Rezlus's rule by raiding his tower using one of four pre-rolled heroes: Human Fighter, Elven Rogue, Dwarven Cleric or Halfling Wizard. This justice hunt covers four different areas, interspersed with 15-minute each primary and secondary quests. It is a lengthy six-hour campaign.

Every class has an array of at least six special attacks which can be opened and reinforced as the character levels up. These abilities can be mapped to face buttons and once higher ranks are bought, they are charged by holding and releasing said buttons.

The warfare in Daggerdale's first and largest chapter is enjoyable. At midpoint, however, it loses its precision pacing. Though the character rises phenomenally with the best arms that the game's deep loot offers, most enemy encounters-- especially boss fights -- become slow destruction wars.

Daggerdale starts as hack-and-slash but finishes as sheer tragedy. This lowering quality indicates a debugging deficiency. As characters, players and enemies frequently walk through the environment, entire groups of enemies disappear from the screen mid-fight. Occasionally, after dying, loading a new chapter or joining a multiplayer game, the character loses all its equipment and its abilities.

There is one unforgivable bug which only occurs during Daggerdale's online multiplayer mode. Non-host players are occasionally kicked to a loading screen while the game goes on around their paralyzed hero. This snafu crops up during large scale fights, almost ensuring the character's death once the game catches up.

Daggerdale's environments are substantial and well-designed, but its failure to load these environments ruins the encounter. Dungeons & Dragons: Daggerdale is just about hitting monsters until treasure falls out of them.




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