Dungeons & Dragons: Daggerdale Reviews

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Written by WorstUsernameEver on June 4th, 2011

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Daggerdale's idea of diversity, beyond the odd skeleton or super-rare boss, is to take each identical enemy and put a different number above its head, thereby differentiating a level five from a level one. Believe it or not, this works on some people, which goes a long way to explaining why Dynasty Warriors continues to sell.

Re-titling this game '˜Hitting Goblins: With A Stick', might gain the correct levels of player expectation, but still wouldn't elevate its droning gameplay. But the fact that it carries the Dungeons & Dragons name means it's going to sell in undeserved quantities to an unsuspecting public. A public who probably won't want to believe that anyone would trash their precious license with such a poorly conceived product.

Overall, "Daggerdale" was enjoyable but a bit buggy. The story and combat were good and made for an exciting experience. The spotty visuals and enemy AI weighted down the overall fun, but not enough to make me want to stop playing.

Is it good enough to live up to the D&D name? Depends on how much actual roleplaying you like to do.

There is little to none to be had here. Interactions with other non-player characters happen largely in grunts and subtitles. No dialogue exists other than during cut-scene cinematics.

It won't replace your tabletop game, but it might give you some good ideas how to run your next campaign while allowing you some enjoyment along the way.

I tried to think of one good thing about the game other than the pretty cool (if generic) final boss battle. After racking my brain, I came up (I like the way that when you destroy a barrel a bag of coins will fly out and spill across the floor). Seriously, that's all I got. Even that has problems, like the fact that the bag has about two frames of animation (bag upright, bag spilled). And who keeps bloody bags of gold coins in barrels?!

In case you're wondering why I haven't talked more about co-op the answer is simple: I couldn't find anyone to play with. You can't play a game like this with anyone but friends, but they won't be your friends for long if you insist on getting further than level 7. Daggerdale is as generic and bare-bones an action RPG as possible, with dull art direction and massive design flaws. Yes the Dungeons & Dragons ruleset seems present and accurately represented, but who cares if it is in no way better than just rolling the dice yourself?

With Torchlight just out on XBLA and Torchlight II, Lord of the Rings: War in the North, Dungeon Siege III and the mighty Diablo III all out either soon or this year I cannot imagine a single person wanting to spend money on this game. Which is apt, since Atari didn't seem to want to either.

With a 1200 point price tag, you kind of have to wonder who they're expecting to buy the game. Dungeons & Dragons fans won't be interested, as this is a game that basically makes a mockery out of everything a role playing game should be about. People who fancied a co-op role playing game to play as of an evening won't be interested, thanks to the game's broken save system, and difficulty level, and anyone who was on the fence, and may have been tempted for 800 points, or £6.80 will be put off entirely by the extortionate price. And it's disappointing, as past Dungeons & Dragons games have been so good but this, we're afraid, isn't fit to lace their Elven boots.

I actually had a decent time playing the game, trying out different class combinations, specific archetypes and hacking/slashing my way to new levels and better loot. With the familiar magic item system with loot, there is reason to play through the game a few times to unlock achievements, such as obtaining every weapon, but your non-D&D player who doesn't realize some items give negative effects may be hard struck to get the point of testing out new gear, such as your typical WoW loot whore. The melee, spell and potion options are mapped to your buttons, so the combat flows fairly well, but at most points is underwhelming. The positives come in the sense that the game, much like D&D, is a complete grind, where quests give little to no XP, killing mobs feels like a chore and you can go hours without getting a new level. Call me crazy, but I love this aspect of D&D, where typically 2-3 sessions means a level. Glad it stuck to its guns and made the players work for it. Because there is enough to cause nightmares.

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