Dungeons & Dragons Daggerdale Preview
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Category: News ArchiveHits: 1977
Each of the characters can equip one melee weapon and one ranged weapon as well as having access to a number of class specific abilities, such as fireballs or magic missiles for the wizard or a powerful shield bash (that can, rather inexplicably, be used even when you don't have a shield equipped) for the warrior. Basic melee and ranged attacks are mapped to the face buttons and holding down a trigger modifies the face buttons to activate special abilities. Melee attacks can be comboed together into simple hit chains and can hit multiple enemies within the swing arc. The loot system is extensive and eschews the usual trash drops to be sold to vendors in favour of lots of magical items and cash, which can be used to but more magical items from vendors. The loot used a colour coding system, ranging from grey mundane items through to purple unique artefacts.Another interesting point to mention: Atari's press site now lists the 4E action RPG for XBLA, PSN, and PC.
From what I've played so far, the system works well for three of the four characters, as the warriors, cleric and thief rely on melee or ranged attacks far more than they do on managing the cool-downs of their special abilities. In single player this leads to the rather awkward situation of trying to physically manhandle monsters as a three foot tall, cornrowed, incredibly fragile magic user in a dress. It doesn't work too well. Magic users use magic as their primary form of attack and defence, so having to manage some fairly restrictive cool-down timers and only having access to a maximum of four special abilities seems to hamstring the character. That said, the wizard should work well in co-op. I haven't been able to test it as yet, but having other players to do the grunt work while you dish out heavy damage from range could be very satisfying.
