Dungeon Lords (PC CD)

... but do you want to?I can remember when the demo for this game out all those years ago and it was a bad sign right from the off that most people died within thirty seconds on multiple attempts. This was the first demo that required me to consult a forum strategy guide just to see myself through the first ten minutes of gameplay. I never finished the demo but I have such huge respect for what D W Bradley has given us in the past with much of the Wizardry series that I wanted to keep an eye out for it when the multitude of bugs that ruined the game on release had been sorted out.So here we are and with most of the major bugs ironed out I managed to play a lot longer than I did on the demo. By my best guess I'd say I quit around the 10% mark of the full game.Is it fair to review a game based on playing through such a small portion of it? Probably not but life's not fair.Dungeon Lords is a 3d action RPG but with a hefty chunk of old school turn based RPG paraphernalia bolted on. The magic system is DEEP, the combat less so. If you're going to make an action RPG, which has Diablo 2 as its prime example, you need to get the combat right and DL doesn't. Once you get you athletics skill up sufficiently high that you have side rolls, combat turns into an exercise in frustration as you attempt to perform a sweeping attack and instead tumble to one side because a double tap on strafe left is jump left, while a single tap while pressing the attack key is a sweeping attack. Meh. Maybe it's just me.The story is the usual fantasy tosh that hasn't changed in decades. I've been playing the same story for twenty years now and there aren't enough people doing anything interesting with it. The Witcher had a great story but I can't think of a single decent fantasy RPG plot apart from it in recent years, probably since the Baldurs Gate and Planescape games.Combat is relentless - stay on the path you're warned. It's dangerous to wander, you're told. Well the woods must be full of dragons with nuclear missiles for claws because a walk down the path will have you attacked with wolves, bandits and scorpions at a relentless gallop. And that's playing on the low encounter frequency option. In a turn based party centred game, like the Wizardy series, combat has a satisfactorily tactical feel to it, but in DL this comes down to a LOT of running away and button mashing.Overall Dungeon Lords proved to be a very disappointing ill judged combination of old school RPG meets 3d action game.

GREAT ITEM

Dungeon Lords should never have been released in it's current state, as has been already mentioned, that much is obvious from the awful trials and tribulations everybody will have had with version 1.0.The demo that was released showed a lot of promise as that ran perfectly well (which was why I got the game in the first place), but it was all a bit of a smokescreen for what was to come. Having played now through version 1.1, 1.2 and 1.3 (of which only 1.3 has really helped) there does seem to be some hope with patch 1.4 which should hopefully bring the game to somewhere near it's potential (a list on the official Dreamcatcher.com forum shows what it should do).Just one fly in the ointment is that the patch 1.4 is already three months later than promised but the german 1.4 patch was released last week (do not download this unless you have the german version, I know I'm stating the obvious but sometimes you need to!!).Before anyone moans about the stars I've given, 4 stars is for how it should be rated after the patch, not what it is like at the moment, which is two stars

After playing games such as morrowind I awaited this game with eager anticipation, it offered so much and from the manufacturers description it sounds amazing. Sadly it is far from amazing, the game is full of bugs (clipping, where you open a mummy case and become trapped in the lid unable to move while the monsters kill you at range, (stutters, where you'll be running along then the game halts while it sorts out what to do) and plenty of others. After the first town (fargrove) which isn't bad in itself as long as you ask the right questions to the right people and if you can fathom how to get out of it, it goes downhill badly, Arindale is next and you'll quickly discover the load times on entering buildings quadruple (press to enter, walk away make a cup of tea, come back and perhaps you may have entered the building. Once you are in it is so so disappointing there isn't any furniture in any room, not even beds in the inn or logs in the fireplaces, it is awful.The fact that there is no Map is also a massive downfall, you find yourself wandering around for hours looking for a town or road whilst constantly being attacked by wolves or snakes or bees or something.This game couldn't have been tested and shouldn't even have been released as a beta, if they could have worked on it for another six months I am sure it could have been excellent as it has the ability to be a very good game, sadly it reeks of buy now patch later and later and later etc. I am sure the patches will solve some of the many problems but it should work properly from the box, thats what we pay for.Conclusion: Avoid at all costs or you'll be disappointed that the game you are now 'well into' gets very frustrating, slow and eventually unplayable.

If you buy this game, a must is to install the lastest patch as it resolves many bugs in the game. Being able to create a charcter from two class areas amkes the character very individual each time. Some areas are challaging but that is some of the fun.