Dungeons and Dragons: Daggerdale, an RPG with hack and slash elements, released on May 25, 2011 for both PC and Xbox Live Arcade.
Dungeons and Dragons: Daggerdale begins with a mysterious woman who gathers four heroes to battle the evil Rezlus, a devout servant of Bane the Master of Darkness. Your quest is to enter the Tower of the Void and defeat Rezlus.
Initial Thoughts
The release of Dungeons and Dragons: Daggerdale literally came out of nowhere. I did not see press releases, trailers, or heard any buzz about it before I was given a day to play and review this venture into the Diabloesque RPG genre. I was really excited to get my hands on another dungeon crawler after a recent 100 level grind through Torchlight in one week.
Quests are fairly varied, but you repeatedly go back and forth through the main story area. In the 2o2p forums, there were early comparisons of this game to Diablo, but I would say it is closer to Dragon Age with the option of local and online multi-player questing. The quests are linear with one subquest available along with the main story quest.
Gameplay
You start out with a pretty basic selection of characters and can choose to be an elven rogue, a human fighter, a dwarf cleric, or a midget mage. I chose a human fighter to see how far I could get through this adventure in one day, which was easily attainable. Once you select your character type, you name your dungeon SUPERHERO and decide what special abilities you want. This is an important step as I use these abilities more than I use the regular attacks. You then choose your feats which are like proficiencies such as one-hand slash or gaining toughness. Character stats are normal RPG fare, but they are already preset at the start depending on the character you select. You later get to modify these stats at every even level ( ex. 2, 4, 6 etc).
You begin the game with the crappiest items in the game. Your dungeon SUPERHERO is actually a peon doing only 4-6 points of damage. Gold, health potions and lower end items can be found by breaking barrels scattered throughout the dungeon. You begin by fighting small skirmishes of goblins and completing simple straight forward quests that earn you decent experience and gold, but garbage in the way of items. At this point in the game, you literally get excited about finding Cloth Armor +1. The rest of the gameplay is similar to other RPGs, not a lot of surprises, not a lot of story, nothing cutting edge in sound or graphics, and just very basic.
The character experience progression for the game is on par with one level per hour. As your level increases, the monsters and loot scale with you. After six hours of play, I reached level seven and defeated the final boss, Rezlus. The current level cap is set to ten for the player and twelve for the mighty Rezlus. Multi-player scales to the higher player, with a max of 4 people to a party. Joining a party was fairly simple, and hosting one was just as easy. People enter and leave at their own will.
Summary
The Good- Old school dungeon crawling
- Multi-player action reminiscent of Gauntlet
- A decent variety of dropable items
- Quick character progression
- Area bosses look cool and mix it up a bit
- $15 instead of $60 for old school nostalgia D & D
The Bad
- Graphically, it's okay for an XBOX arcade title, but for some reason, developers are wedded to this drab and dreary cave motif that reminds me of the Unabomber's first home
- Breaking hundreds of barrels that keep respawning. I literally had to look to see if there was an achievement for breaking 1000 barrels
- It is short with six hours worth of play to reach the battle with Rezlus
- Level cap is set to ten, which to me is too low. Maybe they have expansions planned, but I haven't seen anything to this effect
Wrap-up
Simply put, Daggerdale is a bare bones throw back to good old dice chucking with your buddies. Remember when you sat around a dimly lit table, drinking Mountain Dew, rolling characters on graph paper and imagining you and your buddies setting out on an unexpected adventure? This is THAT game!!! Only not as fun.
I was heading towards a more favorable review, until I reached a section of the game where my character lost his items and abilities temporarily. When I got my items and abilities back, one of my abilities (shield bash) was wiped blank. Being a warrior this really pissed me off, as it was one of my bread and butter moves at the time. Nothing could bring it back, and I was really pissed when it happened about half way through the game.
Unless you are a hardcore D & D fanboy, my recommendation is to pass on this at 1200 MS points or perhaps wait for a 50% off sale. If you are itching for decent dungeon crawler with more options and customization through the Xbox Arcade, pick up Torchlight instead.
