Dungeon Lords
Looks great, has help from D.W. Bradley… what more could one ask for?
Tags: Dungeon Lords Categories: PC Reviews, Reviews
Posted by Craig "American Idle" Hansen on Jun 13th, 2005
| Title | Players | ||
|---|---|---|---|
| Dungeon Lords (title page) | 1 - 8 | ||
| Developer | Publisher | Genre | Online |
| Role-Playing | Yes | ||
 |
DreamCatcher Interactive has been working hard to diversify its catalog lately and the latest initiative is Dungeon Lords, a full-on RPG that is the brainchild of no less than D.W. Bradley, who has helmed or consulted on some of the top PC RPGs of the last couple decades. Sporting one of the best-looking graphical engines this side of pixel-shading-capable graphics cards, Dungeon Lords seems to have a lot of things going in its favor. And indeed it does.
 |
Dungeon Lords has all the elements you expect out of a modern PC RPG – or at least out of one that has a significant offline play mode. There’s a vast 3D world to explore, deep maps, plenty of enemies and loot, and a solid character-generation system. The combat system will be familiar to anyone who has played Elder Scrolls, Guild Wars or any number of other PC RPGs of this type: stuff comes at you, you swing and hit it. May the best PC/NPC win. Unfortunately, Dungeon Lords’ battle engine doesn’t seem to include a very good aiming interface, so if you’re swinging at a ground-level slime or a bat flying above your head, there’s no way to really direct your attack to the proper elevation. This breaks the mood of the game with a bit of awkwardness that gets annoying when you’re not situated and the right distance and instead of swinging low enough to hit a slime, the animation shows you swinging well above it. Ugh.
 |
The story begins with your attempt to gain entrance to a city that is barred off to you, and rolls on from there. The length of the first dungeon is immediately massive and may intimidate a more casual gamer who wants a bit more story in the early going to draw them in. But then, this is the realm of PC RPGs, not console RPGs, so a difference ought to be expected. Still, the game remains more battle-and-exploration-focused than story-focused throughout, which should please hardcore gamers in search of a solid dungeon crawl but, again, may not be as appealing to the more casual fan of the genre.
 |
The basic setup of the game is standard genre stuff. A ruler has died and no heir is apparent; a noble’s daughter who may be the solution is missing and you have to find her. On the way, you’ll enjoy tons of subquests and side-plots as well as plenty of main quests before reaching the game’s ultimate conclusion. If you play through every side-quest possible, Dungeon Lords can add up to plenty of hours of offline play, spanning locations such as wilderness, swamps, forests, mountains, towns, villages, castles, dungeons, temples, caves and forbidden ruins. Again, nothing overwhelmingly original, but certainly the sort of well-rendered eye-candy that genre fans will no doubt appreciate.
 |
Taking a note from the Neverwinter Nights playbook, there is also an online mode that supports multiplayer group gaming sessions, although it lacks any sort of robust ability or engine that allows the gamer to build their own modules or game worlds. That’s too bad, though what is here is definitely welcome to denizens of the PC world; increasingly every year, MMOs dominate the once-robust RPG genre and there are fewer and fewer offline RPGs to enjoy without jumping the PC ship to the world of consoles. So Dungeon Lords is a welcome respite from all that, delivering a beefy offline RPG in which the online mode is more of an afterthought add-on, rather than the other way around.
| What Works | Score |
|---|---|
|
+ Great eye-candy that pushes the edge of PC graphics – without requiring pixel-shading! + Solid, if sometimes generic, game play and storyline. + Lots of dungeon crawling. + It’s mostly offline! That means you can play it all the way through WITHOUT monthly access fees! |
7.7 |
| What Doesn't | |
|
— Not enough story for the more casual genre fan. — Online mode would be more engaging with a robust “create your own module” add-on, ala Neverwinter Nights or Elder Scrolls. |
|
| Under the Shrink-wrap | |
| At last, a rare offline RPG that delivers the goods! Although the game is more of a dungeon crawler than a character-based, epic storyline affair, Dungeon Lords is a welcome addition to this gamer’s PC library! | |
[ Post the first comment | View related posts ]
Tags: Dungeon Lords
Posted by Craig "American Idle" Hansen on Jun 13th, 2005 and is filed under PC Reviews, Reviews. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can post a comment, or trackback from your own site.
