It's a shame, as Daggerdale's handful of environments are massive and lovingly designed but its inability to load these environments wrecks the whole experience.ĭungeons & Dragons: Daggerdale does a big thing bad. Cutscenes - of which there are only a handful - aren't exempt from these graphical issues, with character and object textures refreshing four or five times right in front of your eyes. Hector: Badge of Carnage Episode 1 (PC/Mac)ĭaggerdale also features some of the worst pop-in and texture loading problems seen this console generation, with environmental objects sometimes appearing mere feet in front of the player.
Occasionally, after dying, loading a new chapter or joining a multiplayer game, your character will have all of his equipment and abilities removed and un-mapped. Entire groups of enemies sometimes disappear from the screen mid-fight. Characters, players and enemies frequently walk through pieces of the environment. That kind of downward-sloping quality curve is usually indicative of rushed development - as are bugs, which Daggerdale has in spades. Even if your character's leveled prodigiously and suited with the finest armaments that the game's deep loot catalog has to offer, most enemy encounters after the midpoint - especially boss fights - start to feel like wars of attrition.ĭaggerdale starts out as a competent hack-and-slasher, and ends as an unmitigated disaster. Around the halfway point, however, the game loses its well-tuned pacing. Of course, the more you charge, the longer you have to wait for that ability to become available again, oftentimes making this whole process a complete wash.īetween these special abilities and basic attacks, combat actually manages to be enjoyable for Daggerdale's first and largest chapter. These abilities can be mapped to face buttons and, once their higher ranks have been purchased, can be charged by holding and releasing said button. It does not make for a lengthy campaign - the game is good for about six hours of playtime a nice sum for a downloadable offering, if not a tad slim for the action-RPG genre.Įach class has a selection of six or so special attacks which can be unlocked and strengthened as your character levels up. This quest for justice takes players across four different areas, each peppered with a handful of brief, 15-minute primary and secondary quests. Players are tasked with ending the tyrannical reign of Daggerdale's best-dressed archvillain, Rezlus, by raiding his tower as one of four pre-rolled heroes: The Human Fighter, Elven Rogue, Dwarven Cleric or Halfling Wizard. Some of the tabletop game's terminology and a few superficial concepts show up in Daggerdale, but the rest has been sacrificed to create a monotonous, hideously buggy hack-and-slash RPG. It is as accessible as the game has ever been - and, as a result, as adaptable as the game has ever been.ĭungeons & Dragons: Daggerdale has been promoted as an opportunity for Bedlam Games and Atari to bring "an accessible version of Dungeons & Dragons: 4th Edition to life," a task at which they have failed in a huge, huge way. The game's once ethereal elements have been turned tangible, its mechanics made far less punishing for new players, and its every component finely tuned to a state of balance that few other tabletop developers can match. Dungeons & Dragons: 4th Edition represents one of the most drastic facelifts the long-running tabletop RPG franchise has ever undergone.
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