If you think back to your early game playing days, the odds are you have a few favourites that stick in your mind - some questionable, some classics, they're probably the games that have shaped the titles you instinctively reach for now too. From platformers like Rainbow Islands to Tomb Raider to insult sword fighting in Monkey Island, they're still genres we dabble in today - but our initiation into role-playing games came much later, in the lull between the end of our GCSEs and the start of the summer holidays proper. Neverwinter Nights, a fantasy-themed, dungeon-crawling role-playing game was the first we really played, spending hundreds of hours getting to the bottom of the mysterious plague that terrorised the Sword Coast, paving the way for our current role-playing adventure addiction. And now, some twelve years later, we can relive our teenage years with a new take on the Forgotten Realms lore, in the form of Sword Coast Legends.
Sword Coast Legends brings back all kinds of memories...
Set in the same medieval fantasy Dungeons and Dragons world as the old goodies of Neverwinter Nights, Baldur's Gate and Icewind Dale, Sword Coast Legends marks a return to the role-playing routes of many a player's heart. With a hilarious multiplayer Dungeon Master mode, where one player lays down enemies, traps and obstacles to hinder their exploring friends, it shot to the top of our most anticipated games list following a brief encounter at last year's Gamescom games convention. Shopkeeping lobsters turned traitor, zombified pop groups and an angry house wife, fresh from the mind of a deranged German journalist, are pretty par for the course in the land of Sword Coast Legends. Perhaps more impressively, those who are a bit more ambitious can use the bundled editor to create their own stories, quests and campaigns for their friends to play through, too - or, you can just download everyone else's.
Of course, this mental multiplayer mode is supported by a huge, sprawling single player story too, focused around a guild of adventurers, who are trying to find out why everyone's out to kill them. Travelling around the titular Sword Coast, you'll be fighting off mythical creatures, exploring winding forests and caves, and tackling oodles of side quests, as you try to get to the bottom of the sticky situation the Burning Dawn guild have found themselves in. Hopefully before you lose any more members too, given that all but three members died in the initial onslaught!
You must gather your party before venturing forth!
Sword Coast Legends has already hit the PC late last year, but, somewhat usually for a game of it's ilk, will be hitting consoles too in the coming months. Seemingly available solely as a 19.99 Euro download (which works out at somewhere between £15-17 in real money), the console release will include a slew of additional content that should make up for the six month delay, including the drow (dark elves gifted in magic) being featured as a playable race, additional character skill trees, and a number of special in-game items such as a Tome of Knowledge, an Order of the Burning Dawn Cloak, and some armor and weapons too. Not forgetting the Dungeon Masters, the console versions also include a whole host of new objects, areas, visual effects and hardcore game options, from the obligatory Beholder enemy, a Lost Mines dungeon tile set and some customisable Wisps (icons that show you where the Dungeon Master is lurking). For both PC and console players, there'll also be a free Rage of Demons expansion coming later this year too, transporting you to the demon-filled underworld found below the Sword Coast.
Slated for a vague 'Spring 2016' release, we're not really too sure when we should expect Sword Coast Legends to hit the Playstation 4 and Xbox One - just that it'll be sometime soon. There's also no word on the exact UK price, but given that it's on steam for about £15.99, we're imagining it'll be somewhere around there.
