We were genuinely looking forward to Dungeons & Dragons: Daggerdale. After all, on paper, this is a game that ticks all the right boxes. Medievally infused, check. Top down, hack and slash style gameplay with light role playing elements, check. Features dwarfs, check. Has a full co-op mode, check. But despite putting crosses in all the right places, somehow, Dungeons & Dragons: Daggerdale never really comes together to form a game that actually goes above average. We'll try and explain what we mean.
The game gets off to a disappointing start, thanks to the incredibly limited character creator. In Dungeons & Dragons games - or in fact, in most role playing games - getting to create your own character is an essential part. You can usually choose what race you are (elves, dwarves, boring "humans"), choose what you look like, and then pick a character class - from the sheer strength of the Fighter, through to the magic-wielding, er, magic of the Mage, and the poetry of the Bard. In Daggerdale, however, there's no such freedom - you're simply left to choose from one of four pre-made characters, each of whom have their own class. On the plus side, you do still get to name them, and so Alvin Knee-Muncher, the Dwarven Cleric was born.
One thing we have learnt from playing Daggerdale - dwarves are incredibly flammable
A top down, hack-and-slash role playing game, there is some semblance of a story here, but it's never really enough to raise even an eyebrow of interest. And when we say a it's a role playing game, what we mean is you can level up, and you have to chat to people to get quests - although you can only have one on at a time, there's no quest log telling you what you've done up until now, and most of the quests - and the people you speak to - are so eye-bleedingly dull you won't want to talk to them again.
It could just be that the game's making fun of the sort of quests these sort of games usually have - but when every quest seems to be "Hey, go here and fetch this", it gets a bit grating. Especially when you're sent into the mines to rescue a dwarf, who, when you save him from attack, decides to forgo thanking you for your efforts, and instead asks you to go and find his sword and armour which were stolen during the attack - apparently, they're family heirlooms. And so, you diligently set off to find these heirlooms - which aren't marked on your map - while goblins teleport in out of nowhere and set about the poor dwarf again. Serves him right.
With support for four player online co-op, although somewhat inexplicably, only two players locally (despite the fact you share the same screen), Dungeons & Dragons: Daggerdale's been designed for co-op play - if only because the rest of the game's so flipping hard. There's little puzzle solving to be done here, as the majority of quests simply see you entering an area, being set upon by dozens of enemies, and having to hack through them all until you get to where you're headed. There's never any feeling of turning back the tide, and overcoming the odds, either, as no sooner have you cleared a pack of enemies, than they'll teleport straight back in out of nowhere, meaning a room can often go from being empty, to being completely overrun in seconds.
Too many enemies - not enough health.
It isn't all bad, though. When you're exploring the mines, hunting down a quest item, as you try not to get lost in amongst the intricate passages and walkways, it can be quite a lot of fun - at least until the next four hundred enemies teleport in, and start hacking you to bits. At times, the game even starts to be quite good - but there are so many bugs, glitches, and general problems that the feeling never lasts that long. The mini-map, for example, doesn't show you where you're going with a nice big arrow at the side, to at least give you an example of where you're heading - instead, it only tells you where your objective is when you're standing right next to it. Worse still, you can bring up a larger map by pressing back, but you can't move that larger map around, meaning if your objective's quite a way away, you literally have no idea where it is.
The rest of the interface isn't much better. There's a tiny, dark grey font, on a slightly darker grey background, which makes it impossible to read unless you're playing on a large TV, and levelling up your character when you earn enough XP is every bit as tricky, thanks to the confusing interface.
To make matters worse, the game's save system is the worst we've seen - while the game lets you save anywhere, it doesn't actually, well, save. Don't worry, you read that right. You can bring up the menu, and press save whenever you want, and the game will give you a little saving icon, and it'll save your character's progress towards the next level, but if you're expecting it to save where your character is, what they're doing, or how far through a quest they are, you've got another thing coming. Load your game, and you'll start from the very beginning of the quest, thanks to the game's reliance on checkpoints - which it never tells you that you've passed.
With a 1200 point price tag, you kind of have to wonder who they're expecting to buy the game. Dungeons & Dragons fans won't be interested, as this is a game that basically makes a mockery out of everything a role playing game should be about. People who fancied a co-op role playing game to play as of an evening won't be interested, thanks to the game's broken save system, and difficulty level, and anyone who was on the fence, and may have been tempted for 800 points, or £6.80 will be put off entirely by the extortionate price. And it's disappointing, as past Dungeons & Dragons games have been so good - but this, we're afraid, isn't fit to lace their Elven boots.
Format Reviewed: Xbox 360
