You feel like you’re playing the same three waves of enemies over and over again for most of the game."Ĭombat itself is the standard light attack/heavy attack affair that seems to find its way into almost every modern action game, but you can chain the most together in enough interesting ways so that it’s never boring. "There are good ideas here – the issue is there isn’t enough enemy variety to keep encounters varied enough to be interesting. Each character has two special moves that recharge, as well as an ultimate technique, and you can mix and match the former once you level up to suit your purposes. Each of the characters feels different – Drizzt is fast, Catti-brie works best at range, Wulfgar is a bruiser, and Bruenor is a tank – and it’s a lot of fun figuring out their moves and how best to build them, especially as you level them up and unlock new techniques.
Neither are great mechanics, but they really lose their luster after you do them fifty times.Ĭombat is probably the game’s best aspect. When it’s really feeling frisky, it will ask you to solve a “step on these glowing tiles in the right order” “puzzle” or stand near a torch so you can be warm enough to run over ice without taking damage. Occasionally, you’ll solve basic puzzles, like collecting explosives to seal tunnels or items to open a door. You fight the same group of enemies over and over again across the game’s 21 levels you’ll do the same optional objectives over and over again – breaking so many of X things, collecting so many of Y things, killing the odd named enemy, and so on. Tuque has done a nice job of making the levels look visually distinct and giving each one a sense of place, but almost all of them play the same way. Things don’t get better once you get into a level. "You fight the same group of enemies over and over again across the game’s 21 levels you’ll do the same optional objectives over and over again – breaking so many of X things, collecting so many of Y things, killing the odd named enemy, and so on." His sole purpose seems to be to constantly ask why you’re wasting his time and not queuing up the next level. After choosing your character, you’re dropped into a hub area with a map that allows you to select your missions, some training dummies, a trophy area, and one of the most annoying merchant characters in recent memory. Instead, Dungeons and Dragons: Dark Alliance is most comparable to the Warhammer: Vermintide games. While the game may carry the Dark Alliance moniker, it has little in common with the Baldur’s Gate titles of yesteryear. As a result, it’s hard to care about anyone or anything beyond the next name you need to check off your list of targets. Things happen as a result of your actions, but because the story never actually bothers to acknowledge the main characters, there’s a huge disconnect between what the player does in-game and what happens in the narrative. Instead, you’re dropped into levels with little context as to why what you’re doing matters, you go kill the bad guys you’re told to, and then you go home. That’s right – not one of these characters appear in a single one of the game’s cutscenes beyond the opening and ending, nor is any time spent fleshing out their backstory, what they’re doing here, or what they want. The playable characters have some dialogue at the start of each level and can banter with each other, but beyond that, they never actually appear in the story. Dungeons and Dragons: Dark Alliance lets you play as some really iconic DnD characters – even I know who Drizzt Do’Urden is – but it doesn’t do anything with them. And that’s about all there is to the story. Naturally, your job is to stop them from getting it.
What little story there is revolves around the Crystal Shard, a powerful, evil artifact that a lot of really bad dudes are after. "The playable characters have some dialogue at the start of each level and can banter with each other, but beyond that, they never actually appear in the story." It is not only by far the worst game I’ve been unlucky enough to play this year, it is also one of the worst games I have ever played, period. The unfortunate reality, dear reader, is that Dungeons and Dragons: Dark Alliance is a mind-numbing slog of a game with a shockingly bad story, repetitive gameplay, poor enemy variety, rote level design, and a truly staggering number of bugs. At the very least, I thought it’d be a fun game to run through once or twice with some friends who know far more about DnD than I do.Īs I said, it sounds good on paper.
Take four of the most famous and beloved Dungeons and Dragons characters – Drizzt Do’Urden, Bruenor Battlehammer, Catti-brie, and Wulfgar – and drop them into a co-op hack n’ slash dungeon crawler where you can slay monsters and grab loot with your friends. On paper, Dungeons, and Dragons: Dark Alliance sounds like a home run.
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