Dungeons & Dragons: Daggerdale Review

This image is misleading; your fighter won’t get armor for the first five or so levels.

Despite a very shaky and dubious launch, I managed to scrounge up a few copies at a GameStop that I didn’t even know existed in my area, just two days after the purported release date. Thankfully one of them had a CD key in the manual, as opposed to a blank space. But hey, at least it only took two attempts to get the game installed, amirite? Anyway, once (if?) you get the game going you get to choose between four pre-fabbed characters: male human fighter, male dwarf cleric, male halfling wizard, or female elf ranger. I decided to give the human fighter a whirl because presumably having a lot of hit points and being the hardest to hit would probably make my solo experience that much more survivable.

If you were reasonably expecting this game based off of Dungeons & Dragons to utilize D&D mechanics and elements, you will be almost universally disappointed.

The game uses the ability scores that we all know and love, and even gets the modifiers right. However, you don’t pick exploits as you know them, instead being able to make a melee attack, ranged attack, and choosing from one of three scalable abilities that you spend points on. The only one I bothered to go with was shield bash, which A) doesn’t require a shield to use, and B) doesn’t seem to even use a shield even when you have it equipped (thought sometimes I found myself with two shields equipped at the same time). You then get to pick feats, of which there aren’t many but at least mostly seem to be true to the source material. And that’s it. You don’t get to allocate your ability scores, you don’t get to pick your starting gear, and you don’t get to customize your appearance in any way. I’m frankly surprised that you even get to name your character.

One you get past the brief and spartan character generation menus you are thrust into Daggerdale, which I guess is now a complex cave system populated by dwarfs, goblins, and human-proportioned skeletons. Now I haven’t been in the Forgotten Realms loop since the third or fourth time the god/goddess of magic was killed, but I seem to recall the Dalelands being on the surface of Faerun. At any rate, I was actually more surprised by the fact that I had cloth armor, a light shield, a one-handed weapon (despite being specced for a two-hander), and 120 hit points (which in retrospect makes me wonder what Toughness did). Oh, and to hit level 2? I needed 10,000 XP.

What. The. Fuck?

I spent the first three or so hours running around in caves killing goblins, then talked to some dwarves with muffled sound effects for speech, then killed some more goblins trying to scavenge up the hundreds of gold pieces required to buy leather armor (because again, no armor to speak of). Granted it gave me resist fire all of one, but come on. On the topic of gear, the game also takes props from Diablo 2 by including cracked and worn versions of items (not to mention barrel-busting and color-coded items), which penalize you for using them. Hell, the damage range on weapons isn’t even correct in most cases. The worst part is that any weapon or armor that offers an energy-based benefit lacks texturing, so expect to put up with a blue-and-white avatar until you find something better doesn’t do anything.

With the right gear, you can actually see textures!

This game feels and plays like any other action-RPG out there, but I’m only reminded that I’m playing D&D because all the monsters have floating names cribbed from Monster Manual. Otherwise it could easily mistaken for Dragon Age or some other Diablo-clone, which would be fine, except that these games have been done plenty of times in the past. I honestly was expecting to have more customization and elements taken from D&D, such as actual class features, powers, healing surges, magic items, etc.

Is it worth the fifteen bucks? I’d say almost. There are some bugs that need to be patched, like the mapping errors with certain types of gear, and some monsters get stuck in the ground. I’d also heard that the game can fuck up your saves and cause you to lose your character or gear. As an action-RPG it provides a decent enough slash-fest given the price, but I think Atari could have done better in some regards. Apparently this is one of three games in a series, so hopefully Atari learns from their mistakes and sales in the next installment.

What changes would I like to see? Well for starters…

• Being able to choose starting gear at all. Picking feats for a two-handed weapon but not being able to get ahold of one for awhile really fucking sucks, as does not having actual armor. I literally did not get scale armor until I was 6th-level.
• On a similar note, choosing powers. It would be very easy to make encounter powers that only recharge after an encounter ends, and daily powers that only recharge after you wrap up an adventure. Optionally, some dungeon zones might have “campsites” where you could take an extended rest.
• Action points could be something that lets you attack and/or move faster for a small period of time.
• A healing surge mechanic would be great for not having to lug around over one-hundred potions.
• The inclusion of opportunity attacks as an automatic reaction would be great, especially for helping fighters seem, well, more like fighters. As it stands, I don’t see anything stopping them from swamping a wizard or ranger in the back.
• Ditch the Diablo 2 item conventions. D&D has never been a game where cheap, vendor-trash magic trinkets rain off of monsters. Generally speaking in 4th Edition most characters could expect to see one magic item per level, and combined with a greater variety in character advancement this would be fine.
• Use the actual XP table. Demanding 10,000 XP to gain a level takes a long, long time. If characters leveled up a bit faster, you wouldn’t need so many magic items in order to keep things fresh.

Things I Learned From Castlevania

I actually wrapped up Castlevania: Lords of Shadow quite awhile ago. Surprisingly, I really enjoyed it: the graphics, gameplay (aside from a few hiccups), dialogue, and soundtrack are superb. Not only is it one of the best digital games to be released in 2010, but it also gave me some ideas and concepts for puzzles and monsters that could be incorporated at the table top.

Throughout the game there are quite a few puzzles, from light puzzles, to color patterns, to scaring murders of crows in order to direct them towards animated scarecrows so that they’ll fight you. Fallen knights carry scrolls that provide you with clues, while the game gives you the option of skipping the puzzle entirely–if you’re willing to forfeit experience points. Something that I’ve always done at the table is grant skill checks in exchange for hints, but I think I’m going to adopt this mechanics as well: if players want additional hints they can take a XP penalty, or skip the entire puzzle by forgoing all of it.

This would prevent the game from grinding to a halt as the players beat their heads against a wall while trying to figure it out. Of course, you’d have to determine how much time it would take for them to resolve it, especially in the case of adventures where there’s a time crunch.

Next, monsters. Every Castlevania game boasts a wide selection of monsters, and this one is no exception:

• Goblins will sometimes throw bombs at you, which you can throw back if you’re fast enough. This could be emulated with a player readying an action to catch the weapon and throw it back, though I’d require a saving throw/that the attack missed. Of course, if the attack fails–especially on a natural 1–then you could rule that the weapon missed but also didn’t explode (yet), giving them a chance to chuck it back. Sometimes bombs are used to destroy the terrain in order to advance the level: they could be used to easily allow the characters to destroy doors or walls in order to create an alternative route through the dungeon.
• Wargs, warthogs, and spiders can be ridden on after beating the fuck out of them. You can use them to attack their allies, but usually they are used to interact with the environment in some fashion. I could see a character hopping on a bloodied monster and being able to control one of their attacks by making an attack against its Fortitude or Reflex. This is similar to how Kratos could hop on a cyclops and cause it to swing its club out of control, battering large groups of monsters. It would certainly make grabbing more useful, in any case.
• Ghouls are often found in areas with dead bodies that they can eat in order go heal themselves and gain a one-time poisonous vomit attack. I’ve used the eat-to-heal mechanic before, but temporarily souping up their attacks is also a cool idea.
• Vampire warriors can be staked after having their health reduced, allowing you to kill them instantly. You don’t have to go this route, but it gets rid of them faster. I think that I’d wanna go with the executioner’s class feature to help facilitate this: if you start your turn with a bloodied vampire grabbed (or if its restrained or whatnot) and are packing a stake or some other stabbing implement, you can opt to just finish them off. You could also make some kind of undead-hunting multiclass tree that lets you perform stunts like this, too.
• Swordmasters are wraith-looking monsters that are commonly found near pools of water. They can channel electricity through their swords, shocking you if you are standing in the water when they strike. A simple way of increasing the deadliness of a lightning–or cold–using monster.
• Creeping corpses start out as zombies that just crawl on the ground. Pretty tame–until they get into a coffin, after which it grows long, vine-like legs, and becomes a lot tougher. An interesting take on a monster that are initially easy, but can get tougher in certain situations.
• Skeleton warriors reconstruct themselves after you drop them unless you attack their bone piles. This mechanic is easy: just crib the trait from many of the zombies in Monster Vault. 
• The crow witch is one of the bosses. She flies around barfing eggs at you, which you can throw back at it. While not exactly a unique attack method, its one way of literally throwing melee characters a bone. Of more interest is that this boss also spawns allies. I’d like to see bosses that spawn minions to help them out, particularly when they are bloodied: casters, angels, demons, devils, spirits, and undead monsters are all likely candidates.
• The necromancer is honestly one of the easier bosses to beat, because he has to burn hit points in order to summon a horde of zombies that you can easily obliterate them with holy water. If you kill them, the health remains gone, but otherwise they die off and he regains the lost health. I do like the idea of a monster that can take damage in order to conjure allies, or perhaps recharge spent powers, however. Even better if the allies don’t persist, and if aren’t killed heal the boss back.
• One of the Lords of Shadow (whose name I forget) busts open iron maidens throughout the fight in order to feed on the corpses within to regain health. Depending on what kind of actions are necessary to open and feed, you could compel characters to destroy them before he gets a chance to heal, or goad him into getting close. On a similar note, another boss is immune to damage until you destroy stone idols on the level. 
• Finally, Carmilla. She’s a badass vampire with two forms, human and vampire, and plays very differently in each. In her human form she kind of floats around within a protective shield, shooting lighting and throwing lesser vampires at you. In her vampiric form, she switches to a more direct approach (but still adds a few minions to the mix). Changing forms–and attack methods–is an excellent method for amping up an encounter, especially once the boss becomes bloodied.

There’s also a few massive bosses in the game, but that’s for another article.

Gargantuan just doesn’t describe it.

Things I Learned From God of War

I just wrapped up God of War 3, a game which I’ve declared that best game of all time. Forever. Aside from being easily worth the price tag and then some, it gave me some things to consider about planning and running D&D.

Action…

This has been a fairly common complaint about D&D adventures, and this issue isnt just relegated to 4E and/or Wizards. A lot of games start out slow, with a vague plot, or are just filled with endless grinding. Rescue at Rivenroar is a prime example of this, where the hobgoblin siege really isnt, and the dungeon is a highly illogical crawl with useless clumps of goblins who serve no other purpose than to pad the dungeon.

Boooring.

D&D is an action-adventure game, so players should be expecting action. Every God of War game didnt fuck around and opened things up with combat. Typically, shit escalated about two minutes into the game by throwing something at you that was bigger than a building or, ya know, a god. This is often my preferred method to start campaigns out if I have any say in the manner. I have the players roll initiative, forcing them to shoot first and ask questions later. If possible, I give them some exposition via GoogleWave or email, but in a pinch I run a flashback sequence right after things settle down to get them up to speed.

God of War also does a good job with puzzles, often integrating them into the action part of the game. Sliding blocks or turning cranks is often accompanied by monsters rushing onto the scene attempting to ruin your shit. Traps like flaming jets, petrifying faces, and spiked floors are always paired up with monsters, allowing you to use the environment against them while avoiding becoming a victim yourself.

…and Interesting Battles…

Every monster in God of War can be slaughtered in an exquisitely brutal fashion: harpies can get their wings ripped off, minotaurs can suck on a sword, and gods get their eyes gouged out with your thumbs. This can give you some ideas on how to describe finishing attacks on your monsters, but the game does more than just provide you with visceral finishers. For example, when you fight chimeras in God of War 3 you slice off their snake tail (preventing them from dousing you with acid), slash up the lion face on its chest, and then impale its head on one of the goat horns. This sort of progressive damage could be a good way of speeding things up while giving the players visual cues on how well they are doing.

This is something that I like doing when players attempt something clever or especially risky, score crits, use action points, or the monster rolls a nat 1: it has the potential to get fucked up something fierce. This could be damage to a specific location, lose an attack ability, or suffer an incurable condition for the rest of the encounter. For example, a flying monster might suffer wing damage, causing its fly movement to be reduced to 2 and losing hovor if it has it, or it might get its wings torn off and lose its fly altogether (along with a wing-based attack). I’m much more likely to add in this sort of flavor thing if a player does something rad and it also bloodied the monster.

Another cool feature is being able to (albeit rarely) use one monster’s against the others. If you rip off a gorgon’s head in God of War 3, they do a flash petrify against all the enemies nearby. This could be handled in 4th Edition by allowing a player to make a close burst 3 attack against every creature. You could make it so that they are all slowed if hit, or take it to the extreme and make them all affected by the normal gaze attack. You could limit this to perhaps an “elite” version of a medusa (and make them look serpentine), or perhaps require an Arcana check to trigger it.

There are undead soldiers that pack big-ass shields, and are another simple-yet-elegant example of a well designed monster. In the game the best way to handle them is to switch to the cestus, smash the shields, and from that point on you can kill them off however you please. Translating this to 4th Edition, you could make it so that when they are bloodied their shields break (or become damaged) and change up their defenses (perhaps increasing their speed in the process). Its a nice, visual way to describe their bloodied state that is also backed up by the mechanics.

Kratos can beat the shit out of and then “ride” some of the critters, by which I mean he repeatedly stabs it and causes it to lash out uncontrollably, damaging its allies. This could be a very cool mechanic, allowing a player to clamber up onto a bloodied monster (Athletics check) and a Strength roll or attack roll to cause it to attack its allies. On its turn it could act normally (likely trying to get the character off). I would play this like a dominated effect, allowing the controlling player to make only basic attacks if they can successfully strong-arm it with an Athletics or Acrobatics roll.

…And Awesome Solos.

The bosses in God of War could be considered to be solo monsters, which is to say they are generally the only thing you are fighting at the time (but it isnt always the case).

Using Poseidon as an example, the game opens up with you fighting what looks to be some sort of elemental-horse-crab thing attacking Gaia’s arm. As Gaia struggles to free herself, the “terrain” changes as Kratos goes from being on the ground, to hanging upside down, to scaling a cliff trying to fight this thing off. This dynamic change in the terrain as the battle progresses is fucking awesome. Each time I kept thinking, “Holy fucking shit!” Altering the terrain throughout the course of a battle can do a lot to keep things interesting and fresh.

Later in the game you fight a giant scorpion on top of a bunch of shifting cubes that are rooms to the labyrinth. As you fight it you have to smash its legs, then beat the fuck out of its face. Each time you do this, it scuttles away for a bit, sends a horde of smaller scorpions at you, and then shows up soon after to try and get you while you are distracted. Easy enough to have the solo lurker baddy run away, conjure up some minions (or have some arrive in a timely manner), and then try to ambush the party with a “pincer attack”…boo.

The most memorable boss battles were those where the boss or environment changed as things progressed. Hades is very mobile and summons zones of barbed chains that disappear after awhile, before becoming massive in size after you manage to beat the fuck out of him and snag his soul stealing chains. Hermes was more of a skill challenge, forcing you to chase him around the city. Hercules actually changed the terrain on his own by picking it up. These were a lot better than static monsters that just sit in a room and repeat attacks over and over again.

Josh and myself are fans of allowing players to do cool shit, even if the rules dont call for it, and even if it seems like an abusable tactic. All of the above is more or less of a Rule of Cool game style, and my players know that if some actions are deemed too abusable that I can and will veto them, and they’re cool with that. I know a lot of this advice has been written, stated, and parroted before, but the God of War games do an excellent job of presenting you with visual and visceral examples. I highly recommend picking them up and giving them a try.

Also, the game has some truly epic artwork and environments. If you can snag an art book you’ll get a lot of inspiration and reference material for monsters and areas.

Review: Sacred 2

Sacred 2 is actually a prequel to Sacred, taking place 2,000 years prior. The only way I figured this out was with a cursory perusal of its Wikipedia entry, as I wanted to get a quick rundown of the game’s background and plot before diving in. In a nutshell, there is a magical force known as T-Energy–which sounds like a virus–is going out of control and its up to you to heal the land or just wreak more havoc. Which method you use depends on whether you pick the Light or Shadow path, which also determines how you handle various events in the game that crop up.

I’d heard that the game tries to use a moral compass mechanic, with (of course) two very distant extremes. I’m not a fan of a game that includes good/evil decisions when there isn’t any kind of middle ground. You can’t be someone who is mostly bad or sort of good, you have to fully embrace either perspective. That being said, I’m sure that if the game took my own actions into account I’d have been wholesomely evil seeing as I spent a couple of hours rampaging across the country side blasting bandits with my high-tech (?) laser cannon for really no reason other than boredom, and a lack of direction.

In addition to choosing your side, you also get to choose from one of six gender-specific classes. Too often this can be the make-or-break part of a game. If the models look too crappy or fashionably challenged, I just cant bring myself to look at my avatar or care about their problems. I’m not really a fan of female characters looking as if they were going to the beach or preparing to actually get dressed, which immediately served to cut my options in half.
The hammy opening dialogue for each character really didn’t cut it for me and reminded me of playing the original Resident Evil. I hurriedly picked the temple guardian because it was the least visually offensive option and also because I couldn’t stand listening to them go on and on about their dark and/or mysterious histories, but realized quickly that it wasn’t going to stop there because the in-game NPC dialogue was just as bad.

The graphics are alright considering that its a port from a PC game about half a year old, and the sound is decent enough if you turn down the dialogue volume. Hot-keying your attack and item options is a bit tricky and the game doesn’t stop for any reason, so you might find yourself being assaulted by bandits allied with boars while you are trying to figure your shit out. There were a couple things that I was totally clueless about, namely special attacks and skills. This is something that I expect a game to make very clear from the get-go, but it ended up being a non-issue since I was able to get by just fine for several hours using only my normal attack and the occasional potion-that-also-heals-robots.
The game itself doesn’t bring anything new to the table. It follows the basic formula of running around killing random monsters that drop random loot as you gradually hoof your way to a conclusive story arc, just without the story. This otherwise simple three-step process is only complicated with the obligatory quest provided by people that you just don’t care about.
There are a lot of visual bugs in the game, especially since the camera starts panning before the area is fully loaded. When I started the game there were a few floating barrels as well as NPCs and bits of scenery popping in, who proceeded to quickly run through a sitting animation as if they were actors that just noticed that they were on film. Add in some lag to the mix and you have a game that does a good job of reminding you that you’re in a game.

If you enjoyed games like Diablo 2 then this should provide good-if-glitchy entertainment. The control scheme is pretty simple, as I was able to play for almost two hours straight with only the X button taped down and running in random directions while performing random tasks for NPCs that occasionally garnered rewards. The main thing that detracts from the whole experience is the fact that there isnt a plot that I can identify. I feel like choosing an ancient canine cyborg carries about as much purpose as picking a specific pair of socks: no one seems to notice that I’m a robot and everyone seems to have gear perfectly suited for my character.
Personally there just isn’t enough going on here to keep me gripped. It feels like I’m playing World of WarCraft, just with a lot less flexibility and clarity on the tedious charity that I’m performing for completely aloof strangers that are just to lazy to do themselves. I’m sorry, but delivering worms isn’t exactly a hero’s quest: its a chore.
In the end Sacred 2 is adequate. You dont find anything terribly innovative here, but if you are looking for a game with that old-school feel then it will likely suffice until Diablo 3 is released.