Dungeon Lords Review

Dungeon Lords is an action RPG like IceWindDale, yet without its polish, excitement, scope or variety. It actually showed promise at the very beginning, but soon after the first few battles and quests I noticed a severe lack of interest on my part. The problem was that not a single aspect of the game impressed me or held my attention in any way.

The opening videos were a good start for a decent storyline, but someone forgot that a plot doesn't begin and end with the intro and the outro only. I expected to see drama, twists, memorable villains and allies, sudden battles, nicely written dialogue, or at least some of the above. Dungeon Lords has none. Then I remembered it's an action RPG--apparently storyline was not a priority and a complex combat system would certainly compensate for that.

Fights begin with a brief pause indicating that a horde of enemies has spawned somewhere near you. In a few moments all of them rush you at the same time, devoid of any intelligence or tactics, prompting you to start running around in circles swinging blindly left and right hoping to get a hit. It could have worked with impressive effects, combos, fast moves and swift attacks, but all you get is sluggish movement and poorly animated characters. Battles are incredibly tedious and lack real strategy because there is so little you can do in terms of weapons and movement.

You play as a fighter, mage or a thief, or any combination of the three since you are able to upgrade your stats if you gain enough advancement points. The more you fight the more points you accumulate, which can be spent at any point in time and in any way you wish. It's a nice system because it allows players to specialize or spread their abilities in all directions, perfect for a game where you control a single character. Still, none of it is sophisticated enough to offer a wide range of gameplay possibilities found in other RPGs.

Traveling around the land can only be described as depressing. Level design shows no sign of creativity, and each location is constructed in the most obvious and predictable way possible. I can't remember pausing even once to look around at something unique; I just passed one bland section after another. You will not find “art” anywhere either. Enemies, weapons, spells and dungeons are all terribly generic. The fact that there is no connection between them with books, stories, descriptions or some kind of lore breaks the illusion that you're playing in a complete environment.

What makes it worse is the unfinished state of the gameworld. Every single room is completely bare of furniture or decoration and all you see is a floor, walls and a ceiling covered with a boring texture. Ironically the wilderness is the only place that doesn't look deserted. The designers have spent some time populating it with grass and tress, which sadly are the only things of interest out there. Exploration comes down to smashing crates and treasure chests in empty corridors.

All in all, wandering around randomly constructed dungeons, fighting the odd pack of enemies that has randomly spawned, and breaking down the randomly placed crates to get a random amount of gold and health potions is what makes up the larger portion of the game. This random nature, combined with enemy spawning, strips fights to mindless clicking rather than strategy or tactics especially since levels have not been thoughtfully designed to enhance and help the fighting.

Other things such as broken quests and spells--features described in the manual but missing from the game--severe lack of polish in all areas, various little bugs and inconveniences (no quicksave/quickload function) on top of an already depressing game made it unplayable.

Graphics/Sound
Considering performance and loading times, utter disappointment. The lack of decoration and artistic effort lessen the effect even further, making the overall appearance pitiful to watch.

The musical score ends with the main menu. You get to go through the empty world in silence and even managing inventory produces no sounds. The rest is as bland as everything else in the game.

Multiplayer
There is an Online/LAN mode with co-op allowing players to go through the single player campaign. I had no success finding suitable servers, but as we all know playing with others is generally more exciting, at least in games that are somewhat exciting to begin with.

Conclusion
Bugs or missing features aside, this game was simply unremarkable. I looked forward to the end rather than the next gaming session when finally impatience settled in. I do not know how far I was before I quit, I know it was as far as I could go on tolerating the incompetence of Heuristic Park . Even if they waited to complete their product, Dungeon Lords still needs creativity more than it needs patching. I can enjoy a buggy game when it can hold my attention in some way. Sadly Dungeon Lords was neither bug free nor addictive, which makes it a total failure and a waste of time for everyone associated with it.

Pros:
Character advancement system.

Cons:
Everything else.