Dungeons & Dragons: Daggerdale XBLA Review

Hope everyone had a great Easter break and baby Jesus laid you all a bunch of chocolate eggs and/or other assorted goodies. I tried to stay away from most things chocolate this Easter but I couldn't resist all of it. I spent most of Easter where I spend most of the time I have free - in front of my trusty Xbox.

All this free time has resulted in an unprecedented amount of content to write about, which I will be working on and rolling out over the upcoming week/s. Normally I try to set aside an hour or so to write an entry every day, but starting with this piece I think I'll marathon a few to be rolled out in future so I don't forget pertinent details. Enough about future plans, on with the real reason this entry exists.

Overview

Mum, can I borrow some eyeliner?

Dungeons & Dragons: Daggerdale is a standard, pretty-much-top-down action RPG loot-em-up. The valley of Dagger, or Daggerdale if you will, is being threatened by some sort of Wizard/Necromancer, named Rezlus, who's nefarious scheme is to kill or enslave the various races that live in Daggerdale. So far so good, if a little vanilla, sadly, for Rezlus anyway, he decided to take dress tips from the "cool" Emo/Goth kids that hang out behind the Daggerdale shops. As you might have guessed I didn't find him to be all that threatening and the only real reason I personally wanted to kill him was because he looked so damn annoying.

Daggerdale also seems to be a little bigoted as the different races there never seem to inhabit the same maps, even though the whole game is just working your way through one big cave. It seems all the races support this self-imposed segregation as when they do cross paths near the end of the game no one is all that happy about it and it's more of a we'll-just-deal-with-this-to-save-Daggerdale thing.

Rational

Finding better loot is rare.

As the overview might have clued you into the fact that I thought the story was total crap, I don't remember anything specific about it at all. That's fine, in that it's just an excuse to delve into this cave and get all kinds of loots and levels. The loot however leaves quite a bit to be desired. There doesn't seem to be that big of a range of differing items, and the intervals between finding the next exciting bit of loot for your character seems to be too long.

Another negative is the lack of character customization, upon starting the game you have a choice between 4 differing but set character/class combinations. Want to be a Dwarven Fighter? Too bad, Cleric is what you're stuck with. I didn't think the Dwarves were known for their magic, but then again I don't really know squat about D&D. There's no visual customization to mess with either, and maybe I'm expecting too much from an XBLA release but one of the most entertaining parts of the RPG's I like to play is messing with the character customization to get them more or less how I want. I mean if I'm going to role play a character, I'm going to role play the guy I want, if the preset characters don't hold my interest I end up bored. Which is more or less what happened here.

No you can't be a Human Rogue! Dwarven Fighter?! Who do you think you are?

The last thing I'll say about this game is it is short, especially for an RPG. it only really has 4 different maps to explore and the whole game takes place inside the one mine/cave which makes the environment rather bland and samey. The original Diablo is the shining example of an action RPG that takes place in one location done right, and had Daggerdale paid it more attention it could have been a better game. I busted through Daggerdale in 5 or 6 hours, which felt long enough because I was over it by the time the game ended. Six hours to see the whole of an RPG (and I do mean all of it, I did every side quest I could find) is minuscule, and further shines a light on how little there really is in the game.

Summary
I can't recommend this game at all. In fact the only people I can fathom getting anything out of this game might be D&D enthusiasts if the Daggerdale region holds some intrigue for them. Again I know nothing of the D&D universe so I'm not sure these people even exist.

It bares mentioning that to fully complete this game you have to run through it and get all characters up to level 10 for an achievement. This turned a game that I was done with after 6 hours into something I struggled through for over 24. The story and interactions with NPC's don't change at all depending on your character and the game essentially plays the same every time. Play Diablo instead, it's this game but better, longer, more varied and challenging and it came out in 1997.