There are two reasons why I love this game. One, it's called "Dungeons and Dragons", and I was raised on D&D. Two, the old style graphics, midi sound, and antiquated game play remind me of childhood. For the dedicated role-player, this game can take us back to the days before WOW and EQ, back to a world before 3.5 edition and Eberron, to a time when all we knew was dungeon-crawling and "save the princess". To think, we used to call that role-playing!
Some might scoff at how easy it is to win this game (two days of dedication, and you've done everything there is to do, killed everything there is to kill), or how cliché the plot is, but just think- this was the beginning of an era of D&D based role-playing games.
There are two reasons why I love this game. One, it's called "Dungeons and Dragons", and I was raised on D&D. Two, the old style graphics, midi sound, and antiquated game play remind me of childhood. For the dedicated role-player, this game can take us back to the days before WOW and EQ, back to a world before 3.5 edition and Eberron, to a time when all we knew was dungeon-crawling and "save the princess". To think, we used to call that role-playing!
Some might scoff at how easy it is to win this game (two days of dedication, and you've done everything there is to do, killed everything there is to kill), or how cliché the plot is, but just think- this was the beginning of an era of D&D based
role-playing games. And besides, I think its fun.
There ARE some slightly annoying elements. Battles become routine very quickly. Strategy is limited to the very small number of things you can do in a fight. You stab, they stab. You cast, they cast. Stab, stab. Cast, cast. "Oh, look, I won and now I get to loot the cool stuff these grunts are always randomly carrying around!" Or, "Crap, I lost and now I have to go back to the save point."
There's lots of walking around identical looking hallways. You can walk for hours listening to the 30 second midi clip of creepy music looping over and over.
And, as with all early RP games, if you don't do all the right things in the right orders and have every random special item you didn't know you would need at the right moment, you can't progress. Often you're irredeemably stuck and you have to restore your game to that point in the past when you didn't do, or you didn't pick up what you now need. And if you don't have a saved game before the point of no return? Well, have fun doing it all over again.
My favorite part of the game when I was a kid was character creation. You have a small amount of control over what your character looks like, and you get to choose either fighter, rogue, mage, or ranger class. Here's a quirk- you can only create male characters. Why, you ask? Perhaps the programmers felt adventuring wasn't suitable for maidens.
This game isn't fun because it's realistic, or innovative, or fast-paced. It's Nostalgia, baby. Plain and simple.
