D-Day is a new thing I'm trying, where I play a demo for an upcoming game and give my impressions on it. Today we're talking Dungeons and Dragons Daggerdale, Atari's recent co-op hack n' slash set in the D&D world.
I remember being very excited when I got Atari's first announcement email for Daggerdale, since this was supposed to be the first solid use of the Fourth Edition rules in a video game. I'm a fan of 4E, and thought its use of player powers and other design choices would make it easier to translate into different media like video games.
Judging from the demo, I'll have to keep waiting for that to happen.
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| Image: Atari.com |
The heroes are summoned to defeat the villain Rezlus, who has created a magic tower that's to be used in his scheme to conquer Daggerdale for the dark deity Bane. You and your companions have to fight your way from the mines beneath the tower up to its peak in order to bring the whole thing crashing down around them.
...and that's about all you get for backstory, at least in the demo. There are mentions that he's a Zhentarim, which veteran D&Ders would recognize as "bad news", and the woman who summons the four players says she's connected to the Zhentarim as well and can't help them right before she teleports away and leaves them to do the heroic-ing. While it's good not to spend a lot of time diving into Realmslore, I would hope the full game goes into more detail about why letting this guy take over Daggerdale isn't the best idea.
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| Image: Atari.com |
Like most hack n' slashers (and unlike D&D in general) you don't get much choice when it comes to character selection. There's a human fighter, dwarf cleric, elf rogue and halfling wizard. The Daggerdale announcement email had mentioned a ranger and possibly other classes, but they're nowhere to be seen: they could be DLC down the line or even part of the two sequels that Atari has already supposedly planned.
For the demo, you only get to choose the fighter or the rogue. I played through with the fighter first, which was one of the most-changed classes in 4E, to see how they adapted those changes to a video game setting.
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| Image: Atari.com |
In short, they didn't: at least not in any way a regular D&D player would recognize. The character sheet has a set of pre-spent ability scores and a few leftover points you can spend on powers and feats. The feats are similar to what you'd see in the Player's Handbook: Toughness for more health, Weapon Focus for specific instruments of destruction, etc.
Powers, however, were changed to fit the video game's structure. You have a few powers available at the start to pick from, and points to upgrade them up to three times. For example, Shield Bash let you hit with your shield and then make a follow-up strike: if you spent points to rank it up it also knocked back enemies further and further. Classic fighter powers like Power Attack or Cleave weren't available at the lowest levels, which was a turnoff for the D&D player in me.
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| Image: Atari.com |
As mentioned in the beginning, combat in the demo boiled down to A) Hack, and B) Slash. As the fighter I never even used the powers I'd been given, relying on mashing the basic attack button to carve through the goblins available in the demo. The control scheme is similar to Dragon Age: basic commands on one layer, with your class-specific powers on another layer brought up by a trigger pull. Health potions seem rather common, and you can chug them on the fly. The enemies have some extra D&D window-dressing, like level and a tag like "artillery" and "minion" describing their role, which seems superfluous: visual cues like spell effects and armor detail should give the player all the information they need to know.
What annoyed me most was the sheer amount of smashable barrels lying around: at least a half-dozen in every room and a chest or two every few minutes. This really slows down the pacing, and had me spending twice the time it took to kill the room's the goblins going through and making sure I'd knocked open every container for a chance at loot.
The Verdict
If you didn't include the "D&D" logo on the front of the game, I'd be hard-pressed to recognize Daggerdale as part of the franchise. It feels like a quickly-made dungeon-runner in the vein of Diablo and Gauntlet, but with far less polish and depth. If fans of the RPG came here looking for a neat analog to their weekly dice-rolling sessions they're going to be disappointed, and if people tried it out just to see what D&D was like they'd leave with a bad taste in their mouths.
This is definitely one D&D game where I'd be glad to see the DM kill my character.
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