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Sometimes you just want to cut things. Sometimes you want to enter Faerun without strategizing your brains out. Sometimes you just want to play a game that is bold enough to use no less than one letter “D” in each word of its title. Sometimes you just want to play…
(PS: If you want to get straight to the review, just skip the next 3 paragraphs.)
So let me set something up before I get into D&D:D. Good hack & slash games are hard to find. Like, really hard to find. I’m no connoisseur of the genre, but I have played no small number of them over the last 25+ years and most them suck hard. It may not seem like it, but making a good hack & slash is a crisp art. The game needs to be refreshingly simple, yet contain enough complexity to warrant hours of progressional gameplay. It needs to look pretty and run smooth–but also needs to display its content so that the player can identify all the necessary pieces within a split-second glance. If there are RPG elements to it, it needs to allow the player complete freedom over the manner in which they build their character and fight while still maintaining a crisp distinction amongst all the classes’ skills (i.e. skills need to be more than damage, damage or damage) and also keeping the game somewhat balanced. Lastly, while the player ultimately knows that the game is a power trip, there needs to be just enough of a hint of story, a reason for conquest and world-building to mask the power-trip facade while not being so convoluted and gameplay-bogging that it slows the game down in any way. On their surface level, a hack & slash game may seem simple, but accomplishing these feats in tandem is almost akin to miracle-working.
There are generally 3 approaches to this kind of style.
Diabloesque: Initiated by the original Diablo, nowadays this genre generally means a fixed top-down view of a character chosen from a selection of preset classes. The gameplay of a Diabloesque involves hacking through hordes of monsters that spill items, gold and equipment out like piñata candy, grinding through (often randomly generated) maps to get better gear and upon appeasing the EXP gods, you can choose where to put your next skill point, among a set of tiered skills, or oftentimes a complicated skill tree. Path of Exile, Grim Dawn, and the wonderful Torchlight II are examples of this subsection.
Real-Time Fantasy Adaptation: Sorry, I don’t have a fancy title to give this one. I’m tempted to call it the “Dark Alliance” category, but I feel there must have been a title released with similar gameplay that predated Dark Alliance that I’m just not aware of. Regardless, this category encompasses games that have taken an already-existing fantasy element and tried to transpose it into a real-time hack and slash with RPG elements. You can sort of look at it as falling between the two other categories listed here. Typically it focuses less on massive skill-trees and is oftentimes (although not always) less gear-grind/level-grind intensive. More structure is put into world-building in these games, and oftentimes you will have more camera control than a Diabloesque in order to make it feel more like an adventure game. Games like a The Bard’s Tale, X-Men Legends, and Lord of the Rings: War in the North are examples of this style.
Gauntletesque: Created by the success of the first Gauntlet, these games focus much less on the leveling-up aspects of RPGs and much more on the hacking and slashing of the hack & slash genre. Typically you’ll get to choose among 4+ classes, but class choice is not as impactful as the previous 2 genres and sometimes all classes will even play out the same. Equipment is often foregone, or it only exists in the form of time/use-limited powerups. A big tell if you’re playing a Gauntletesque is if enemies spawn continuously from “spawners” that must be destroyed to stop the flow of foes. Leveling up may or may not exist within the game, but typically it does nothing more than grant more health, damage, armor and/or speed–unlockable skills in this subsection is almost unheard of. A big appeal to these kinds of games is that they are 4-player. Magicka, Hammerwatch and of course the newest Gauntlet, Gauntlet Slayer Edition fall into this category.
So why did I explain all this and what of D&D:D? Well, to answer the first question, it’s because it tempers what our expectations for the series should be. It would be unfair to expect a Gauntletesque to provide heavy skill trees, just as it would be unfair to expect a Diabloesque to provide the feeling of an fantasy-adapted adventure game. As it happens and to answer the second question, D&D:D falls into our “Real-Time Fantasy Adaptation,” which means we can expect it to have the feel of a fantasy adventure game, with some of the leveling and grinding of a Diabloesque. So after all that ado, after setting the foundation of expectation that the majority of hack & slash games that I’ve played from any of the three previous subsections are crap, I’m elated to say that my first impression of D&D:D is extremely positive.
D&D:D start off at its weakest point in the character selection screen. My first impression was worrisome–only 4 classes? I can’t choose gender or race? ONLY ONE HUMAN!?! (I’ll admit, I’m a complete racist when it comes to the fantasy universe). Regardless, clicking past this screen will bring delight, as you’ll find enough talents, skills and exciting feats to temper your chosen character to your desired mold that it’s quickly forgiven. What’s even better is that it’s all D&D themed, which gives it a believable sensation from an immersion standpoint, but also a well-balanced feel at a glance. It sort of feels like I stepped back in time to the day so of 3rd edition as well–seeing as how through enough feat manipulation, you can get most any class to equip and be proficient in any armor or weapon that you want. Ultimately, there’s enough selection to create distinction with enough simplicity that I didn’t spend more than 15 minutes choosing and creating a character. Sighing in resignation, with no desire to play the slack-jawed fighter and even less inclination to play anything shorter than 5 feet tall, I went with our rogue-elf.
The first thing that struck me when I began playing was how good player and camera movement felt. The character is quick and responsive and the camera allows viewpoints from any reasonable angle. The HUD is clean and easily understood as well (a must for these kinds of games) and even before I ran into the brief tutorial, I had already figured out all the buttons. Fighting enemies was just as rewarding as I had hoped for a kiting-rogue; no need to manage the annoyance of consumable ammunition and you even start out with a fresh animation cancel in the form of the rogue’s class ability to roll–something that made the game feel much more dynamic and skill-based, which often lacks in the more stat-heavy hack & slashes.
Don’t get me wrong–the game is still linear, you still pick up quests that act like you have a choice whether to accept them or not (why on earth would I *not* accept free exp for killing everything in the dungeon that I’m going to be going into anyway?) and the story is very simple (Wizard bad, you good, go kill) but that’s exactly what you want in this kind of game. Even the destructables and loot are held up to a manageable level–just enough to give you something to do, not so much that you feel like a vandal swimming through heaps of garbage. Funnily enough, I was just thinking about the peculiarity of only being able to break barrels when I ran into this fellow. Poor guy.
The level designs are fun as well, liberating themselves from the stale blocked-out isometric dungeon view and instead being hand-crafted and (in spite of their general linearity) feeling open due to paths wrapping around and the ability to move in 3-Dimensions, such as “jumping off cliffs” (although one cannot truly jump, something that for whatever reason was driving me nuts).
Overall, the game just feels good and exciting and moves along at a great pace without feeling cheap or strictly mechanical. I’m very much looking forward to extending my power-fantasy trip into D&D:D and should the fun continue I may even swallow my pride enough to test out the Halfling wizard. (I know your race is akin to thieving, but did you have to steal my favorite class?). For now, this game rests in Tier 1 and I have hopes that it will maintain this position in the future.
