.W. Bradley is often labeled "the godfather of the computer role-playing game" genre, most famous for his contributions to the venerable Wizardry and Might and Magic series in the '80s and '90s. After a considerable hiatus, Bradley is back with Dungeon Lords, an epic fantasy role-playing game that combines "old school" fighting and role-playing elements in the trappings of a massive 3-D world.
A powerful wizard in the Circle of Mages has been assassinated and his ally, Lord Davenor, left to defend a beleaguered kingdom from the same conspiratorial forces. To placate the enemy, Davenor offers his daughter's hand in marriage to Lord Barrowgrim—leader of an army of marauders. Learning of her father's plans, and in love with someone else, Davenor's daughter disappears. Players begin the game in the woods near the town of Fargrove in the human lands, and get caught up in the main story gradually by conversing with locals and completing various quests.
The main character is rolled at the outset, and creation follows the outline of classic fantasy games. Elves, humans, dwarves and a handful of demigoths (beasts, reptiles, etc.) can be fitted to one of four character classes (fighter, mage, thief or a hybrid class called "adept"). Instead of levels, characters gain "advancement points" that can be spent as gained on base attributes (strength, intellect, dexterity, etc.) or on skills in weapons and magic categories.
Players control the main character using conventional keyboard-move and mouse-look commands, and attacking and blocking are handled with the left and right mouse buttons respectively. Multiplayer mode allows several players to battle through the story (identical to solo mode) cooperatively, either on a local area network or online.
A monotonous fantasy slog
There's ever so much to almost like about D.W. Bradley's Dungeon Lords—it's just that there's ever so much more waiting in the game to sabotage all that goodwill. This is one more to rack on the wall—an example of a promising dungeon crawler that was patently rushed out the door before it was finished, leaving naught but a glorious train wreck (and the return period on store receipts) for players to mull over. Consider the character generation screen, which has buttons to allow players to customize their characters' appearance: the buttons don't work—at all. According to the FAQ on the publisher's forums, "Certain cosmetic options from the original design, that do not affect gameplay significantly, were listed in the manual, but did not make it into the release of the game."
Of course, the most egregious feature omission is in fact something that affects gameplay in a 30+ hour dungeon crawl more significantly than anything else—no automap. Referenced several times in the manual as corresponding to the "m" key, there simply is no mapping feature of any kind, leaving players to either memorize labyrinthine passages, or actually crack a pack of No. 2s and Tops Quadrille Pads to finish this monster. Considering the ample, albeit brainless, beasties littering this thing's every corner, pausing to tick off blocks on a piece of graph paper to avoid retracing steps is excessive to the point of being infuriating.
The core of any hack-and-slash game is combat, but even that gets loused up here. Aiming doesn't really happen, though elevation does, making every thrust and jab a wooden, straightforward affair. Attempting to connect with swooping or scuttling nasties is a mouse-mashing guessing game that's already old before you get out of the first dungeon.
Dungeon Lords looks good at some times, dated at others, has the largest game world this side of Morrowind but the worst level design since Stonekeep, lacks any sort of music score but somewhat makes up for this with decent atmospheric effects, has some clever thieving innovations for disarming traps and isn't prone to crashing despite all manner of quest-related and feature bugs. It has "promising" stamped all over its many crippling problems, and just might be worth a look in a few months, if both the developers and the publisher are willing to fix the bugs and patch in an automap. Anything less and plague-level avoidance is strongly advised.
What sort of evil graph-paper-lovin' demon from hell possessed the development team and actually convinced them to scrap the automap? Oy vey.
—Matt
Back to the top.
