I tried to play this game on the PC, and these are my and probably only my opinions on the game that was released today. As someone who has played D&D pen and paper on and off for more than two decades, I hoped this game would be fun.
Multiplayer Gameplay:
- I don’t know if my hubby and I were bugged or not when we tried Co-op play, but when setting up the co-op mission, there was no option to choose the difficulty, even though there should have been. No options in the mission setup menu could be chosen, no matter how I moused over to try and choose one.
- Match-making in general isn’t very intuitive. During co-op play, there are no tutorials on how to play the game.
- The “little” objective direction arrows were not designed well, especially for those that are sight-impaired.
- Walking in ice shouldn’t kill you. I know that it’s Icewind’s Ice Breath, but still… the initial damage should have ended. Also, I don’t know how goblins that have been frozen solid through to the bone marrow can have full-on conversations about getting warm after getting out of the ice and to a bonfire–they aren’t telepathic and their mouths were frozen as well as the rest of them.
- No area of effect markers. I died three times to ice that wasn’t there.
- There is no way a goblin should one-hit a barbarian. Co-op difficulty shouldn’t default to the highest difficulty. That made no sense. It seems that the developers of this game didn’t think about players that will want to party together and get right into the game without playing the single-player campaign first.
- Passable graphics
- So…yeah, I shouldn’t be killed from a one-hit goblin’s strike that was 10 yards away
- As a barbarian, I was one shot from the front by a goblin. My hubby, who was playing the dwarf, wearing platemail, was one-shot as well.
- So far, we have died 12 times to the same goblin.
- Though we both turned Voice chat off, we decided to start a new session, because my hubby wanted to switch to the archer. When we did, voice chat was auto-enabled, even though it showed as disabled in the options.
- Upon re-entering the first quest, my hubby’s game crashed, because of a UI crash.
- It took two crashes to get him back into the game.
- I was juggled in the air because my Warhammer couldn’t slam down on my target because constantly moving goblins were trying and succeeding in hitting me while in the air. When I attempted to do the same thing to them, my Warhammer went straight through them, and I was hit and downed.
- So from my gameplay experience, Co-op is ONLY meant for four people. When trying to co-op with two players, from what I’ve played, because the mobs are at the same strength as four players co-op, and at the highest difficulty, at least one player will get one shot. So in actual D&D terms, in the co-op mode we played, all the mobs hit with natural, roll 20 crit hits.
Single-player Gameplay:
So after moving to single-player, we found that the game has tutorials only for single-player. They don’t care if you know how to play the game in co-op play, because they assume (like asses) that you’ve already played the single-player campaign. Graphics are still passable, especially for today’s standards. Gameplay is borderline passable with a good amount of sluggish lag thrown in for good measure.
After constantly being defeated by two end bosses, a fire mage, a poison mage, a frost mage, and two fighters that swarmed me, and hitting me through my blocking, I shut down the client and uninstalled the game…and that was only at the end of the first mission.
This game is wholly unbalanced, the graphics are passable for today’s standards, the mobs range from weaksauce to one-shooters, and you don’t know what you’re going to get from mob to mob, because unlike in actual D&D, there’s seems to be no set rules on the mobs’ ability stats. The gameplay is sluggish and laggy. Aiming is very stupid (why should an archer, who mostly uses a bow for her skills (outside of a kick skill) have to hold down the Control key to bring up a reticle for the bow, so that she can aim), and the barbarian’s ranged attack is a waste of time, because it is a very weak skill, and by the time you’ve gotten a couple of shots off (if you are in range that is, as the AI for the mobs is very garbagey. I mean I’m not going to have a full-on conversation with another player, while I’m getting shot from range–weakly, but still getting shot.) Actually, the default keybind control scheme, on the whole, is nonsensical. Why would I toggle the middle mouse button in order to lock on target, and then use the arrow keys to switch between targets, all while trying to use the left and right mouse buttons to attempt to attack a target, while holding down TAB to block, while using traditional WASD in order to attempt to move my character? Honestly, after the shitty experience, I had with the barbarian, and after watching my hubby play the archer, I honestly didn’t want to try the other two classes, because I’ve wasted enough time with this craptablous game.
I know this may have just been my experience with the game, but this is what my husband and I went through with it. I have never, and I mean NEVER raged quit a game before, and I was long-time WoW player that has endured ninja looting, getting kicked from raids just because I rolled on an unreserved piece of gear, and having to deal with the general toxicity of the community that has grown since the advent of Cataclysm. As a matter of fact, I have been playing video games since the release of MS. Pac-man back in the 80s, and I’ve played through all the years of games with no saves and only three lives a quarter. I don’t like to quit–actually I hate to do it. This game has made me break my 30+ year record of endurance in gaming, and I hate this game for that.
If you don’t want to waste your time or your money with a game that didn’t seem to go through a lot of Q&A testing, after having played it, I wouldn’t recommend playing this game.
