A hundred and fifty years ago in the land of Baele, a great evil arose in the form of the wizard, Kaedin. Mastering the powers of the plains of existence, this malevolent wizard channelled the power into 4 gems, and created a fifth one to harness that power. He then cut a swath of destruction across the Kingdom of Baele. Four Heroes took up the call to stop Kaedin, and they succeeded against all odds. However, with his dying breath the Wizard smote the four heroes, and although the world was at peace again, it was at a terrible loss.
Now, a group of evil clerics, who have obviously never read a fantasy book or played a RPG in their lives, have attempted to raise the evil wizard from the dead for their own nefarious needs. Had they been exposed to popular science fiction, they would have known that raising someone so evil would surely get out of their control and end up with them meeting their makers, and unleash an uncontrollable evil on the world. So, faced with such a terrible evil, the Kingdom decides that the four Heroes must be resurrected to fight once again.
Here’s where you step in as one of the four heroes. On offer is the choice between Elf Wizard, Human Fighter, Dwarven Cleric and Halfling Rogue, the four classic classes of the D&D world. Each has their positives and minuses – the Wizard has powerful spells but can’t hold herself well in a fight; the Fighter is strong in melee, but weak against magic; the Cleric is reasonable at magic and fighting, but great at neither, and the rogue is good at hiding and ranged attacks, but weak against magic and melee. The joy of this game is you can play single player, or with all four characters at once, gauntlet style.
Awakened from your tomb, the first task is to fight through the burial grounds and get to Castle Baele. Not really quite what you would want or expect after spending 150 years dancing with angels and jamming with Hendrix. And, unlike Buffy, there’s no time to get all moody and sleep with vampires in order to get back at your friends, you have a job to do. The game moves at quite a brisk pace, and you’ll find yourself fighting nearly continuously. When not fighting you’ll find yourself avoiding traps and looking for levers on one side of a castle that open a door on the other side. These fantasy types must of really enjoyed walking around!
The gameplay is very similar to Baldurs Gate : Dark Alliance. It’s a top down view, although you can zoom in using the right joystick for a 3rd person perspective, although this severely limits your field of vision, and is basically good for nothing except looking at the detailed environments, more on which later. The controls are basically the same too: Move with the left stick, attack with the A button and block with the Left Trigger. Black and White are Magic and Health Potions respectively. A good addition to the gameplay is assignable buttons. Holding down the right trigger slows down the action, and allows the Y, X & B buttons to be assigned spells, traits and abilities, and items. This is great, as you can allocate each button to prepare for each of the 7 distinct levels with different monsters that require different tactics to kill, as well as slow down the action and do it on the fly as the situation requires.
As with any game based on D&D, there are tons of items to be found, bought and sold, ranging from standard weapons to magically enhanced armour to rings and potions that add bonuses to your attributes. However, each of the main characters has their own Ancestral Weapon, unique to them and quite powerful. Making them even more powerful are the Soul Shards, 20 items scattered across each level, and gaining 5 of these shards essentially levels up the weapon. While a very nice addition, and while the animation and graphics of the upgraded weapons look very good, I found this made the other weapons pointless, especially in single player. Whilst other weapons may offer different types of damage and bonuses, I found the Ancestral Weapon to be the best overall for all situations. Sure a flaming sword might be good against a Frost Giant, but you’ve got a greater chance to hit and higher damage with your Ancestral Weapon, especially when it’s upgraded. I also found that I’d get weapons and item suitable for one type of level after completing that level. For example, I found a protection from fire item type in the snow level, which is past the fire level.
Speaking of levels, they are very linear and quite easy. I played through the game on “normal” and it was a breeze. I tried multiplayer on “hard”, and it was also a breeze, perhaps even easier than single player. Sure, I died a few times, but had so much money from selling weapons I could buy plenty of Raise Dead Amulets. Furthermore, the quests don’t seem to flow as well as in BGDA, it’s more of an “accidentally run into this person who asks you to get that” rather than connected stories like in BGDA. The various puzzles and quests are quite simplistic and require very little thought to complete. Sure, the game is more of a hack and slash game than a traditional RPG like Morrowind or KOTOR, but the story really doesn’t hold any surprises, period. Even the big surprise with the Shopkeeper, is about as surprising as waking up in the morning and discovering you’re still alive.
While the gameplay may be lacking, the visuals are truly wonderful. The cut scenes are amazing, and look like they’re straight from a Hollywood movie. They are very detailed, and this detail is transferred to the ingame graphics. There’s heat haze from torches, reflections in the ice, waves are made in water, and each level has cool things to look at, like candles and fountains and such. The monsters all look quite monsterish, and blood and ooze squirts out as you hit them. Blood also stains you on occasion! The spell effects look great too, and it’s truly a sight when the Wizard and Cleric unleash their most powerful spells together.
Sound is also done well, with a good rustic medieval score that suits the action very well. The voice acting is pretty good, although the shop keepers do tend to get repetitive and the spell utterances are a little on the annoying side. Battle sounds sound as authentic as they can, with the clang of claws on steel sounding as one might expect. Ambient sounds aren’t really noticeable, because there’s nearly always fighting going on, but in lulls in battles, your armour clings and clangs as you run about as is appropriate, fountains bubble blackishly and rodents squeak and birds squawk.
Final Thoughts:
D&D Heroes is a decent game especially in terms of multiplayer hack and slash, but lacks in certain areas of gameplay that stop it from being truly great. It is very linear and quite easy, and while the additions of assignable buttons for spells and so on are great, there’s just not enough depth to the story or gameplay. It may look nice, but it leaves a feeling of being unsatisfied, and wanting more of a role-playing experience akin to Baldurs Gate : Dark Alliance, or Baldurs Gate II on the PC.
Pros:
+ Great audio-visual
+ Awesome 4 way multiplayer
+ Nice additions to the control method such as assignable spell buttons
+ Upgradeable Ancestral Weapons
Cons:
– Way too easy
– Story is much too linear and not very engaging
– Ancestral Weapons make other weapons obsolete
Score: 79%