Dungeons & Dragons: Dark Alliance – Review

The latest Dungeons & Dragons Video is now here and available for all to hack and slash through.

Dungeons & Dragons: Dark Alliance from Tuque Games, which was purchased by D&D owners Wizards of the Coast. You can think of this as a spiritual successor to Baldur’s Gate: Dark Alliance, the co-op brawler follows the adventures of characters from the D&D novels by R. A. Salvatore.

To start off with, there is no character creation, Dungeons & Dragons: Dark Alliance lets you choose from four iconic D&D characters such as the Drow ranger Drizzt Do’Urden and the dwarven king Bruenor Battlehammer. You can solo or team with 3 other friends and hack and slash to your heart’s content.

Drizzt Do’urden is fast and agile using two scimitars to carve up foes and backstab them and then move on to the next.
Catti Brie is the ranged expert picking foes off from a distance and crippling bosses.
Bruenor Battlehammer is your standard hardy dwarf tank character, who is there to soak up damage while wearing down your attackers.
Wulfgar is a barbarian, he hits like ye olde freight train and great to take down foes quickly.

The core gameplay is your standard straightforward hack and slash fair, with players mowing through monsters, avoiding dangerous terrain, and defeating mini-bosses to access new areas of a dungeon. You can also find hidden things and solve basic puzzles and platforming to find extra treasure, power-ups, and lore items.

There is a hub world where you can select your next mission, buy items gear from a merchant. You can also swap out your equipment for the loot you found on your journey, as this cannot be done in battle. Campaign or dungeons are made up of three acts and you can even increase their difficulty for more experience and better rewards, with much more difficult to match that reward. Each time you level up, you’ll obtain Attribute and Feature points that can be used to enhance your character. Moves and Consumables are unlocked with gold that you earn by completing Missions, and equipment can only be acquired as loot.

All 6 classic attributes, Strength, Dexterity, Constitution, Intelligence, Wisdom, and Charisma are present in the game. Each of them has a different impact on your character, increasing either Attack or Defense. Attribute Points cannot be re-distributed.

The game is pretty darn good to look at it, there are open structures, with plenty of branching paths and opportunities to veer from your main goal. However, the potential side content is pretty repetitive, taking down a mini-boss, or locating a number of hidden objects. The levels are, however, very linear and begin to feel repetitive very quickly, with you traveling from one arena area or corridor to another.

Almost every level has these exact side quests, along with the same puzzles of locating a lever switch or explosive barrel to bypass an immovable obstacle etc. The lack of variety in objectives outside of combat leads to the game’s levels feeling very similar to one another.

Loot, yes there is loot to be had, but hold up!

Most loot you find will change your character model and can be further customized with different skins by a quick trip to Kartik the merchant. You can upgrade loot you find with materials found in the field, to keep any Rare or Epic equipment that you find.

The thing that annoyed me the most is you cannot actually see or equip the loot you acquire until the end of the mission. You only know that you have found, say, an Epic long sword, but cannot confirm if it is actually better than what you already have until it has been identified back at base. a small nitpick, but I was just annoyed I had to wait to see what I got.

Final Thoughts

I wish there was more story here, there is an over arching story, you get a cut scene when you start a new mission. but it felt like a second thought. I also wish there were more variety to the mobs, after a while you are just killing the same mobs in different settings.

There were a few bugs that I ran into, with some enemy AI that I hope gets worked out. it was nothing game-breaking, just some enemies did not spawn right and seemed to be stuck, so I just could hack and slash them down with them just standing there.

Overall this is a decent hack and slasher if you love that type of game, I only played it solo, but I would love to see how much different it plays with 3 other players, and I felt like I was missing some aspects of the game, but soloing.

There are some big plans for the game.

Post-Launch DLCFree DLC 1: Wraiths
Our first planned DLC arrives this summer (winter for our southern hemisphere friends) and is FREE for everyone. This includes a new story mission over three levels, where you will battle a faction of Wraiths that are attempting to corrupt a forest spirit for their own gains. The team is also aiming to add two-player split screenplay options to PC and Xbox Series X/S with this update.

Free DLC 2: Trolls
Our second planned DLC arrives this fall (spring in the southern hemisphere) and is also FREE for everyone. It will include a new story mission told over three levels. Trolls have invaded Kelvin’s Cairn and it’s up to you to eradicate them. This DLC will also add new Challenge Ratings to the game, giving you higher expert difficulties to overcome.

Echoes of the Blood War – Expansion
We’ll end the year with a large paid expansion Echoes of the Blood War. This expansion will add a brand new magic-using playable character to the game – the perfect addition to the party! Along with the new character comes a new storyline with new missions and new monsters.

System Specs
MINIMUM:
Processor: AMD FX 8320 / Intel Core i5-6600K @ 3.5GHz
Memory: 8 GB RAM
Graphics: AMD Radeon R7 360 / NVIDIA GTX 750 ti
Storage: 50 GB available space
Xbox One Controller Strongly Recommended