The magic system in Dungeon Lords is quite limiting, making pure caster characters almost impossible to play. Three of the schools of magic are powered by a sort of recharging ammunition. For example, Arcane magic is powered by spellbooks. Each spellbook of Fireball is one “charge” of the spell. These charges refill over time, but that refill rate is far too slow to be of any real use in most combat situations. Much of the support magic is helpful, but those wanting a pure “blast-em” character will be sorely disappointed.
I found it very difficult to become emotionally involved with the game, as the world just feels empty. There’s very little interaction with the environment, both in towns and in the wilderness. The first city was full of buildings that couldn’t be entered. There were a few random NPCs wandering the streets, but it hardly felt like a bustling center of humanity. Once I ventured into the rest of the world, however, I found the first town to be a teeming metropolis compared to the other settlements. The Elven city consisted of about six buildings, and just as many NPCs. Every building was barren and empty, almost completely devoid of furnishings. Inns contained no beds. Shops were simply an NPC behind a counter, with no wares on display. Grand temples were nothing more than a guy in robes standing in the middle of a vast, open hall. It seems like the designers just ran out of time, and threw in the bare minimum to get the players from point A to B.
And this time crunch obviously didn’t stop with the buildings. Entire features of the game were missing. There is no automap, even though the manual and the in-game help file indicate that one exists. There are items collected in the game that do nothing. There are locations that obviously were intended to be useful, but are now just there to look at. In addition, Dungeon Lords is crawling with bugs, many of which are game-breaking. I found that saving in several different save slots was essential to making any progress. Often a vital action would fail to happen, or an NPC would get caught on the scenery and fail to trigger the next event, and it would become impossible to continue on with the plot. There are many skills that have been removed from the game, although the manual and several in-game notes make mention of these. In planning characters, I thought Identify or Repair might be useful. Little did I know that these were now non-existent. There are many more bugs and glitches, major and minor, plaguing this title. Some of these issues are going to be cleared up with future patches, but right now things are a bit of a mess.
Graphically, things are mediocre. Not only is the world empty, it just isn’t much fun to look at. There’s nothing outright bad about the graphics, but there’s just nothing impressive, either. The characters have some clunky movements, and only a few different animations. The monsters are equally uninspired. Many of the monsters reuse the same graphics, such as the different spiders, wolves, rats, and some humans. The only way to tell if it’s a wimpy spider or a Big Mean spider is to highlight the critter with the cursor. The dungeons do look decent, and each has a unique feel. The wilderness, on the other hand, needs work. First, because of the lack of automap, I would have really liked a few landmarks to help orient myself. But most of the land looks exactly the same. Most of the places of interest are highlighted by campfires or somesuch, but it’s still difficult to find a way around, especially once the character steps off the road. Finally, the water animation deserves special note. Never before have I seen water with actual topography. I dove into the lake, and actually found myself merrily swimming up and down hills in the water. Maybe this is a world so imbued with magic that the water doesn’t stay flat. It was quite distracting.
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