User Reviews (1 - 11 of 20)

Show these reviews first:

Highest Rated
Lowest Rated Newest
Oldest Most Helpful
Least Helpful

The words "let-down" are not enough.

1 Rating: 1, Useful: 1 / 14
Date: September 07, 2007
Author: Amazon User

Now, I have never played tabletop D&D and I am not a huge video game advocate either, but I was very stoked about getting this game. I love rpg's and strategy games so I assumed this would be an excellent buy. I tried, I really tried to like this game but the truth is, it's no fun. There was no enjoyment in playing this game. It felt like a chore, learning how to play and then generating characters was impossible. The game plays very slow and I couldn't quite get the "hang' of the controls. I only played the game one time and now it sits in it's original box in my closet. I wonder if I'll ever try it again. I prolly won't I can still vividly remember the onslaught of extreme depression when I played; Like I'd never be happy again. Please don't buy this game. Save yourself some good time and money. I would only recommend this game is you were masochistic and hated yourself.

Your Friend,
Sleek Mouse

What a waste of 40 bucks.

2 Rating: 2, Useful: 5 / 17
Date: August 20, 2007
Author: Amazon User

Just to give folks a background, I have played D&D since the mid 80's. When I heard a D&D game was coming out for the PSP I got really excited, disappointed, excited, disappointed and excited again as the release date kept getting pushed back. As the company pushed the release date back they kept removing cool features like possible expansion packs you could download or multi player with characters you create.

I became a bit more hesitant but decided to pick this game up. I knew it was going to have a tactics feel to it, but they still billed it as an RPG. I can't believe how wrong that is. There is no world to explore, just a bunch of menu type areas that lead from one battlefield to another. The "cut scenes" look and read like they were typed up by 12 year olds, no offense meant to 12 year olds out there, but it's the closest thing to what this game offers... Also character movement in this game sucks too. There were many times I tried to move my character around the attack range of mobs and it just wont let you. It has some kind of wierd auto path arrow that seems to have a life of its own when you pick where you want your characters to go.

The graphics are sub par to other RPG's I have played on the PSP. The menu system is probably the worst in this game, clunky and time consuming. When they say there is 40 or so hours of game play for this game they may have been correct. 10 hours of play and 30 hours of using the menu system.

The rules for 3.5 D&D are followed fairly well but that can't cover up the smell of poo this game leaves behind.

I guess if you love overly clunky interfaces and pure strategy games this may be for you. If you love a great RPG with true character development and a story line you should really look for something else.

D&D Tactics Fails its Save

2 Rating: 2, Useful: 10 / 11
Date: September 20, 2007
Author: Amazon User

I love Dungeons and Dragons, playing it with two different groups twice a week. I also love handheld tactical games, with some of my favorite handheld games of all times being tactics-style. So when this product was announced, I found myself waiting for it with 'bated breath. And waiting. And waiting.

The screenshots and video looked good, the press releases and interviews and previews all seemed to suggest that things were heading in the right direction, a tactics game with great graphics, based around the complex (and carefully thought out) 3.5 edition D&D rules. Each time it was delayed, I dared to hope that it was because they were taking the time to really get it right.

Having now played a good chunk of the game, I think that what was instead happening during the delays was that the development team, overburdened by the complexity of what they had set out to do, was simplifying and reducing, getting rid of stuff that didn't work, dropping features that were too hard to complete, and just generally scaling back the ambitions for the project until its parameters fit within what they had already done, rather than what they had set out to do.

It is a reasonably fun game nonetheless. Controlling a party of six adventurers, representing the base D&D classes, plus a couple extra psionic ones, is relatively fulfilling. It's even a decent tactics game in some ways, with the step by step planning of what your characters will do, and the mutual supporting interactions between them. This fundamental enjoyment is what pushes my overall rating of the game up from 1 to 2 star status.

But there are two important respects in which it falls very short.

First, as a tactics game, the controls are finicky. It's hard to get a good overview of the situation, in part because the 3D rendering is so intensive that the poor PSP's responses are jerky rather than smooth. Lighting is also a problem, with the lighting conditions being based on which character is selected, rather than on what lighting pertains overall. This means that if you have a character without a light source of their own, you sometimes can't see clearly, even if they're standing next to two or three other characters with light sources. Area effect spells are hard to position, because some of them cover so many squares that you can't see the edges of the selected region.

It also lacks any tactical finesse. The scenarios are straightforward, and its really more about using your party's "brute force" capabilities to batter opponents into submission. The computer's AI doesn't take advantage of all the available rules, so the game never really gives you a chance to explore the tactical depth of which those rules are capable.

Finally, the menu based controls are complex and slow. Moving equipment from party member to party member is excrutiating, picking options in combat requires you to navigate a multi-level menu tree, and the interface for leveling up manually is so cumbersome they included an "auto level" ooption. This will provide a hefty barrier to entry to anyone that just wants to pick up the game and play, and would only be forgivable if the complexity was to support the depth of D&Ds complicated ruleset.

Which it doesn't.

The second problem with the game is that when they started cutting corners, they began hacking off parts of the rules system that were inconvenient to them, or changing things to work around bugs or missing features they'd decided to abandon. Here's what I've noticed so far:

* No multiclassing
* Opponents never use the 5 foot step to avoid attacks of opportunity. They always take a "move" action, even if they're only going 5 feet. Spellcasters never "step back" to cast spells.
* Metamagic feats cause all spells that _could_ be affected to be affected at all times. So, if you take the "Widen Spell" feat, all of your fireballs will have a 40' radius. You can't turn it off, and it still uses a 3rd level slot. (Fireball is pretty unusable in the game anyway, since you can't tell if it's going to hit an obstruction and blow up on top of you, but taking widen spell turns it into a spell that you almost never get to cast.)
* Undead are subject to critical hits.
* They're only using a fraction of the possible creature base. I'm a good chunk of the way in, at 10th level, and I keep encountering the same kinds of creatures again and again. (werewolves, anyone?).
* Burning hands doesn't appear to be castable. (Don't know why, but it never lets me cast it.)
* Magic missles must all be directed against a single target.
* Lightning bolt is a single target spell.
* If the character you designate as your "main" character dies, combat immediately ends with a "FAILURE!". Not very D&D-like.
* No prestige classes. (see no multiclassing, above.)
* Things stack that shouldn't. Bracers of Armor stack with armor bonuses, for example.
* No secret doors. (or at least, if there are, I haven't found them.)
* A character moving through an allies square is never subject to an AOO.
* Even high skill tumblers can't tumble through an opponent's space.
* If you take a full attack action, both attacks end up directed against the same opponent, even if the first hit kills that opponent and there's another opponent in reach.
* No school specialization, so your wizard won't have many spells. I recommend a sorcerer, since there aren't a lot of non-combat spells.
* A cleric with a weapon in one hand and a shield in the other can't cast spells. (It's well established in the rules that the cleric can move the weapon to the shield hand in order to allow this.)
* No paladin mount.
* Power attack has non-adjustable intensity. (i.e. you can't select how much of it you're using.)
* You're not allowed to assist other character's attacks or ACs. This is a fairly minor rule in regular D&D, but since its specifically marketed as a Tactics game, this seems like a strange thing to leave out.
* Monsters never have treasure, it's all in chests scattered about the map.
* If you kill the last monster, you never get to open any chests you hadn't reached yet.
* Turning undead always destroys them, never turns them.
* Bardic Music doesn't follow the rules for same. It clearly gives allies a bonus, but what bonus exactly is clearly not quite in line with the original rules.

I'm sure there's more, but its a hodge-podge of rules changes. Some made in order to accomodate the electronic nature of the game, to be sure, but many made just because the developers either didn't understand, or didn't bother to implement, the original rules' intent.

The sad part is, you can see the bones of a much more expansive (and exciting) game here, but they just failed to deliver. What's left is a reasonably fun set of dungeon crawls with a clunky interface.

Who knows, handhelds keep growing in power, maybe they'll get it right next time.

Boring

2 Rating: 2, Useful: 0 / 1
Date: May 20, 2008
Author: Amazon User

I like RPG's, Dungeons and Dragons, and Tactics games; but I put this game down after about 15 minutes and haven't picked it back up.

For one, if you want to roll your own characters, it will take you close to an hour before you even start playing the game. After that, I just don't find that the D&D 3.5 ruleset makes for a good backdrop to make a tactics game. Furthermore, there is inclusion of some D&D details that just distract from gameplay.

I would be more inclined to think that the D&D Miniatures franchise would be more suiting. Are you listening WoTC? ;)

Stop right there.

2 Rating: 2, Useful: 0 / 1
Date: August 04, 2008
Author: Amazon User

I know. I was there, too. I read all the mediocre reviews. I read the bad ones. Incredibly, once in a while, I found a good one. I thought to myself, "Could it be true? Could D&D Tactics really suck that bad?" The sad, sad answer is "Yes."
This game is truly horrible. Blame Atari, or blame Wizards of the Coast, or blame Kuju, or blame yourself for thinking this could be at all decent.
Just don't blame me.
I told you not to buy it.
Oh, wait, I didn't do that yet.
OK, here's my advice: Press your browser's BACK button as quickly as possible and never look here again.
Don't buy this.
Don't.
You'll even regret spending the shipping even if this game cost you a penny.
The purchase of a game like this only encourages the production of awful video games.
Here's the real deal:
Q: Does it have Dungeons?
A: Yes.
Q: Does it have Dragons?
A: Yes.
Q: Does It have even an INKLING of fun?
A: No. Sadly, no.
I wanted to like this game. I really did. I wanted to like it so much I played it for 29.7 hours. True story. But, try as I might, I can't like an awful game. And I sure as hell would never recommend one.
If you still want to play it, I have one for sale cheap.

Clunky Interface but still alot of Fun

3 Rating: 3, Useful: 2 / 3
Date: August 28, 2007
Author: Amazon User

I was very excited when I heard a D&D game was coming to the PSP. The good points are the ruleset 3.5. Follows the rules of D&D perfectly. The bad point is the clunky menu system and trading weapons. My characters are mostly encumbered all the time, and I can't figure out how to move items along, and what item is better than the next.

All in all a fun game for the D&D fans, but if you aren't into the rules, pick up Untold Legends - brotherhood of the blade.

Mediocrity

3 Rating: 3, Useful: 2 / 2
Date: January 18, 2008
Author: Amazon User

Let's get right to the thing most people interested in buying a D&D game are going to be worried about: how faithfully does it interpret the rules of the game?

The answer is, quite frankly, poorly. First and foremost, the ability to multiclass seems to be completely absent, which in and of itself almost completely disenfranchises this game from D&D 3.5 and its ease-of-multiclassing, build-your-own hero design. Further, there don't seem to be any prestige classes either, which while far more understandable (and acceptable) than a lack of multiclassing serves to even further distance the game from what people who play P&P D&D naturally expect.

Throw in changes to feats and base classes (what the heck were they trying to do with the Ranger?), ambiguous or missing class abilities (do Clerics even get Domain-related special abilities?), and a generally thin selection of all of the above to begin with, and you end up with a game that completely removes the character-building and development strategy aspect from D&D, which quite frankly is about the only thing truly 'tactical' about 3.5 to begin with...

This would be understandable if the changes were merely made to make the game more 'playable' in its given format, but that doesn't seem to be the case. For example, the Perform Skill in this game only has any utility to a Bard character, and you can't multiclass from other classes to a Bard, but non-Bards are still allowed to pick it. If you were trying to 'streamline' the game for hand-held play, things like that would be what you would want to 'fix'...

But instead we get 'fixes' that show a questionable, at best, sense of what the original rules were intended to do, and little to no concept of game balance. The Psionic Weapon feat, for example, adds +2d6 damage to all melee attacks. ALL melee attacks. All the time! You don't have to spend Power Points or anything, you just get +2d6 damage on every swing (vs. +2 damage for Fighter's Weapon Specialization). How in the world could that have slipped by someone?

Then there are the changes they seem to have made to try to be 'sticklers' to the rules, making the naggling little details that no one who plays P&P bothers with--at least, nowhere near to this anal-retentive degree--into massive issues the player must deal with. Encumberance is not only enforced, it's going to ream you on every single level in the game unless you've got a team stocked with Barbarians. You're going to be constantly groaning over being told you can't do something with your hands full. (A Cleric needs a feat to cast spells while wielding a mace and shield? Since when?) You're going to wonder why some things just don't seem to work right (Tumble nerf?). The strict adherance to the Light and Vision and Surprise Round rules is going to give you endless headaches, especially if you try to use a Rogue or Ranger...

If you push past the thousand and one little annoyances, which extend further into a poor interface, weak story, and mediocre graphics, there's a half-decent game buried underneath. However, that's all it is: half-decent. Don't go into this expecting more, and don't bother at all if you're a rules purist or lacking patience.

Game keeps crashing

3 Rating: 3, Useful: 0 / 0
Date: January 09, 2008
Author: Amazon User

I bought this game for my husband as a gift. He absolutely loves it and plays it almost everyday. However, I am so incredibly disappointed with the glitches. The game keeps crashing in the same spots. There is one particular mission that he tried to play 3 times and each time it would crash at the same place. He gave up on that mission, played a few more and then it happened again somewhere else in the game. We've tried to contact Atari but they haven't responded yet (it's been over a week). I feel like it would have been a great game, but it's certainly not worth the money as is.

Hard to start

3 Rating: 3, Useful: 0 / 0
Date: August 29, 2008
Author: Amazon User

This game has alot to offer a fan of the D&D universe, but has a learning curve.

It's D&D

4 Rating: 4, Useful: 5 / 12
Date: August 19, 2007
Author: Amazon User

Well, I am definately enjoying this game, the controls are not too bad, just it is quite a pain to trade items between your characters, you can't control (as far as I can figure out...)if you want to give a bow to your ranger that your bard has, it seems like you have to give it to your cleric Then to your barbarian, then to your rogue...then maybe your ranger? If someone figures this out I would be happy to hear it.

Gameplay is enjoyable, be sure you save often. I've had to replay battles just because I accidentally loaded instead of saved.

Well overall, there is a whole lot to this game, I've barely scratched the surface, I'm sure

Review Page: 1 2 Next 

Actions