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Close... but not quite there yet

4 Rating: 4, Useful: 31 / 33
Date: January 25, 2004
Author: Amazon User

This is a pretty decent game. The graphics are good. Overall gameplay is simiar to Baldur's Gate (xbox): Basic D&D rules are used, but player skill is also required. For instance, when you shoot a bow, you have to aim it yourself, but if you hit, the damage is calculated based on D&D rules. Blocking works similarily.

I like the cooperative multiplayer mode this game offers. This allows you to play the game (main storyline) together with a friend. This is the most appealing aspect of this game in my mind.

Unfortunately, the save game system is a bit of a turn-off. Often, the save points seem to be positioned badly. I would appreciate a save point right before a boss-battle. This is generally not the case. Also, going back to a previous save point after having cleared out most of the level is not an option, because the world isn't truely persisted. In other words: Although the game saves that you picked up gold and other things you might have found along the way, it does not save that you have slain the monster. This might be a good way to gain more XP, but it doesn't help your progress all too much. So you will find yourself fighting through a few minutes of silly battle that you have done before, just to even get to the boss-battle. Argh!

I have now played this game on and off. I keep coming back to it, because overall, it is a pretty good game. But usually I end up a few hours further down the story, but frustrated, and it takes a while before I come back and continue, because I dread re-playing something that I have already done before.

I really wish someone would finally come up with a better save-game concept. The conventional wisdom seems to be that console players do not want to save anywhere and anytime. Instead - according to game publishers theory - console players want save points. Well, I have news for them: I do not buy into this theory. I am a console gamer, and I still want to save anywhere. And with a system like the xbox, this is no technical problem at all.

Overall level design is OK. As someone pointed out here: It is pretty linear. I do not mind that, but some people do. Some levels could be designed a bit better. One of the worst level-design issues actually has to do with the save game system. Often, save points are positioned very inconveniently. One boss-battle for instance has a save point right in the area where you fight the battle. But when you move over the save point, a stupid dialog pops up, telling the player that saving is not allowed during boss battles. You then click the button to make the dialog go away, and bam!, the enemy whacks you and you die. I mean, why even put that stupid save point there if it can not be used until the enemy is killed? It would be easy enough to put it right afterwards, especially since the game is so linear.

Anyway: If you like D&D role playing games, you probably want to check this one out, but be aware that it is a bit action-heavier than D&D games on the PC.

Fun, but falls short on character and plot.

3 Rating: 3, Useful: 30 / 33
Date: November 03, 2003
Author: Amazon User

In a nutshell, it's AD&D wiggled into the Gauntlet package.

Pros:
Good multiplayer game if you've several friends with 3-5 days of free time.
Also fun as a single player game.
Lots of powers to buy up and further diversify each character.

Cons:
Despite the diversity of skills/powers that can be bought up, it all boils down to "look at my new trick for doing/avoiding damage."
Linear gameplay with no means of exploring or jumping ahead.
Gets repetitive fast.
Low replay value.

Finish the game in 3-4 days of solid playing.
Zero character development. Total hack n' slash.
There is no actual story/plot beyond "go kill X again." Yawn.
Mini-adventures/quests are equally linear and inconsequential. Double yawn.
Standing around aimlessly while waiting to heal up.
Backstory is so ridiculous as to be laughable.*

* The backstory has the four heroes killing the Bad Guy centuries ago. But as the Bad Guy is dying in this fight, he gets off a spell that 1) kills all the characters and 2) destroys their weapons by shattering their magic into 20 shards which are then dispersed to multiple planes of existence. Hello? If the guy is so powerful as to be able to cast something like that as he's dying, why didn't he do that right when the heroes walked through the door? It's just outright bad story.

So while the game is entertaining most of the time (the first time through), it becomes tedious in places and won't be one that you go back and play time and time again. Lack of any plot/story makes it a combat-only game rather than an engaging epic, which is the heart of the AD&D gaming system.

I'll be selling my copy after I've loaned it to some friends to play.

Good D&D game

4 Rating: 4, Useful: 16 / 16
Date: October 08, 2004
Author: Amazon User

This game seems strangely reminiscent of games like Diablo I and II for the PC. That is, it's a hack n' slash dungeons and dragons game. I found the game extremely fun, albeit a bit short. I do not consider myself to be an exceptional gamer and I had very little problem beating this game. The graphics are only above average, although the fire and other lighting effects are great. The gameplay is rather simple, run up to the back guys and hack at em with your sword until they're dead. The button mashing gets a bit repetitive, especially since the enemies are just slightly tweaked recycles from earlier levels. The game is much more fun with friends as you can create a party of up to four characters. When playing as a single player, you can control only one of the characters. I was hoping that the computer would control the others, creating a four-person party, but that is not the case. If you liked Diablo and other hack n' slash games, get this one, it's a lot of fun. More traditional D&D fans might not like the combat system. However, the level up system is quite extensive and offers a lot of variety for the different characters. Overall a great game.

"Gauntlet" meets Dungeons & Dragons

4 Rating: 4, Useful: 10 / 10
Date: October 18, 2003
Author: Amazon User

"Baldur's Gate: Dark Alliance," despite bearing the "Baldur's Gate" name, was more of a hack-and-slash game in the "Gauntlet" vein than anything as grand or complex as its Dungeons & Dragons heritage might have suggested. Even so, it made for a very fine game, and a quite successful one to boot. Well, all successful games have their imitators, and so "Dungeons & Dragons: Heroes" was born. If "Dark Alliance" was thin on roleplaying, then "Heroes" is downright skeletal. It bears even more of a resemblance to "Gauntlet" than its predecessor... but it's actually a solid game, despite its flaws.

You get to pick from four different hero types at the beginning of the game (fighter, wizard, rogue, or cleric), you give that character a name, and you're on your way into the realm of Bael, where an evil wizard is rising to overthrow all that is good and just in the world. A familiar setup, to be sure - yet it gets the job done, particularly since the storyline is clearly not much of an emphasis in the game. Even so, the game's animated cutscenes are quite well rendered, and convey that tiny sliver of story in an entertaining fashion. The rest of the time, you roam the world in a way that's highly reminiscent of "Gauntlet" or the aforementioned "Dark Alliance," except now you have complete control over the game's camera. You can rotate your view or zoom in or out to your heart's content. Even so, it tends to be a bit of a hassle, particularly in the cooperative mode. It doesn't help that playing from the furthest zoom makes you and your enemies so tiny you can barely see what's happening, or that at the closest zoom the walls and other bits of scenery can completely obscure your vision in the midst of a brutal fight.

Camera niggles aside, the action is well-handled for a game of this type. There are a thousand monsters waiting to throw themselves at your sword, and hacking, slashing, and casting your way through them can be quite enjoyable. The enemies are many and varied, and in later levels become rather challenging (despite the game's overall simplicity, I mean, but more on that in a second). Each area of the game comes complete with a nasty boss monster as well, and even though they're exactly what you would expect from a D&D game (beholder, dragon, lich, etc.), they make for some exciting battles. Even so, I never once failed to destroy one of these end level baddies on my first attempt. In fact, I never died only to find myself having to restart from my last saved game, and that's because the game is so generous with gold that you can literally build a surplus of health potions and continues (or special items that allow you to resurrect on the spot). So despite the swarming opponents you'll face, you'll never feel all that threatened. That can be good or bad, I suppose, depending on how you look at it, but because the game is so easy it also feels very short.

The game gets off to a bad start. The first cavernous area you're forced to explore is the very definition of bland. The next area, which comprises the forest just outside of Castle Bael, is a little better, but not by much, and the aforementioned fortress stronghold isn't anything to write home about either. Even so, things do start to get a whole lot better as you progress. Even though it's more than a little contrived, you'll eventually wander through an ice-encrusted snowscape, a fiery ironworks, and a pyramid-spattered jungle, the variety is nice and makes you forget just how boring the first few episodes actually were.

In the end, I liked "Dungeons & Dragons: Heroes." If you're a fan of "Dark Alliance," this is a good way to spend your time until "Dark Alliance II" comes out. "Gauntlet" fans should also take notice. Still, it has its share of problems, and does not match the quality of either game previously mentioned.

Final Score: B-

Cross between Gauntlet and Baldur's Gate

5 Rating: 5, Useful: 7 / 7
Date: October 11, 2003
Author: Amazon User

This is a fun hack and slash RPG in the style of Gauntlet and Baldur's Gate. I thought the controls were well thought out, giving you lots of flexibility over what functions you assign to what buttons. Unlike the other games, you can zoom way in and out, although with multiple players you are almost always zoomed out. Like Baldur's Gate, you manage many types of items, gain spells/powers/etc, which makes it more involved than Gauntlet. The graphics are nice, and and there's a good variety of enemies.

I think the main drawback to this game is that it's too easy. By the end of the game, your character is *really* powerful and you have tons of money with nothing to spend it on. The bosses were all pretty easy to defeat. Baldur's Gate is much more difficult and its storyline is a bit more involved.

Excellent Game!!

5 Rating: 5, Useful: 6 / 6
Date: September 22, 2003
Author: Amazon User

This game may as well salvage my liking for the X-Box. Beautifull graphics, smooth gameplay, lavish worlds, and classic hack n slash with fully adjustable camera views, come together to bring you a Baldur's Gate on steroids. Well worth it for any RPG fan. The only downside is, it's not long enough to satisfy my addiction.

Baldur's Gate meets Gauntlet

3 Rating: 3, Useful: 6 / 6
Date: January 14, 2004
Author: Amazon User

If Baldur's Gate and Gauntlet had a baby, this game would be it. It inherits everything about those two games that made them popular. Unfortunately, it also inherits almost all of their flaws as well.

Heroes makes no attempt at being a serious action RPG. There's barely any story to speak of. There is a big bad guy who's gonna conquer the world and it's up to 1-4 player heroes to stop him through several fantastic realms. In this aspect it's just like Gauntlet.

Players of Baldur's Gate will recognize the interface and character abilities as much of it is ripped straight from that game. Some of the abilities are exactly the same. The inventory, the way items work/equip, abilities, and attributes are pretty much a carbon copy of Baldur's Gate. This isn't such a bad thing, and the developers have streamlined things to make them work in a more fast paced environment better without slowing the pace of the game and interfering with your three co-op buddies playing with you. In fact, I think Bioware could take some cues from D&D: Heroes in how it improved the play.

Make no mistake, the whole point of this game is to sit down with some friends and hack your way through various levels and improve your character with upgraded powers and abilities as well as new and more powerful items and equipment. Hardcore stories are meant for a single player experience. So the combining of two such games as Baldur's Gate and Gauntlet seems like a perfect combination for such a concept. However, it seems that developers keep ignoring the king of multiplayer action/RPGs, Diablo. More importantly, they ignore the facets that made that game such an immense success in it's genre.

Heroes is fun. It's even fun playing through by yourself (but you really want to get this to play multi). However, after you play through it, it doesn't hold a great deal of replay value. Diablo introduced things that kept that game replayable for literally years.

1. Randomized levels that are different everytime you play.
2. Seemingly endless variety of magical weapons with near infinate power combinations so there is always something better to find.
3. The ability to take your existing character through the game two more times in succeeding difficulties.
4. Extremely high level cap for your character so that you could play with him for a long time.

It's nearing almost a decade and still virtually no games of this type implement even one of these concepts. Had Heroes included them it could easily have been a five star game. As it is, it isn't a bad game by any means, but it does suffer from blandness. I could live with the fact that it doesn't really introduce anything new, but not capitalizing on winning concepts is a shame.

If you have three buddies who are into these types of games it's worth picking up. It's fun while it lasts.

Pretty good waste of MY time

4 Rating: 4, Useful: 7 / 8
Date: December 27, 2003
Author: Amazon User

I played the demo from Xbox mag and liked this right off the bat.
As for the actual game I played, sorry to say I can't 100% agree with other assessments of the graphics. The water and fire is what catches your eye but the boxy (classic D&D) style dungeons made me drop my rating a step.

Monsters: Are pretty much slightly modified repicas per level. ie some skeletons are archers, some are fighters and some more like rogues. This makes for modified tactics on your part.

Bosses: Pretty easy to figure out. Even the Final Boss isn't that bad.

Story line: YES it is weak but I don't see these whiners making games for Atari. The story line forces you to follow one path to your goal but you can always go back to past places to rack up a few XP or gold.

I played all 4 characters and found it pretty much fun each time.

Bad: It should have allowed you to add players in a single player mode if you already finished the game with other characters. ie If I already finished with the fighter, when I play with the Rogue, I should be able to add the fighter to my party as a NPC and so on.

I had fun and so should you.

A Disappointing Diablo Clone

3 Rating: 3, Useful: 7 / 8
Date: July 09, 2004
Author: Amazon User

I need to preface this with saying that I love D&D, and I love fighting through dungeons. Any game that lets you set the character's armor and weapons makes me happy.

I really liked D&DH when I started playing it, but it became repetitive after the first few hours. I finished it, but quickly traded it in. Read on for the reasons why...

You are one of a band of heroes raised from the dead to fight an evil warrior you defeated years before. His power is legendary, and it is believed that only you (and your friends, if you are playing multiplayer) can defeat this undead hellion. He has, of course, unleashed a pride of monsters upon the various worlds you must travel to find his lair.

Characters
The characters in this game are good, keeping in tune with traditional D&D classes. I played through as the human Warrior (I mean ''Fighter''), my hack-'n'-slash favorite. You can also choose from Rogue, Wizard, or Cleric. Other than the players, the NPCs are well animated, but their character development is pretty two-dimensional.

Bad Guys, Monsters, and [SPOILER]s, Oh My!
Ok, I won't spoil my favorite part of the game for you. Let me just say that some of the monsters that appeared brought back some great PC/earlier console memories. There's nothing better than beating a monster easily that has kicked your backside before, and there is plenty of this in this game. The monsters are well animated, and have decent sound effects. It would be nice if there was additional variation within levels (rather than just among levels), but overall there are is a wide variety to kill.

In other graphic/sound areas: The NPC voices are good, and well cast. The animations for fighting and spell casting are nice, but are not unique to D&DH.

Will This Gather Dust?
I traded it in after finishing it in one week, so it might be gathering dust at the store -- I don't know! I have absolutely no desire to play it again, because the repetitive hacking and slashing became tiresome the FIRST time through. Only about 20 hours worth of playing time, but I only played through as the Fighter (thank goodness)! There is nothing new in this game, but that may not be a bad thing, depending on your taste...

Overall Recommendation:
If you like Diablo, you'll like this.
If you liked playing earlier D&D games, you'll like this.
If you like pushing one button to attack and another, occasionally, to use a health potion, you'll like this.

Fun but missing something

3 Rating: 3, Useful: 5 / 5
Date: May 10, 2004
Author: Amazon User

First I want to highly recommend this game for you if you want to play it together with friends. My wife and I play it and we have a great time with it. (And of course it's easier with more than one adventurer.) So many games alienate you from your friends and family because you play and they don't. This one encourages team play. I wish more Xbox adventure and RPG games had this feature (Fable with friends would have been the bomb).

I wish there was more customization of your characters. Your choice of adventurer is limited to four: a dwarf cleric, human fighter, elf mage or halfling rogue (I think I remember the rogue correctly). You don't even get to chose gender. No choice of different faces or hair style to personalize your adventurers. No race choices. Nothing. Your appearance does change when you buy new armor, etc. but one of the things I like about D&D type games is getting to feel like your character is a real person and you know them. Modifying his/her appearance is a lot more fun.

I wasn't satisfied with the camera choices. In order to play effectively, a god-like view from the maximum distance is best, but then you don't get to see what the monsters look like. Up close you can enjoy the visuals, but you get a much poorer understanding of your environment. I don't know how I'd change it, but I keep thinking of other games that give you the best of both.

The challenges of the game were fun but not impossible. This isn't Ninja Gaiden! The improvement of your equipment goes at a decent pace, as does your level-up from experience. I'd like to have seen more sould shards. You find these special gems throughout the game and they improve the look and power of your weapon. There are exactly twenty and you need twenty in order to achieve the perfection of your weapon. What this means is, you'll be unable to find some and you'll complete the game with your weapon only 3/4ths upgraded (I only got 50% upgades the first time we completed the game). A little unsatisfying not to ever see it in its final form.

All in all, a lot of fun, especially for you and a friend. I hear the game studio has been closed down recently. I sure hope we see more games like this in the future.

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