#Dungeon boss game review full
#Dungeon boss game review series

The synergy that can exist between a party is replaced with a wildly unbalanced experience as you try to use the narrow strengths and weaknesses of a single character to brute-force your way through each level.

#Dungeon boss game review full

Running through with a full stack of four players is a mostly unremarkable trek, but going solo is a relentless nightmare as all of Dark Alliance’s shortcomings are magnified and given an iridescent glow. Speaking of which, while Dark Alliance is designed for co-op play it allows you to play alone as well. I’ve had my fair share of bad rolls in my day but this is just unfair and un-fun. The exceptions here are unbalanced variables like a random attack from an enemy that will one-shot even the most well-protected character or a glitch that removes your skill from the equation. Of course, none of that changes that what you actually do in these locations is more often than not really boring, but at least the views are nice.Įven on the higher difficulties, Dark Alliance is rarely very challenging when playing as intended, with a full team of four. Music and sound effects are also high quality and perfectly fit the aesthetic of the Forgotten Realms, and voice acting across the board is a major highlight – even when the story those voices are telling is pretty dull. Enemies and allies alike are detailed, otherworldly, and have tons of combat animations that make for some satisfying moments. Most importantly, each level is absolutely beautiful and serves as a testament to Dungeons & Dragons' rich history. Most areas have a unique appearance like fiery forges, creepy goblin lairs, and frozen wastelands, with plenty of alternate paths to explore or hidden areas with treasure chests and puzzles to find. Where the enemies and gameplay severely lack variety, though, the levels themselves shine as one of the few true highlights of Dark Alliance. Some sections are so repetitive that they actually had me checking if I’d somehow replayed the same level twice by mistake. That’d be bad in and of itself, but in order to face those final bosses you must first defeat some minibosses that are… also just identical frost giants.

#Dungeon boss game review series

In one series of levels focused on frost giants you fight three bosses in a row: all three are frost giants, and all three have almost identical appearances and movesets.

With extremely few exceptions, even the bosses that appear at the end of each level are just named clones of the same enemy types you’ve already been fighting throughout each level. Worse, Dark Alliance’s idea of a difficult battle is to give enemies enormous health bars that require spamming the same attacks for an upsettingly long period of time. Just to make the trek more irritating, a small set of mundane puzzles and environmental hazards are reused constantly – there’s one where you have to step on symbols on the ground to deactivate a barrier that’s like a puzzle designed for a first-grader or harmful ice-covered areas that require you to stand near a torch to gain the “warm” status effect before crossing that wears out its welcome after the 50th time you do it. You’ll have optional objectives that are laughably shallow, such as having you destroy certain items throughout the level or hunting for a named enemy. You fight only a handful of enemy types that appear again and again over the course of 21 levels. There aren’t any surprises or reinventions of the gameplay along the way – if you’ve played one level you’ve played them all. The whole hack-and-slash campaign is a monotonous slog in every sense, with mindless, repetitive combat and exploration dominating the time as you loot gold, earn samey new gear, and grind for XP to unlock abilities.

You just check targets off of your checklist, then call it a day and go home – that’s a pretty poor use of the Forgotten Realms’ decades-long history of worldbuilding. Each of the four protagonists will have short dialogue exchanges with one another as you adventure, but with almost no additional time given to fleshing out character motivations or personalities for those who don’t already know them, the story is largely a nothingburger. It’s awesome that some of the most iconic and well-known D&D characters, like Drizzt Do’Urden the dark elf, take center stage as playable characters for Dark Alliance, but it’s deflating that they aren’t used well at all. Naturally, you’ve gotta get them to cut it out by killing them all so that virtue can reign supreme, or whatever. The campaign centers around a powerful evil shard that has caused the good guys’ enemies to rally together to claim it. The fact that the story is a barebones “kill these guys on your naughty list” bounty-hunting premise certainly doesn’t help to draw one in.