Dungeons & Dragons: Daggerdale Reviews

Dungeons & Dragons: Daggerdale has been released today on the Xbox Live Marketplace and PC retail and will be out for PC digital distribution services on June 24th, so in case it has grabbed your interest you may want to read the first two reviews of the title that have surfaced. Unfortunately they’re far from positive critiques.

Joystiq calls it a “critical miss” and awards it a 1.5/5

Daggerdale starts out as a competent hack-and-slasher, and ends as an unmitigated disaster. That kind of downward-sloping quality curve is usually indicative of rushed development — as are bugs, which Daggerdale has in spades. Characters, players and enemies frequently walk through pieces of the environment. Entire groups of enemies sometimes disappear from the screen mid-fight. Occasionally, after dying, loading a new chapter or joining a multiplayer game, your character will have all of his equipment and abilities removed and un-mapped.

The most unforgivable bug is one which only occurs during Daggerdale’s online multiplayer mode, which once sounded so promising. Sadly, that promise is tough to realize when non-host players are occasionally kicked to a loading screen while the game goes on around their paralyzed hero. More often than not, this snafu crops up during large scale fights, almost ensuring your character will be dead as doornails once the game catches up to you.

Daggerdale also features some of the worst pop-in and texture loading problems seen this console generation, with environmental objects sometimes appearing mere feet in front of the player. Cutscenes — of which there are only a handful — aren’t exempt from these graphical issues, with character and object textures refreshing four or five times right in front of your eyes. It’s a shame, as Daggerdale’s handful of environments are massive and lovingly designed; but its inability to load these environments wrecks the whole experience.

While TheGamersHub is slightly less unforgiving and awards it a 2.5/5

The whole package can be seen as a great deal, however the only real draw would be the online co-op. The shortness of the campaign and the lack of any other modes besides Campaign and Co-Op make me wonder if the game is worth the full 1200 MSP ($15). That money can be put towards full retail titles that will give you all that is offered and more. There are too many faults in the game to simply warrant a day one purchase than anything less than a hardcore D&D fan. However for hardcore Dungeons & Dragons fans, Daggerdale is the supposed first chapter in a game trilogy that is set to take place. Let’s hope that the next entry takes more time on polish and quantity than just what feels like a quick cash in with the D&D name.