Thoughts on the Demo?

[BuckGB]

Anybody else try out the Dungeon Lords demo yet? It's fairly limited, having only three races, one gender, no character customization options, and no "official" quests, but it's still very fun for what is included. I think the final version (with all of the above included/expanded) could definitely be a sleeper hit given D.W. Bradley's track record and how fun Wizards & Warriors was.

Thoughts?

[Monolith]

Perhaps it's just me but after about 10 minutes I had enough of it. Too much action for my taste. And I didn't like the combat system. I simply expected something different - more RPG I guess. I just felt like playing the 3D version of Diablo 2 but with a conceptual combat system.

[txa1265]

I don't see any resemblance to Diablo anywhere ... the combat is pretty clearly modelled on the Jedi Knight II / Blade of Darkness structure, and the game itself bears much resemblence to the Gothic games, in my opinion.

Personally I really enjoyed the 'demo', I wish they had called it a 'tech preview' so people would have had different expectations, and since that is basically what it was.

Mike

[fable]

...could definitely be a sleeper hit given D.W. Bradley's track record and how fun Wizards & Warriors was.

I personally found W&W something between a bore and an annoyance: boring, because NPC dialog never seemed very interesting and quests were fairly mechanical; annoying, because quest items would appear deep in dungeons in rooms you'd already gone through long ago, while the town interface was a mess. His best calling card was several of the Wizardry series, and there he was working alongside other fine designers. I have to say that his work since then has not been terribly impressive, though I'm willing to extend the benefit of the doubt and try the final product.

[BuckGB]

Originally Posted by fable

I personally found W&W something between a bore and an annoyance: boring, because NPC dialog never seemed very interesting and quests were fairly mechanical; annoying, because quest items would appear deep in dungeons in rooms you'd already gone through long ago, while the town interface was a mess.

Really? I'll agree that the town interface was lacking, due to the fact that you had to click on each party member to obtain and finish a quest. However, I thought the Role ascensions (which Bradley is practically trademarked for) and Guild training were both done pretty well overall.

My biggest gripe about NPC dialogue was having to scroll back to read anything more than a few lines of text, especially when an NPC would fire out a novel of text in one shot.

It wasn't the best first-person party-based RPG ever made, but I thought it was solid and earned its claim of "120 hours of play time". With recent RPGs barely hitting 20 or 30 hours, that game was far bigger than anything produced now days, and I'm hoping Dungeon Lords will offer a similar experience.

[txa1265]

I have to admit to missing Wizards & Warriors ... I've looked on eBay a couple of times, perhaps I'll check again ...

But they are talking about '40 - 50 hours without doing all quests'. Based on how I run through games - KotOR took me >60 hours the first two times, for example - that sounds fairly long to me. Not like Divine Divinity or BG2, but pretty long.

Mike

[fable]

Originally Posted by Buck Satan

My biggest gripe about NPC dialogue was having to scroll back to read anything more than a few lines of text, especially when an NPC would fire out a novel of text in one shot.

To be honest, I've never thought of Bradley's writing as impressive. He can do humor well, but when he tries getting profound he just becomes turgid and longwinded. And then there was that one major area in Wizardry VII where he attempted pseudo-Shakespearean English on a massive scale: it is the worst-written material in a game that I've ever come accross. And I've played a huge amount since 1980. I've even posted excerpts with detailed analysis of all their flaws when I was working in an MMORPG, as examples of how *not* to do Renaissance English.

It wasn't the best first-person party-based RPG ever made, but I thought it was solid and earned its claim of "120 hours of play time". With recent RPGs barely hitting 20 or 30 hours, that game was far bigger than anything produced now days, and I'm hoping Dungeon Lords will offer a similar experience.

Given that I had to (as noted in my previous post) return frequently to areas I'd cleaned out in order to retrieve artifacts that *should* have been in rooms I'd visited before, but weren't because the quests weren't triggered yet, I honestly can't claim the 120 hours was accurate. Still, it was a large game, well-structured, and I only hope Bradley gets rid of the no-time-to-think action elements which also annoyed me in W&W, and ultimately led to my abandoning the title. But PR leads me to think that won't be the case in Dungeon Lords.

[fable]

So has anybody else tried the demo?