Dungeons & Dragons Online Reviews

A trio of new reviews for Turbine's Dungeons & Dragons Online: Stormreach have reached the web. The first is at IGN PC with an overall score of 7.5/10:
Turbine quickly announced that it would be adding more content in April -- another large dungeon with a raft of quests, and the first dragon that Dungeons & Dragons Online players will actually get to see and fight. But it shouldn't take more than a few days to get through it before you're back to square one. I don't claim to know what's best for the MMO gamer, and I recognize that there will be a constant juggle of quality versus quantity in any design document. But it looks like content with the depth of D&D can't be done easily in MMO-sized amounts, if you want to get your game out the door in a reasonable amount of time; before your budget runs dry and before you get too far behind the technology and features curve. I think DDO's single-player content is more compelling and its dungeons more accessible and numerous than in World of Warcraft or EverQuest II. Its visuals are technologically superior to WoW's without suffering from EQII's unsettling mannequins and relatively bland environments. But DDO doesn't hold a candle to either in terms of breadth or replayability. If only they'd had more time, or a larger team, then I might be singing DDO's praises to the rooftops. Instead, it's a cool experience that's essentially over all too quickly.

The second is at Amped IGO PC with an overall score of 6.9/10:
It's impossible not to compare Dungeons & Dragons Online to other available games on the market, and if you're a hardcore D&D fan that likes online games, you'll purchase it anyway. If you're already playing an MMO and looking for a new experience, D&DO isn't necessarily your best option. It's group dungeon crawls are very good, but a total lack of features, slow pace, and low risk-to-reward ratio is not going to be everyone's cup of tea. Turbine did an excellent job of bringing the core tabletop experience to an MMO, but this focus costs dearly by making the game neither broad, nor deep. If you enjoy soloing or like being able to log on for short periods of time and still accomplish something, steer clear. For everyone else, there's enough to like and enough to dislike to make jumping in a crapshoot. Unless you are positive Dungeons & Dragons Online is right up your alley, you'll do best to stick to WoW, Guild Wars, or Neverwinter Nights for your online role-playing goodness.

And the third is at CheatCodeCentral with an overall score of 4.1/5:
Dungeon crawling is both rewarding and dangerous. It's a good source of upgrades and experience points but it's also filled with monsters and pitfalls. Here you will experience a variety of gameplay elements including combat, puzzle solving, action, exploring and tactics. An auto map will help guide you through the dungeon. You can recover hit points relatively easy in the dungeons through the use of magic and other items found, spell points are much more difficult to recover. Healers will help characters regain their health and there is at least one recover zone where players can rest and recharge their health and regain their hit points.