Dungeons & Dragons Heroes

"Best Played Together"

On the game disc, there's a message saying ''Best Played Together''. On the back of the box, there's another saying ''Four have been summoned''.

Well, that's how D&D Heroes is most enjoyable.

D&D Heroes is an hack'n slash game (very, very very) loosely based on the pen and paper RPG Dungeons & Dragons.

The premise is as follow; 150 years ago, you fought a battle against an evil powerful wizard, and in that battle, everybody died. Today, some evil cult brought the wizard back to life. Since nobody else seems able to defeat him, someone had the idea to bring you back to life. That's where the game starts. No rest for you.

STORY: NA (I'm not taking it into account, but it's something like 2/10 actually)

Well, D&D Heroes pretends to be an RPG and it is only marginally so. The storyline is nothing but a serie of fetch quests. You won't be playing this game for its storyline. It is worth almost nothing. I mean it, one fetch quest after another. It has one, yes, one plot twist. No more.

The storyline has two redeeming qualities however. It is logical (no holes in it, nothing stupid, crazy or illogical) and it manages to not take time away from the better parts of the game. The dialogues does not drag on and on and everyone get quickly to the point.

As I said, you won't play the game for its storyline, but you'll know why you're hacking in all those monsters.

GRAPHICS: 8/10

When you zoom in, you get the see the amount of details given to characters and everything else, but when you zoom that much, you don't see very far so don't expect to spend a lot of time looking at how good those graphics look.

And if you aren't playing solo, the camera automatically zoom out when you put some distance between your partners, but it doesn't zoom in when you get closer, you have to do it yourself. Not that it would have been a good idea, but my point is that you'll spend most of the time at the maximum zoom out, unable to enjoy just how good looking are those characters.

As for animations for spells and special abilities, I'd say it's pretty good. Unfortunately, some spell and abilities effect tends to clutter the screen and at its worse, it can become difficult to know where your character is, much less what you are doing.

SOUNDS: 6/10

The sound effects are ok, swinging your sword sounds like the usual sword swinging, hitting the enemies sounds like hitting the enemies and etc.

There is little voice acting, but it rules. I can't think of many games where we hear serious adult voice acting that isn't overdone. Listening to these people speak feels like listening to real people speaking.

As for music, I can't remember much of it. This is an hack'n slash game, so you'll be hearing sword-in-flesh, grunts and spell flinging more than the background music. In many ways I hoped for better than that, but anyway, if you play with friends, will you really be listening to the music.

GAMEPLAY: 7/10

This category make AND break the game.

Let's start by giving you an idea of how it works. There is a button assigned to attacking and a trigger to blocking. Not that you will be blocking much, it's usually better to dodge. Or simply hack the monster before it strike.

Two other buttons are assigned to special abilities and a fourth button is assigned to miscellaneous usable items. You can change what abilities and item you want to use by opening a menu with the other trigger. When you do so, the game slows down (there is an option to make it not slow down, but no option to make it stop).

The black and white buttons are assigned to ''quick potions''

You'll be attacking a lot, dodging a little and sometime using all your magic power in a single onslaught of magic/special abilities.

After killing enough monsters, you gain a level. With each level you gain more HP (hit points; health) and MW (mystic will; magic power). You also earn Level-up points to buy special abilities and power-ups. Every four level, you get to upgrade a ''base ability'' (strength, dexterity, constitution, intelligence, wisdom and charisma) in a D&D fashion.

Unfortunately, most special abilities are almost worthless. So you'll probably stick to the same two abilities all the time.

While killing monsters, you will also find treasure, some of it will be weapons and armors. So you get to upgrade your equipment, but, unless you were wearing the worst equipment and are changing for the best, chances are you won't notice much of a difference.

Your hero starts with an Ancestral weapon. However, those weapons were cursed by the evil wizard before he killed you and the Ancestral weapons power has been scattered across the world in ''Soul Shards''. There's twenty of those to find and you'll find most on your first try. I got 19 out of 20 on my first try and I'm not very good at finding hidden things.

Finding the Soul Shards is as challenging as the game will get. I've never seen the game over screen and never will unless I try to.

To be game over, you have to first get hurt by the monster. It will happen. If your party includes the cleric, he can heal you. If not, you can use the quick potions button I mentioned earlier to replenish your health or magic power with a single push of a button.

Until you run out of potion which will not happen often. If it happens, you can quickly head back to the Castle Shoppe to buy more with your endless amount of gold you have.

But, if you are unlucky or careless (or a bit of both), you could get killed (as 150 years ago, but a shameful death at the hand of some lowly random monster this time). But you still aren't game over. If your hero was carrying at least one Raise Dead Amulet, you can come back to life. As it happens, you'll find more than enough of those.

The usual canon fodder monster are not really a threat and the boss are no more dangerous than that. They just take longer to kill. Actually, the only real challenge is at the beginning of the game when you still haven't built up a good stock of healing potions and Raise Dead Amulet.

So basically, D&D Heroes is a simple and easy hack'n slash game.

As you may have guessed, the multi player mode is cooperative. There's no ''friendly fire'' so you don't have to worry about hitting your partners.

THE D&D FACTOR (1/10)

This game is loosely based on D&D. At the beginning, it looks like it is D&D, but you'll quickly see through the deception.

Spell casters with almost endless magic power, AC that reduce damage instead of making you more difficult to hit (not to mention that your AC will reach 100 by the end of the game), weapons that inflict 20 to 60 points of damage in a single hit, etc.

This game shouldn't bear the name D&D. It's really not D&D.

OVERALL: 7/10

A simple and easy multi player hack'n slash, somewhat repetitive and most certainly not D&D.

I insist, this game is:

Best Played Together.

Reviewer's Score: 7/10, Originally Posted: 02/06/04