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Review: Dragonshard
- Title: Dragonshard
- Developer: Liquid Entertainment
- Publisher: Atari
- System: PC
- Reviewer: Zonk
- Score: 8/10
In addition to the setting, Liquid also broke new ground with gameplay elements. While most RTS titles pit you against other factions in titanic battles, Dragonshard offers more than one way to play the game. On the surface of Xen'drik you build a fortress settlement and train up characters referred to as captains. These captains fill different character templates from the Eberron setting (artificers, rogues, ranged warriors, warforged soldiers, etc). Powerful captains attract soldiers which bolster your numbers while campaigning aboveground. There are several unique hero characters you can choose from as well, and these lead your captains in battle against opposing forces. The problem is that the only resource you can gather aboveground are the semi-ubiquitous dragonshards. Like every good adventuring party, you need gold to fund your conquests. In the grand tradition of D&D there is just as much gameplay to be had belowground as above. In the dungeon realm of Khyber, which runs beneath every level's map, monstrous creatures with hordes of loot await your blade's ministrations. By taking your captains belowground you leave the common soldiery behind, reducing the game to a much more traditional dungeoncrawling experience. Defeating these creatures nets you experience, which you can apply to captain types in order to level them up. In a nice circular fashion, leveled captains gain more followers. These soldiers don't count against the maximum number of followers you can control, and above ground your captains lead huge armies against your opponents. As you conquer more of the map above, you'll find new entrances to the Underdark and new opportunities for loot.
The result is a fun combination of traditional Warcraft-like combat and something more akin to Neverwinter Nights. The focus of game's storyline is very RPG, as well. A group of good-aligned warriors united in their worship of the Holy Flame seek three mystic seals which will allow them access to a giant hunk of Dragonshard. The powerful relic has affected the local lizardfolk population, changing them in substantial ways and providing the primary adversary for the Holy Flame's army. Aside from the goals you'll attempt to fulfill in acquiring the seals, quests you receive from characters scattered throughout the map give you opportunities to gain additional power and treasure. Items can affect your Hero's stats, and some quests can even open up new captain types in your base. The experience taken as a whole is very different than your standard cookie-cutter RTS, and the variety of gameplay ensures that if you get bored with one aspect of the game you can indulge in another activity to switch things up.
Base building in Dragonshard is fairly unique as well. Bases are laid out into blocks of four squares, with a central citadel and a stout wall surrounding the buildings. Unit-building structures are built on each square. Once their training facility is constructed, captains can be trained and (if you have enough experience) upgraded to level 2. By building another of the same structure type adjacent to the original, you can train units more quickly and upgrade the captain type further. Beyond simply upgrading the captains, there are structures you can build in the square arrangement that will improve the statistics of adjacent unit structures. Placing a mana increase obelisk in an arrangement with priest and sorcerer producing buildings will allow your spellcasters to be more effective in combat. It takes some getting used to, but once you get the hang of putting together a base it's easy to throw one together fairly quickly. After you've ventured into the Underdark enough times to gain some sizeable wealth you'll have a base that resembles a small city, with monuments and buildings nicely blending together.
The visual look of the game is distinct, and quite attractive. Units are highly detailed, with lots of nice touches given to the captains and heroes you'll be leading. One hero has a cross hanging from their armor that swings as she runs, while the angelic Archons wield inner-lit lightning bolts. The lizardfolk are especially intricately designed, with spines and scale flaps all over the place. The world is equally beautifully rendered, with environmental effects aplenty and a deformable terrain adding to the experience of combat in a substantial way. The most dramatic way to see the terrain deformation is the infrequent impacts of dragonshards from above. The first time it happens, it's quite startling to see. The explosions of crystalline shards are heavy enough to knock your troops off of their feet if they hit nearby, and leave collectible shards nestled in impact craters in their wake. The downside to all this pretty is a drag on your rig. While I don't have a cutting edge setup, I can play Half-Life 2 with most of the shinies turned up. Just the same, a screen full of warring armies caused me slowdowns on a couple of occasions. Despite the slowdowns, Dragonshard is a dramatic game. The auditory environment is dramatic as well, with angry cries and clashing blades adding emphasis to the visual devastation. Heroes and captains have unique vocalizations and catch phrases. As with every RTS they get old after the hundredth time you've heard them, but until you get fed up and turn them off you'll enjoy their gusto. There are precious few cinematics in the game, with most plot elements being explored via cutscenes acted out within the engine. While this is a good way to show off the game's graphical power, it can make for some odd moments. Up-close, the running animations of the heroes looks decidedly awkward. Additionally, there are no animations for characters to turn in place. When a hero turns to address one of his fellows, he rotates in place like a cardboard cutout. It's distracting, but the cut-scenes move the plot forward effectively. While some of them skirt the line of hokey gaming patter, for the most part they do a good job of keeping you informed about your goals in the single-player campaign.
The single-player mission is enjoyable, but re-playability is fairly low due to brevity. Multiplayer is where the game gets an extended life. Whatever reservations I have about the single-player are easily ignored when it comes to online play. The aboveground/Underdark gameplay makes for an even more interesting experience when other adventuring parties are thrown into the mix. In addition to probing the dungeons for treasure and experience, you have to fend off the opposing forces as well. This can be a tricky prospect if you've just put your party through a difficult boss battle. Beyond the basic gameplay, there are additional objectives that you can attempt to gain dominance. A capture-the-flag-like mode has you collecting artifacts before your opponent does, while another gametype requires you to take and hold places of power for a given span of time. Good gameplay is nothing without opponents, and I was very happy to have little problem finding folks to play against via the browser. The only catch is that you have to download a patch straight off in order to get online. A small price to play for the most entertaining way to play the game.
I didn't like this game at first. My knee-jerk reaction to this version of Eberron set me back, and the gameplay didn't jump out at me the way many other games have in the past. It's been a slow year for Real-Time Strategy, but after some time working with Dragonshard it began to grow on me. The base-building has a very different feel to it than your standard model, and the Underdark dungeoncrawling component is the perfect contrast to combat between massive armies. There are still elements that weaken the end result. The single-player game is very short, and confusingly while there are three races in the game there are only two campaigns. The game has occasional slowdowns, and the random Underdark spawn tables can make for overly interesting forays in the Multiplayer game. Overall, though, Dragonshard is well worth taking in if you're a fan of strategy games or the Dungeons and Dragons brand. Eberron is a fascinating setting, and I'm looking forward to seeing it realized more fully in future titles.
and confusingly while there are three races in the game there are only two campaigns.
There are plenty of real-world examples. For example, consider the three races of Sunni, Shiite, and God-Fearing Christian, which are only engaged in two campaigns (Iraq and Afghanistan.)
Every unit has >1 special attacks that can be used, some quite often (i.e. ever 10 seconds or something), but there is no way to quickly select those specials of a group of mixed chars.
So the barbarians can activat their bloodrush, or the archers summon rats/bats, or the healers cast "hold" spells, but if you have a group of all ranged characters (like archers+healers), you cannot select those powers. You got to deselect the group and select a "racially clean" group. (instead of doing the obvious and just accept the the command only for appropiate units).
That way, to get the most out of the game, it becomes a "who clicks faster" competition, and frankly, if i want to measure up in that department, i play winter games on a c64 emulator...
HI O WISE PRINCE. WHT TOOK U SO DAM LONG?
The game is set on the jungle continent of Xen'drik, and as a result some of the most interesting Eberron-specific elements are far to the north on another continent
Yes and this will be the add-on "City of Daggers - Sharn"
I mod down so you can mod up. Your welcome.
RTS along with D&D? Something definately worth while. I have always been rather surprised that Wizards never came up with a MMORPG that is D&D related. Lets hope they do... dragonlance related too. I would love to run around Krynn beating up the baddies! I shall settle for gemstone IV click here for link for now. text Muds PWN too ya know :)
-- Josh
"Whoopie! Man, that may have been a small one for Neil, but that's a long one for me!" - Pete Conrad
Honestly, i was very disapointed in this game. Its yet another C&C clone that just cant seem to get anything right. Lord of the Rings had the EXACT same building mechanism 2 years ago, with better graphics. Unless you have a real hard on for ebberon id steer far clear of this game.
Like the saying goes, never underestimate the bandwidth of a station wagon full of tapes. -Pyrotic
Click here or here.
RTS stands for real-time strategy. As opposed to, say, turn-based strategy.
see the "Oh Shit" expression on his face on that last picture.
Demo Available here: New Warhammer 40,000 Dawn of War Winter Assault demo
I may pick up Dragonshard eventually too... but I imagine that with the little time I have available for Game Playing I'll have my hands full with Winter Assault.
"MIT betrayed all of its basic principles."
From a LARPer?
Hi pot, I'm kettle, your black.
If forums teach us anything, it is that logic and critical thinking should be required courses in the public schools.
Oh yeah, I'm sure you get all the chicks yelling out, "LIGHTNING BOLT! LIGHTNING BOLT! LIGHTNING BOLT! LIGHTNING BOLT!" while throwing pebbles at people.
> A group of good-aligned warriors united in their worship of the Holy
> Flame seek three mystic seals
Warrior 1: "Ok, here, I've found the seals"
Warrior 2: "Ummm, are those... circus seals?"
Warrior 3: "How do they balance those beach balls on the noses?"
Warrior 1: "It's... mystical"
SpellForce 2 does this... RPG RTS combo. It is a very special kind of suckage... games rarely suck that bad. In fact, I don't think any game sucks that bad. It's like a new discovery voyage of suckage. No, I didn't like it. So for these guys to say that's what they are doing... I have some serious doubts.
MadOgre.com
Turbine is already producing it: http://www.ddo.com/
Klein bottle for rent - inquire within.
is an engine that can help a DM design thier own world for others to play in. Heck that is what D&D is all about. D&D gave you the books and you developed the world. Sure you could buy a world that the D&D creators fleshed out but I always enjoyed creating my own. If I could just get an AI engine for NPCs and monsters, graphics, and whatever building blocks I need to create my own world. THAT would be cool. Then I could host my world on a dedicated PC off of my high speed internet and control the number of users that come in....
"If you are on fire you can just stop, drop, and roll. If you fall into Lava you are just dead." - my 5yr old daughter
Ther are RPG games, LARPS, and Table Top Games
No gamer in existance and play all three (must pick two). You obviously chose LARP and Table Top, if you were even slightly interested in computer games over the last decade (and had internet access) you would know that RTS was Real Time Stradegy.
Wow, sent an e-mail as suggested when clicking on "use classic" banner, and got a fast response that addressed my msg
You just hit tab when you have a diverse group selected, and the focus moves between each type of unit. You had to do the same thing in Warcraft 3 and it's not too bad.
Planescape: Torment and the Baldur's Gate sagas are some of the finest gaming experiences RPG fans can cite.
I haven't played all that many of these games, because I became disenchanted with the whole genre long ago, but I have to ask... do any of these games actually provide any opportunities for role playing? That is, do you as a player have any control over your character's actions beyond those of a "choose your own adventure" book? Oh, sure, you can choose to go on or not go on side-quests, but beyond that the only results of your actions are whether you make it through to the ending, or at the most get one of a couple of different variations to the end.
For a canned game, where the only person involved is yourself, this kind of interactive fiction approach is probably the best you can manage... but even the "massively multiplayer" games seem to give you awfully limited opportunities for developing your own character with his or her own motivations and goals. And, after all, that's what distinguishes the role-playing campaign from the canned dungeon crawl whete the DM may as well BE a computer...
"Dragonshard is the first melding of Dungeons and Dragons with the Real-Time Strategy genre"
You're off by about 9 years. Blood & Magic was a D&D RTS based on Forgotten Realms that came out in 1996. Not a terrible game, but it wasn't near the top of RTS's even back then.
Then you want Neverwinter Nights (and the subsequent exapansion packs)
It comes with a phenominal world-building engine and some of the community-produced content for it is breathtaking. There's some very talented world-builders and storytellers out there.
And the game can be played multiplayer with a DM.
Oh - and it runs on Linux!
DG
Want to learn about race cars? Read my Book
Eberron ain't that great a setting. It's not particularly inspired, and the rules for it don't help it reach its stated goal, which is to create "Cinematic Roleplaying". Wow, ok, I have these "Action Points" that can be used as die bumps. Thats crazy. Wow, the "Extreme Adventurer" gets more of these die bumps. So very cinematic. =P
I think their core concept is that if you publish modules with one or two film noir-esque illustrations in each one, that somehow will make a roleplaying experience cinematic. (And no, it doesn't work.)
For a roleplaying system that actually, really, creates a cinematic feel to it, try out Feng Shui some time. There's a D20 adaptation for it (Google "Burning Shaolin"), but their core system is better. No dis on D&D, I play it a lot, it's just that they really missed the mark on this one.
It's an airship, powered by an air elemental. They're pretty rare in Eberron, and are difficult to fly, and only go 20mph anyway, so don't expect it to fundamentally change the balance of the game.
Planescape: Torment was good in spite of the fact that it was based on the D&D system. Not because of that system. As one friend of mine put it: "It just shows what you can do with a system, when you ignore that system as much as you can, and just write a good story."
i think i speak for many of us when i ask the question: Where are our Dragonlance and/or Ravenloft related games and/or movies? Personally, these settings interested me the most of all the TSR worlds. Someday, the Chronicles will be made into a movie, and then everything will be right in the world. :-D
I've played it ... its fun, but nothing greatly different from other RTSes. A few peculiarities to make it interesting for a while, but if you play it a lot I'm sure it boils down to just as much micro as Warcraft III (and similar strategies etc as well). For a few weeks entertainment (depending on how intensively you play - for me with a full-time job a few weeks at least) for someone who likes RTS games in general its worthwhile.
I would ignore the 'first D&D RTS' claims - once you get past appearances its not much closer to D&D than Warcraft. And unfortunately the more magic etc you throw into such a game, the more micro-ing is required (personally I always find games with lots of magic + heroes etc initially attractive, but due to the inevitable micro-ing required for such games I tend to end up playing the more strategic games like Kohan longer). And the dungeons are just an excuse to lean the games towards creeping which inevitably makes the games more of a race.
But I would also ignore the 'another C&C clone' trolls. If its your kind of thing, its worth a play as long as you don't expect too much over existing RTSes. It is definately different, but its not D&D, and if you play any of these RTSes too much they inevitably all boil down to the same thing. Its inherent in the name _real-time_ strategy that time is of the essence, and thus micro etc becomes ever more important once the basic strategy+tricks are understood.