by Jonathan Corey - June 1, 2005

Role-playing games have always been a favorite of mine, offering epic stories and lovable characters that provide an escape form the monotony of life. Compared to headliners like Final Fantasy and the Elder Scrolls, many RPGs simply don't stand up. Dungeon Lords falls flat on its ass. Welcome to a world of clumsy combat and complex advancement accentuated by a whole range of incomplete features.

What, no map?

Dungeon Lords takes place in a world thrown into confusion by the death of a great wizard named Galdryn. Galdryn was betrayed by his colleagues in the Circle of Mages. Upon entering the game, you find a yourself along a wooded path in the dead of night. Up ahead, the light from a campfire can be seen. You find that you are in the wilderness outside the city of Fargrove and that your assistance is dearly needed at the Temple of the Circene within the city walls. Immediately, you will face annoyance at the lack of a map feature. The game contains absolutely no form of map, so you would be best advised to memorize your surroundings and try to keep track of your path when in a dungeon.

If you've gotten this far, then you've made your way through the clumsy and underutilized character creation process. Upon seeing the character creation screen, you will find that multiple customization options exist. There are seven races to choose from in Dungeon Lords, including the classic Humans, Elves and Dwarves and four others including the Wylvan, a wolf-like species, the reptilian Zaur, the Gremlin-esque Thrall and the Urgoth, a race of massive warriors known for their brute strength and complete idiocy. Other customization options include facial style, hair style and hair color, among others, however these features were never implemented, so a default model is used for each race.

Dungeon Lords is essentially a skill based game. Attributes and skills can both be increased through the use of advancement points. Advancement points are gained with experience and are received as a bonus when a character levels up. The game has four seperate character classes, however you are not confined to only the skills of the class you chose at the time of creation. Each class is able to learn all the skills of the others with an affinity for skills of their own class. For example, an Adept is able to learn the Lockpicking skill from the Thief's skill set, however his skills in celestial magic are cheaper to learn and receive bonuses from his class.

The skill system allows you to fine tune your character to your playstyle, whether you prefer all out melee, archery skills or proficiency in four different schools of magic, the decision is yours. This allows for some interesting hybrid characters. Through the game, you will obtain various quests of multiple types, be it to kill a certain monster or to obtain an ancient relic from a dark tomb, these quests propel your character through the story, endowing you with the items and experience you will need to see it through.

The game uses standard mouse look, WASD movement. The main key used for interaction with the world is Shift, causing somewhat awkward finger positioning on the keyboard. I would recommend changing the controls in the game options to use the space bar instead. It will save your fingers much pain from the constant contortion.

I should've brought a flashlight

Aesthetically, Dungeon Lords is by no means groundbreaking, however the game textures and design do compliment each other to provide a visually stimulating experiencing. One of the nicest visual aspects is that when anything, character, wall or creature, is shot with an arrow, that arrow remains lodged temporarily in that object. It's very cool to see your character chopping through hordes of undead with an arrow stuck in his shoulder.

Overall the lighting in the game is very dark, complimenting the desperation of the storyline. This causes many startling moments when you hear a cackle and a mob of goblins come running out of the darkness, out for your blood.

On a very positive note, the HUD is quite minimal. The only things on the screen consistently are a small health meter at the top left and an equally small compass at the top right. This leaves a large viewing area completely unhindered by needless interface pieces.

Rawr!

The sound effects in Dungeon Lords are definitely one of its best features. Most NPCs in the game have unique voices and nearly every part of each conversation has audio to accompany it. This definitely adds to the feeling of immersion in the game, especially important to RPGs. The music and ambient sounds are also excellent, making for a very enjoyable experience.

Somebody dropped the ball

As far as fun is concerned, initially Dungeon Lords is quite devoid of it. While trying to master the somewhat clumsy combat system, you very quickly find yourself in a sewer beneath Fargrove trying to find yourself, mapless, into the city walls. This encounter, although frustrating, will quickly familiarize you with combat tactics and provide you with the experience you will need to get started on your quests. The further you progress into Dungeon Lords, the more fun the game becomes. Once you truly master the art of combat, which requires significant strategy, from blocking and counterattacking to a range of evasive maneuvers, you will find the game quite entertaining.

Multiplayer Hell

Dungeon Lords includes a multiplayer option that can be run via LAN or over the internet through GameSpy Arcade. The multiplayer interface, however is quite unimpressive and any game with more than two or three characters quickly becomes too laggy to play. Although the story in Dungeon Lords is intriguing, the game overall has many issues, including the awkward combat system, a massive amount of unimplemented features and absolutely no form of introduction into the game, such as a tutorial.

Not for the masses

I would recommend Dungeon Lords to hardcore RPG fans such as myself, however, everyone else should steer clear of this game. For those patient enough to sit through its abundance of problems, Dungeon Lords has many hours of hack-n-slash fun to offer. Dungeon Lords is definitely no Morrowind, but kind of like a short, retarded cousin.