Daggerdale - Now Available

I must echo Bill's point about installation. If the damned thing was going to be obtainable by Steam anyway, what purpose if there in having a DVD? The initial installation took long enough, then the Steam download was pretty large. How is it the game can be installed from Steam, yet on the retail release date you couldn't just order it directly? Seemed kind of silly to me.

As for gameplay I haven't actually fired it up, but I don't expect a hack and slash title to somehow capture how D&D is supposed to be played. Nobody believes that except the marketing department at Atari. And honestly, I kind of wish I had checked out the class/race combinations.

The controls are WASD and you left click for primary attack and right click for secondary attack-also you can map stuff to the number keys

Feels like Baldurs Gateark Alliance or Champions of Norrath which was on PS2
It is a mindless attack and loot game which if it had been Borderlands, Magika or Left for Dead, nobody would have been peeved. But, because of the D&D tag, everybody is insulted and feels like they have crapped on their personal franchise. The PC versian looks and plays pretty well, I think most of the bugs are Xbox related.
Multiplayer runs through Gamespy(actually you have to have a Gamespy account to even get to the game menu. Connecting is flawless and there are leaderboards. I heard(haven't tested it yet) you can play local co-op by just plugging in a joystick.
Otherwise it is online 4 player co-op. Its 15.00.

Also , there is a card telling you about an online D&D game at the D&D website where you can make characters and play some kind of campaign at their site using actual rules. Says you can do it in a couple of hours and it happens weekly.
Lots of stuff to buy at that website, D&D related

Yes the Steam stuff is crazy. I don't have that fast a connection and it took three more hours on top of the install.MInus 1 fail for that

redman5427 said:

Also , there is a card telling you about an online D&D game at the D&D website where you can make characters and play some kind of campaign at their site using actual rules. Says you can do it in a couple of hours and it happens weekly.
Lots of stuff to buy at that website, D&D related

Yes the Steam stuff is crazy. I don't have that fast a connection and it took three more hours on top of the install.MInus 1 fail for that

Click to expand...

Interesting. Can you name the site?

http://www.wizards.com/dnd/

Click to expand...

I'm wrong, it is just to sign up for weekly campaigns at a store near you

I was bored this morning, and surfing XBL so I grabbed the demo. It's not all that bad, it's an action-RPG based on 4.0. As such, you use one of 4 characters w/ pre-selected race and class, but the choice of some familiar (if you've played 4.0) starting powers and feats such as "blinding strike" and "weapon focus" for the rogue. So while you cannot pick race/class and your initial stat points are pre-allocated, you do indeed get to set up your character otherwise w/ a choice of starting power and feat, later on it looks like you can start allocating stat points. Lots of loot, a merchant to trade w/, that's all that I saw. From a presentation standpoint, I dont think the game looked visually bad, but I'm pretty forgiving in that respect so my opinion may not be worth much.

I faced no bugs while playing it, and got to the end of the relatively short demo between 10-15 mins of play. I personally liked what I saw better than Dark Alliance, a title that immediately comes to mind when playing it.

Wouldnt pay 15 bones for it, but I'll pick it up when it hits 5. May be fun to play thru on a Saturday w/ a 4 pack of Boddingtons and a bag of pretzels. Hopefully they'll patch it up by then! ='.'=

I have the PC version of the game. And while I did not play for more than a few hours I can say it played bug free for that short time. As for the installation, it took about 45 minutes. It seems that the disk does the first half, then steam takes over. Maybe steam was actually patching the game instead of installing it? Not sure, but yes it is definitely an odd process. And it is supposed to feel and play like Dark Alliance.. This was the game that inspired it. From what I hear this is the first game in a trilogy, with each new game expanding the level cap and adding new classes, features, etc. They will need to step up their efforts if they hope to have a success. A lot of people are put off. From not being able to even purchase the game, to the install, to game breaking bugs.