My Adventure In Dungeon Lords!

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A STORY OF LOVE, HATE, AND WAR

So last month I thought to myself, "Man, I'm going insane. Completely, certifiably insane. I just killed Sarevok again. ****, that's got to be close to a hundred times. Guess I'll move on to Irenicus again, or maybe Dagoth Ur, or Diablo, or something... Maybe I'll create a character that sucks on purpose, just so the experience will be slightly different! Yeah, cool!"

That's when my left eye started winking a bit now and then.

But just recently, about a week ago, I had an ingenious idea! I'll walk my fat ass down to Best Buy and pick up a NEW game! Something brand-spanking new, something I haven't played, something that's single-player, that I can really get into. Something maybe kind of hack and slash, but not TOO much: maybe a little Dungeon Siege, a little Baldur, a little Elder Scrolls, maybe a NWN feel to it - a little of this and that. You know what I'm talkin' about. A good SOLID role-play.

Took my piggy bank down to Best Buy, and the shelf was filled with these strange beautiful exotic things called...uh...MMORPGRPGs or something, but you have to have this thing called the INTERNET. ****. Technology, man. What happened to the classic old-school RPG? Huh? Eh...I was really going crazy, standing there between two shelves full of games, looking for a decent single-player RPG. I almost gave up, and went back home to play Icewind Dale 2 solo without using potions, wearing armor, memorizing spells, or saving.

But then...there was a sharp burst of snow-colored light, and a robed angel (maybe even GOD himself!) came down from the heavens, moseyed over to the game aisle and said, "And yea, I, D.W. Bradley, come unto the Earth to replenish the good of the world, to redeem thy lost souls for thine uncountable sins of replaying, may thou ride the crest of the waves of my ingenious creativity and flawless game design!"

And I said, "Holy ****!"

And poof! There on the shelf, sat D.W. Bradley's DUNGEON LORDS, glowing a little, and on the cover was a cool-lookin' wizard whose eye-twinkle promised me my every dream had come true! Well, most of them. Some of them are weird, and I wake up steamy, and I don't think he could make those come true. Well, maybe. But anyway...

COOL! $50.00? No problem, dude! Fifty bucks is nothing to an average American gamer like me. Hell, I work night shift scraping urine cakes at the senior center just to support my several drug addictions. I am economically unstoppable! My time for playin' Dungeon Lords HAS COME!

So I scooped up this month's savings, broke my poor piggy bank on the Best Buy bathroom floor, and I had $7.46. Roughly a sixth of what I needed. So I went out on the street and beat this old man with his cane and took his wallet, and he had plenty of money so I was fine.

So I bought the game. Just holding it I felt...strangely...powerful...like...nothing...I...had....felt....before....

So anyway, I haven't been to work for a week, and I get things are getting pretty nasty down there, but I don't care. Cause I'M PLAYIN DUNGEON LORDS.

You know, when I first opened the box and started reading the manual by candlelight next to my Altar (on which was the carcass of my cat, Bulby, whom I had sacrificed to D.W. Bradley earlier), I read promises of creating a character. I usually enjoy a character-based RPG, where it's a way of living another life and raising a unique, epic hero that, when you've completed all those engaging, interesting quests, you feel in touch with.

But when I entered the game, I couldn't change the hair color, skin color, that sort of thing, at all. And there was no automap. And I crashed all the time. So I thought, damn, bugs. So I thought, damn, I'll download the patch. So I thought, damn, 38 megabytes. So I thought, damn, time to get fast internet. So I thought, damn, but I just spent this month's paycheck on DUNGEON LORDS. So I thought, damn.

Anyway, I finally got the patch and it didn't fix any problems except the map, so I was like, whatever dude, patches are gay, and I just started playing with a generic nobody dwarf. So there I was, playing DUNGEON LORDS for four days in a row. Unfortunately the experience took a turn for the worse when dwarfy died in an unstoppable horde of fast-swinging undead and it sucked away my experience, unbeknownst to me.

As my dwarf continued on through vaguely pointless dungeons, fighting via a nifty combat system that requires thinking AND clicking at the same time (in order to not have it do anything so you just go back to clicking), I began to realize that this game was created by SATAN and is the worthless bottom-feeding garbage which plagues gamers everywhere, and before I bought it, I should have read the plethora of bad reviews criticizing it for leaky programming, a bland fantasy-novel ripoff plot, generic decent graphics and complete ABSENCE of music, (except for the title theme which goes like this. Duh DEE- duh DUH- duh DEE- DUH DUH!!! Duh Dee- dum dee duh dee...and so forth.) I came to the conclusion that even angels that appear in Best Buy can be morons. D.W.'s an idiot, whether or not I've ever played Wizardry.

Wanna review of this awful game? CLICK HERE!!!
http://www.rpgcodex.com/companydetails.php?id=70

So what am I doing right now, you ask? Actually, this is a memoir. I'm writing this with one hand, while standing on a three-legged chair with a rope going from the rafters to my neck. If I choke to death on my own tongue while hanging myself, it's too good for me. Because I spent 40 hours a week scraping urine cakes for a month just to waste another 30+ playing DUNGEON LORDS.

Some of the five people who actually read this rant are going to say, "WOWYOUCANTYPEWITHONEHANDNOWAY!!!" But some others are going to say, "What happened after he decided Dungeon Lords sucked ass?"

Well, I burnt down my local Best Buy, and I'm currently stalking and assassinating the makers of DUNGEON LORDS one by one, because I have this cool Ninja outfit that I've never been able to wear before, and these ninja stars that you can throw and they stick in stuff. They're cool beans.

If this message ever gets to anybody, and I'm not too positive that it will, please, tell my story. Don't get a job involving urine. And what's more important, don't ever play DUNGEON LORDS. Just...kill Sarevok again...and again...and again...and again...

 

You DO realise that it was god that punished you for beating up that poor old man, just for some cash, do you ?

Seriously, i play DL too, sometimes when i'm bored that is, and i't's not as bad as you described it, different minds, different opinions, no ? I agree that the game is buggy like hell, that's because they simply released it when it wasn't even finished, blame those damn moneyloving softwaredistibutors for that. It was also pretty annoying that all buildings and rooms you entered were completely empty, no people in bars, no beds in bedrooms, no furniture at all, nothing. I guess they left that open for the witty modmakers among us. But it never crashed on my PC, if it did that as well, i would have uninstalled it after a day or so, but it runs smooth enough on my system, no complains there.

It's a pretty difficult game at times, bu i wouldn't want to have it any other way. That room with the undead you mentioned for instance was a real bitch. If it wasn't for that lifegiving amulet or something, i would have never gotten out of there, too many of those creatures jumping you at the same time. Took me an hour or two to make it out of there i think.

The gameplay isn't bad imo, i like those special moves your character developes once he levels up, it just annoys the living crap out of me that you get attacked every other 20 seconds or so, wolves, spiders, snakes, scorpions, and whatnot literally spawns where you stand, it's even worse than those friggin Cliff Racers in Morrowind.

All in all this game is entertaining enough for me to press on till the end, but then it's on the shelf collecting dust i guess. Fairly good, but not good enough to replay once or twice.

 

Dude - you sound just like me after playing full price + for POR2.

The sad truth is: there are no good new games. RPGs are dead, my friend.

 

Now that's how a review should be written.

The British PCGamer rubbished it too. So have plenty of other sources. Research on your next purchase may well prevent a suicide.

 

BEST REVIEW EVER!!

Seriously though, I bought the game too. I really tried giving it a chance. I really did. But the game just ****ing sucks. I mean; as you mentioned, there are customizing buttons, but no-place to use them, the game promises customable characters, but nooo. Anyways, even if it did have that it'd never, EVER hide the fact that it's a slow, and horribly bad attempt at an action RPG.