Dragonshard reviews

D&D fans should be warned that this game does not implement the D&D ruleset. This is a D&D game ONLY in the sense that it's set in an official D&D campaign setting with D&D monsters and character classes.

Dragonshard is an excellent RTS, featuring elements of Kohan II and WC3. Bases consist of one city containing slots which can be filled with troop-producing buildings or monuments to provide troop enhancements.

Instead of D&D xp and leveling, xp is assigned to a global pool and used to level up troop types en masse. This allows for more advanced planning and control of army development.

Above ground, your army consists of squads which automatically train support troops when they're in the vicinity of your base. Below ground, the game shifts to a traditional dungeon crawl with single troops replacing squads. Underground areas feature side quests, traps, and a lot of creep hunting.

The single player campaign is fairly short and lacks the strategic depth one finds in the best RTS games, but it offers fun and varied gameplay. The graphics and sound are above average and the interface works well. The game is somewhat buggy – I encountered occasional crashes and corrupt saves after extended gaming sessions.

Overall, Dragonshard is a solid game that delivers a novel and satisfying blend of RTS and RPG. I strongly recommend it to fans of the genre.

Nice graphics but at the cost of performance. I have a fairly good system but I had serious performance issues at 1024×768 and 2× AA, even with the high end graphics options off. It seems to only want to refresh at 60 Hertz too, which sucks.

It tries to be both an RPG kind of game and a RTS. The RPG element is really dumbed down however. Your little party runs around in dungeons gathering gold, killing a few monsters and doing a few rudimentary quests. Then when you've gathered enough gold you head to your base on the surface, and set about wiping out the enemy. This is the RTS portion of the game, but it's not much fun either. Your base is a walled enclosure with little pads on which you build buildings to produce your troops. You have to build on the pads, you can't build anything on the terrain. I don't know why they did it this way because it's as boring as it sounds.

Battles are fast and frenetic and the screen swarms with units. Everything moves so fast you have little control when battle is joined. You can try to use your ranged units somewhat strategically by concentrating their fire on priority targets but the melee units tear around so fast you just have to leave them to it and hope your guys come out on top. You can't even give orders while the game is paused, which would have been a tremendous help.

The story is extremely simplistic and dull and does nothing to make the game interesting. You can't turn off unit responses, which get really annoying so I ended up having to turn voice off completely. Since I also had performance issues I can't say I enjoyed it very much at all.

This is one of those games that you will either love, or you will hate. I highly suggest you check out the single and multiplayer demos to see which category you fall into as this is one game that cannot be judged by reviews alone. Opinions will vary.