Dungeons & Dragons: Dark Alliance Review

"Alright Crawling"

Campaign

July 11, 2021 at 6:46pm
By Jason Stettner

This use of the Dungeons and Dragons IP is based around a cooperative situation. You’re aiming to battle the typical allotment of trolls, goblins and maybe the odd ice dragon. You do this across a range of three act missions and eventually a few dungeons following the same structure. There’s a very light story here as well, based around the collection of a special shard.

The story could have been integrated better as I found it hard to follow. It felt as though you were basically just plopped into a series of events and were told to battle. That’s fine I suppose, I just would have liked a deeper look at the lore from a narrative perspective.

It’s also not necessarily the longest of games, but it’s decent enough and possibly something you’d replay with other character classes. I felt that the novelty was worn out the first time, but some may find it entertaining past that. You could lightly go back to complete side objectives but the maps are very linear and straight forward with minor off the beaten the path moments.

You will also get the odd CGI cinematic woven in, these were actually quite high quality visually and strangely funny to see in action with a mix of drums quite often. Like seriously a lot of drum usage. When you’re not out adventuring you’ll be in a camp area checking on gear, picking the next mission and waiting for others to join if you’d like to. It’s a bit odd that it doesn’t have drop-in/drop-out coop. You have to connect at the camp to play with others, not the best way to handle that aspect.

Gameplay

One of the highlights of the experience is the high quality environments. For this tier of gaming it does actually look great. It’s got some gorgeous backdrops, brings great particle effects and a good sense of scale. You’ll explore a variety of biomes too, from deep mines to mystical ethereal planes.

There are quite a few AI lining each location, perhaps not the smartest bunch but they have some funny styles to them in how they act. You get a range too, from small to really large. Some of the bigger ones you can basically just see up to their torsos. When it comes to combat the game does have a fairly fluid and creative system to it for combos.

Each character class has unique weapon styles and armor that you can use to improve your stats. There are also some skill options for the characters alongside bonus feats to upgrade as well. A fairly simple set of options, but it grants some personalization which is nice to have available.

The Conclusion

Dungeons and Dragons: Dark Alliance is an alright adventure, it’s got a fine amount of content and it’s good fun for a group. I would have liked a better drop-in/drop-out style of play, but the systems in place get the job done.

The character systems are easy to understand, not too complex and it’s four straight set options without too much variation. The environments are a treat, you get some great looking locations and decently varied AI to battle. Some cool bosses, and staples of the IP are present here. It’s mostly just a fine experience.

You’ll play through it and move on most likely. It’s still fine and I somewhat enjoyed it. I hope they add more content as this could build into something more long term. At this point it’s really middle of the line, I hope that’s been made clear here.

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Dungeons & Dragons: Dark Alliance Review on Xbox Series X

Rating Overall: 6.0