Dungeon Lords Steam Edition

Short review after finishing the game at lv 41: a fun but flawed old school action RPG with enough charm to rise above its flaws. Pros: - Mass amount of classes and sub classes to choose (if i would recommend this game it would be for the classes, so many of them structured in 3 tiers beating many MMOs in terms of unique and amount, some very unique like war angel only for females and so on) - While there are not many side quest, because of the class quests which are so many you still can be busy - Good amount of gear and weapons keeps the game play fresh - Great magic system with 4 schools and lots of spells available - You can always change the health and intervals at which monsters spawn anytime, if you wish a relaxed game play or you want to grind a bit - Decent voice acting and music - After you finish main game you can still play with your character Cons: - Terrible jumping which would be fine if there were not so many jumping puzzles - Mediocre main quest - Some puzzles are completely unfair (pink teleport islands and many others) and you either have to guess a lot or use a guide - Terrible inventory system where quest items do not disappear clogging your inventory system, even worse some quest items come in multiple quantities and if you pick them up even if you do not need them you cant get rid of them (the only way you know not to pick them up is either through a guide or if you played the game before) - Weapons loose durability way to fast making it a chore to repair or deal a lot of lower damage - As a melee flying enemies are a nightmare to hit If you can forgive the many flaws this is a nice rough gem on an ARPG. The mass amount of different classes to choose alone makes this game worth the time.

So, Dungeon Lords... interesting and not well remembered game. Beat it several times myself, both original version and the MMXII version that is released on Steam. The tl;dr version - it's a fairly unique action RPG take, in ye olde times, that can be still decent fun. But it's hardly a full recommendation. Game is janky, some mechanics aren't well balanced, so on and so forth. More of a game for someone who likes exploring gaming history. The long version - game is based around a decently sized open world, with some loading zones for dungeons/city. Open areas might sometimes need quick load for assets too when moving fast. Story is alright, not really catching stars. There isn't much in terms of alternative outcomes to quests. Most of the variety comes from the class system, which is rather inspired. It functions somewhat reminiscent of Titan Quest, which would come a year later after original release of Dungeon Lords (if memory serves). You start with 1 of the 4 basic classes. Fighter, Mage, Rogue and Adept (read Cleric/Priest). Each class determines your general skill access (such as armor skills, weapon skills, magic skills etc) as well as potentially providing unique skills (1-2 per class). Those skills tend to be passive ones. So unlike Titan Quest, where classes would provide you with selection of active and passive skills to use. Most active skills in DL come from 4 magic schools (Arcane/Celestial/Nether/Rune) + some provided by usable magic items. What is in line with Titan Quest is ability to select additional classes on top of your starting one. In this case - another basic class, 2 advanced classes and 1 master class. For a total of up to 5 classes. Advanced and Master classes are based on your Basic/Advanced classes respectively. Such as being Fighter means being able to select, say, Paladin as Advanced class in Celestial (Cleric/Priest) guild. Game has 4 guilds, for basic classes + their advanced/master versions and hybrid versions. And 2 more special guilds: Eastern Houses and Sisterhood, offering only Advanced/Master classes. Sisterhood only accessible for female characters. This means around 3 dozen in total classes in the game to build your character out of. While the classes themselves aren't nearly as deep as Titan Quest/Grim Dawn, it still means a decent variety. You want to be a mage in heavy plate armour - you can do that. You want to be a priest-mage that uses fists in melee combat - you can do that. The level design is fairly interesting, offering some puzzles, secret rooms to find. On a downside, game is built around throwing enemy spawns from thin air at regular intervals. Luckily you can turn down the frequency to make it less annoying. Another downside, I would argue, is the reworked leveling system in MMXII version. A lot of your skills now level from use (mainly offensive passive ones) and you in general get a lot of stat and skill points to distribute. Which means you can become fairly broken and outscale content if you put two and two together for your class. Some might enjoy this power fantasy, but worth noting that original game had more limiting system of spending XP points both on skills and stats. In terms of questing - game adhers to old (contemporary for it I guess) school of not marking anything on the map. You get told who to find and where, but you'll have to do that on your own without obvious guidance. For the most part it works decently well, though at some points game can be stingy with recording instructions you were given. Thankfully it's old enough that you can easily google progression lists (say, on GameBanshee) to check what you need to do next. There are a couple of times when you are seemingly stuck and plot advances only after you do what seems to be side content. As far as stability goes - game plays decently well but can sometimes crash. So I would advise regular saves to not lose progress. To conclude, is Dungeon Lords a great game? Probably not. But I still think it's a decent time if you want to appreciate interesting takes studios had on the genre back in the days.

Ok so, I know a lot of players are unhappy with this version of the game, but I actually like it. I think it's better than the all previous versions. Yes, a lot of things have been changed, modified or removed, but I think it was for the better. Allow me to elaborate... The old spell system was horrible. You only had as many charges to a spell as you had books, then when exhausted, you had no choice but to wait for recharge. That used to drive me insane! Kneeling down for hours. Ugh. Good riddance. The new Mana system fits with the traditional RPG line and works great. So what's the fuss? The old skill system was also terrible. Now, it's similar to Skyrim. As you use skills, they increase on their own. That not only works great, but it's realistic. I love it. The old way made no sense. Old UI was ugly and just strange. The new one is like what you'd see in an MMO and it looks fantastic. We have many other good things as well. Widescreen support, better color and graphics, cloud saves, achievements and new maps. And let's not forget about the bugs. The older version, even CE was horrible for bugs. Nearly unplayable at times. That has all been fixed. So in saying all that, I'm not sure what some players are so upset about. The game is better. Much better. IMHO, THQ Nordic saved Dungeon Lords, and I thank them for it. So yeah. Ignore the negative reviews and buy, play and enjoy this version of D.W. Bradley's Masterpiece. I know I am. 10/10.

This is a 2012 re-release of a 2005 game that looks like it's from 2001 and plays like it's from 1997. It was on sale for $2 and my curiosity got the better of me. It has a lot of charm and a few interesting ideas, but it's also a fundamentally broken game that probably changed direction at least 3 times during its production cycle (It also has very short credits that lists only 5 people as programmers - which definitely shows). It IS a fun game, but only if you enjoy janky old games.

yes

It’s like playing classic wow but as a single player RPG. Honestly, it’s really fun and some of the environments are pretty cool. It also scratches that nostalgia itch. Just play it, it’s worth every bit of the $4 it costs on sale.

i played the collectors edition a long time ago and it was fun but BUGGY AS HELL and the multiplayer didn't work in the slightest. i am very glad that the steam edition fixed pretty much all of the major issues and the multiplayer works well! fun little old game try it out!

I bought this game because Wizards and Warriors, a game previously made by this developer, is a cult classic (only available on GoG). This game has a "Steam Edition" but it isn't very good. Actually starting and maintaining a co-op game is incredibly clunky, if it works at all. I was just playing a co-op game, needed to save and exit to the main menu to adjust my screen resolution, needed to restart to update screen resolution, the co-op player now gets an error message that the Steam Lobby can not be found. This is after we have tried all the supposed fixes that we found online for people attempting to play co-op and have set up port forwarding through our router for this game. So, even if you are okay with a historic look back in time to how game once looked and felt in the early 2000's (it isn't even good for that period from my experience) then the horrible system for co-op play can ruin the experience if that is why you want to play the game. Having this on Steam only ruins the reputation of the developer.

When you die in multiplayer it can crash so hard that the process is unable to be killed and you need to restart your system to get it to go away.

Certainly a game. Tons, and I mean tons of enemies that block up hallways, so much clicking to attack that my hand hurt. Buggy voice lines that assault your ears. Mismatched, sometimes completely wrong audio? This game has it all! And thats what makes it great. The combat, at least playing as melee as I did, does end up a little boring, just spamming left click, occasionally buffing. You take essesentially no damage around the half way through, or you just have enough potions to keep your health up. The world, while fairly similar in its design, its quite large which isn't a bad thing, but the 2min sprint cooldown is a litting painful until you get moonstones. IF you get moonstones. The first time I went, no Moonbeasts spawned and I had to walk eveywhere until I went back. But, overall, a clunky, for fun game thats a pretty good time.