The grandfather of all RPGs has to be Dungeons and Dragons. The pen and paper game has been going strong for more than thirty years, and has evolved from the earlier pre-packaged modules to massive campaigns that spanned vast worlds. For the most part, players looking to unleash their inner barbarian had to jump onto computers if they wanted to digitally form parties and gain experience points. However, Kuju Entertainment and Atari have boiled down the tabletop experience onto UMD with their latest release of Dungeons & Dragons: Tactics. While it does a faithful job of shrinking down the arcane details of the game to portable size, much of the translation suffers from a cluttered menu system along with crucially missing information that most veterans would require.
DHGF: If you were to go look D&D Tactics up, you’d be wondering how I could enjoy it. The Metacritic rating is in the mid-fifties, only six out of over thirty reviews were positive, and the game quickly faded into obscurity. You can’t even find a complete walkthrough on the internet. Heck, I’ve only seen one that made it out of the first act! Clearly, this is not a popular game, so then why should I chose to write about it?
Because people got it wrong.
I thought the game did fairly well capturing 3rd Ed. Dungeons and Dragons. The only gripe I had with it was how cumbersome the menus were, but with all of the options and information and your disposal, it was something I could live with.
WorthPlaying writes:
"It's merely important to keep in mind that this title was designed for a particular variety of person, and if you are not in that target audience (D&D player who likes tactics games and owns a PSP), you should probably spend your hard-earned money elsewhere."
Score: 7.1/10
Even among videogames fans - who are hardly in a position to poke fun - the mention of Dungeons and Dragons conjures up an image of, well, nerds. It's not exactly a fair image; okay, so there are plenty of socially awkward and hygenically challenged virginal males who get a bit too excited about pen and paper role-playing, but there are plenty of perfectly nice, friendly, interesting people who enjoy the pastime as well.
No, really.
