Dungeons and Dragons Heroes
Dungeons and Dragons Heroes is a multiplayer hack and slash RPG for up to four players. Your character choices are a male human fighter, a male dwarf cleric, a female high elf wizard and a female halfling rogue. The rogue is also the archer.
The story is the standard "OH NOES EVIL WIZARD!!!" that is older than me. One largely does not play these sorts of games for a gripping narrative, but they could have put forth a bit more effort. It really seems like they just got the story bits outta the way as quick as possible. The same goes for the loot, except for the subweapons. Each character has five weapon types they can wield except the previously mentioned rogue's bow, of which there is just the one but at least she has unlimited arrows. Every character can also, if you spend your level up points accordingly, wear any armor. That's right, the wizard and the rogue can go running in full platemail. With no ill effects.
Each character has starting attribute scores that showcase their specialties and also leave room for improvement, which is done in proper 3rd edition style after a few levels. Your stats will effect things in gameplay. For example, intelligence affects your Mystic Will Pionts total and why they couldn't just go with everyone else and use Mana Points or Magic Points I'll never know. Wisdom affects the cleric's spell strength and your MWP regeneration rate. Charisma affects prices in the shop, and for some reason, your level up points which are used to improve skills and abilities like spells and weapon proficiency. This game, like the Baldur's Gate Dark Alliance games before it, is a hack and slasher first, and a D&D game second.
Combat has an interesting layer to it in the form of "finishing moves" which folks who played Dablo II assasins will recognize immediately. You equip the finishing move, which is purchased with level up points, and you hit enemies with melee attacks and it will fill up one to three green dots in your status display. When all three are filled, you press the hotkey you programmed for your finisher, and it is executed. You need only fill one dot, but filling all three increases damage. Told you it would be familiar. Every character has three.
Now to get down to it, this game should have been available on PS2, and it nearly was. Some one thought it would be brilliant to make it XBOX exclusive. Not really the market in my opinion, but then again I'm just some guy on the internet. Now, since Cheffiepie and myself have played every one of these hack and slashers on last generation's consoles, I am left with no option but to compare them. As far as I'm concerned, the pinnacle of the genre in terms of gameplay and fun factor and replayability is Champions: Return to Arms with Baldur's Gate Dark Legacy 2 a close second.
This game lacks in the loot department big time. All you have is regular armor, magically enhanced armor, mithril plate, and some basic types of rings and a handful of amulets. In the weapons side of things you have your five weapon types, mostly differentiated by the range between their minimum and maximum damage, and then the enchantments to damage total and some of them will boost one of your spells or skills, and in those cases, if the ability is maxed out, then the weapon will reduce it's MWP cost by 15%. Thrilling, no? Also sometimes you will get fire or poison enhanced items. That's it.
At least at high levels the different characters will still be distinct thanks to their unique abilities rather than all of them just being tanks that steamroll everything like you can see in some games in the genre. Overall, it is a fun game, but it's also very bland so it does not stand the test of time.
Cheffiepie's thoughts:
It's my personal goal to beat it on every difficulty, just because. That being said, here are some things that really piss me off about this game: first, you need keys to open chests, and some doors. You will need to buy keys, or use cheats or have the rogue handy. Why can't they just let you open them like everyone else? Next, where the hell are the teleport/gate scrolls? It would be nice to be able to gate back to the shop to sell your shit like in every other game. There are points where you will have loot to grab, but you will be at your weight limit and not able to carry any more and there will be no opportunity to get back to the shop until you either clear the area or backtrack like crazy. That just is made of fail. Your ancestral weapon can not get better than +4, but other weapons will, and you need to use that weapon to beat the main boss. That's just a lack of forethought.
Those points being made, I did like the fact that there is a special way to beat the final boss that is unique to this game as far as I know. There are nice cheats that make it much easier. That's really all I have. In all, it's fun enough, but it's got flaws that stick out.