Quick Look: Dungeons & Dragons: Dark Alliance

thank you Jeff! looking forward to this!

This game is indefensible.

Game is fine. I have smashed my way to level 12. Could even be good in a few patches.

I'm a bit torn on watching and/or playing this. My intro to D&D was via 'The Crystal Shard' trilogy where these characters originated... is this going to be like watching a terrible movie adaption and end up with me never seeing the characters the same again?

I liked the shisha-kabob part, until the blood was green. Deep red krovy, or nothing at all.

Sad to see. It's just a poor man's third person Vermintide.

Not even the famed Dr1zz7 can save this game from, well, mediocrity.

Despite seeing a lot of footage of it so far I still think it looks just painfully average and boring more than insultingly bad. Like, it works, more or less so it has that going for it.

"Catti-Brie" has to be the worst fantasy lady name I've ever heard.

ETA: Hamboog, however, is justifiably getting a lot of attention.

This looks a little rough...like an re-released 360 game or a high-value mobile game.

Jeff's comments about this game legitimately baffles me. He started off saying something along the lines of, "I was surprised how harsh the reviews were" but then pretty spent the entire bit not saying once positive thing about it. They don't even bother to get the tone of the source material correct...they even make Drizz't a...rogue? This game never looked good to me, especially the marketing (and its cavalcade of C list celebrities), but it frustrating to see that not only is the game itself bad but its also rotten with bugs, glitches, and seemingly incomplete combat. The fact your ranged "class" is starved for stamina 99.9% of the time but you can't even do your ranged special moves from elevation.

I think I might give this a shot on Game Pass, just out of curiosity. It definitely won't overtake Path of Exile for me, but hey, variety is the spice of life. Even if the spices are a year old and wilting.

Also, "It sucks, but, like, whatever" should be Giant Bomb's official Metacritic quote for the game.

I lost my will to play on after I was about an hour in/ three missions

Emperor Handbook is the most powerful ruler of all time. His reign is still present today... yeah the game seems to suck badly. This reminds me of Kingdoms of Amalur Reckoning, but that's a better game. To think the bigot Kurt Schilling made a better game than one with the official D&D license.

Feets - I got two of 'em.

Emperor Hamboog.

Goblins.

@sammo21: I don't feel like it's that baffling. I've never heard Jeff claim to be an expert or a reader of the source material so inconsistencies wouldn't necessarily stand out to him. He's also only played Wulfgar and offline until this video. So starting out "it's not great but you could play it" and ending up "I don't want to play this anymore" is not that surprising.

@mezza: The stuff regarding the source material is on me (and honestly I've not seen many people who have actually played even admit to reading the books). I just found it funny that on the Bombcast (which is what I was referencing) I didn't really hear him say anything actually positive about the game but him say he didn't think the game was that bad.

Oh. Ooooooooh. I totally thought this was going to be a remaster of Baldur's Gate: Dark Alliance. I didn't realize it was going to this weird, Soulsian thing.

So. . .I can't help but notice that the player character looks superimposed on the world. I keep staring at the feet, and they just don't look like they're making contact.

The visuals were really weird. Maybe it's a shadow placement thing, but it always looked like you were floating above the terrain.

When i leave this page i will already have forgotten about this game.

We FINALLY get to play as Drizzt in a big-budget game, and it's THIS?

Oy gevalt, guess I'll see if Avengers has fixed...Avengers.

Things I recall from the Drizzt books

• Artemis Entreri and Drizzt's dad were badasses until they became a team of good guys
• Wulfgar was an obnoxious douche
• Drizzt almost had an orgy with his sister(s?)
• Crenshinbon was originally a powerful crystal owned by some nerdy mage and then became something else?
• Eventually they fight demons and Wulfgar dies. But he comes back later to marry some random farmer lady?
• During the time Wulfgar died, Drizzt and Cattie-brie (the girl he found and raised like a daughter) hooked up and eventually became gods when Forgotten Realms went all End Times?

I don't like that Drizzt is purple. Drow, not WoW.

I started playing this solo, and was really enjoying it, but man does it fall apart when you get into co-op. I like the combat (there's more to it than mashing), and I like the progression. The difficulty needs tuning because you can go from effortlessly easy to getting one shot by heavy attacks just bumping the challenge rating up one (even if the game indicates your gear score is appropriate for the higher setting).

Dark Alliance could be a really solid B Game, but it's got a lot of little issue and a couple big ones right now. The issues are all fixable, but I wouldn't spend money on the game until they are.

Guess its a good thing this was a "budget" title as Biomutant is waaaay better of a game, but because Bio released at $60 it got shat on way more.

Drizzit or whatever is some kinda magic rogue thing right? I wish the game had a straight up spell caster

It's like if Kindoms of Amalur fell into the DnD license.

If they want to make a big Drizzit game, they should just adapt the first book. They could flesh out his time at the academy for more gameplay sections, and what with all the house intrigue and Drizzits issues with drow society, there would be plenty of good story beats to work through.

Instead, they do...this...

Wow. This game looks like absolute garbage and really boring.

@missashley: Luckily, they've used this opportunity to release the old games on modern consoles. The PC version with coop through steam is supposed to come later in the year.

@thisisdell: Lol. I'm running to the store, money in hand, as we speak.

Jeff.Zone is the best place to be.