Dungeons and Dragons Tactics
Dungeons & Dragons: Tactics brings the excitement of fantasy battle and role-playing to the PSP system for the very first time. All of the core races and classes will be available to the player, including two Psionic classes, the Psion and the Psychic Warrior. Players will be able to customise their characters and store as many as their memory stick can handle. Faithfully utilizing the Dungeons & Dragons 3.5 rule-set, Dungeons & Dragons: Tactics allows players to take a party of six adventurers into a wide variety of dangerous environments to experience deep and exciting turn-based action. All core races and classes are available, plus the addition of Psionics Deep and exciting turn-based gameplay using the D&D 3.5 rule-set
User Ratings and Reviews
4 Stars Best D&D RPG for PSP, Yippee!!!
D&D fans rejoice! Finally a game to implement the 3.5 rulebook with psionic characters! You can finally put those long dormant mental powers to use using all the characters designed in the d20 D&D 3.5 system in this game. The downside is, this is one your PSP, which isn’t that great a platform for party-based/turn-based adventuring. I can explain.
First of all, this game is amazing. I mean, it is the closest thing to the pencil, dice and paper games of D&D past with great TRUE implementation of the rule set. I mean, I like to move around from ’tile’ to ’tile’ in turn based mode when roaming dungeons, so I can better plan, rather than real time RPG’s which leave me feeling somewhat panicked. I mean sure, battle can do that to you, but I feel that taking some time to make your moves assures that you are putting more thought into it, which would be impossible in real time across multiple characters. This gives individual control and thought to each person’s actions in the party, and that trumps all other styles of play, IMHO. All of the ‘basic’ classes are there, including psion and psychic warrior, as all of the ‘basic’ races, and most of the applicable rules.
The graphics are fine, very three dimensional, and with a rather blocky polygon count. However, base body appearances that remain static regardless of body armor or headgear are a little disappointing. Still, the animations are pretty good, especially non humans, like the wolves and dogs. Some problem animation issues weren’t resolved, like the issue surrounding ‘unseen’ monsters which do not move at all but slide like chess pieces when coming out of the cover of darkness. On the plus side the lighting and fog effects are great.
The sound is ok. The music is good, but gets repetitive, and the sound effects are nothing special, but fairly varied and appropriate. There are no voice overs for the ’sliding puppet show’ cut scenes, and this is fairly disappointing. I guess no voice overs is better than cheap voice overs, and imagine they were left out for budget reasons.
The game play seems pretty linear, as your encounters are laid out on a map kinda resembling a “skill tree” and your battles are sequentially tougher as you travel further along the road. The availability of new adventurers to hire, and new stores to peruse is great, and really adds to the gameplay. Your party is not limited to the original cast which you can create, or borrow the ready made ones to start things off quickly. You find out as you travel, the ready made ones you passed up in the original party formation can be added later in the game at various stops along the way.
Character creation is simply the matter of picking your race (Human, half-elf, half-orc, elf, dwarf, gnome, or halfling), your sex (male, or female), your class (barbarian, bard, cleric, druid, fighter, monk, paladin, psion, psychic warrior, ranger, sorcerer, and wizard) and your attributes (strength, dexterity, constitution, intelligence, wisdom, and charisma) and then assign your skill points and pick your feats. These are familiar to every D&D fan, but if you are new to D&D, but have played other RPG’s, this will give you some idea of what to expect.
The downside is significant, and predictable. D&D requires a wealth of information to displayed on screen at once, since each character has huge inventories and stats to keep track of. Not only that, but buying and selling inventory from stores further complicates matters. The exchange of inventory between characters further complicates matters. The fact that both right and left hands may be equipped with weapons further complicates matters. This is just one aspect of the problem.
The other problem is game control itself. Each character has a wealth of options to do at any given turn, including spells which need preparing and accessing. How do we access these all these options, and keep track of everything going on the screen, while not losing sight of the character whose turn is underway?
Well, they attempted to solve the information display problem by using abbrevations, and collapsable bullet menus, and with the rest of the navigation (including gameplay) they went with a central horizontal/side scrolling menu. This menu, which is visible for almost the entire game, does everything from character options during a fight, to dungeon exploration options, to map navigation and party management.
This takes some getting used to. I mean, most of the up-down, side-to-side scrolling is done with the directional buttons, but some descriptive information about items is accessed using the joystick. The ‘x’ button is the select button, the ‘circle’ button is the back button, the ’square’ button changes from equip to unequip and back, the ‘triangle’ button is good to quick sell inventory, and the ‘left’ and ‘right’ triggers can be used to horizontally scroll through the characters. During battle or dungeon exploration the ’select’ button can be used to zoom in the viewing angle, and the joy stick vertical axis controls the degree of overhead angle, and the horizontal axis rotates the view. The character menu is accessed through the directional buttons, and the ‘x’ is used to select. Hit start to bring up the ’save/options’ screen during the battle to save when on the fly, or speed up gameplay by using chess mode, or other options.
There is not much intuitive about how this game is controlled, but it can be learned without too much effort. I have often found myself drawn to the character creation and shear infinite combinations of party members that are possible, and whenever I come across a difficult dungeon, sometimes I start again thinking some other configuration would be more successful in EVERY possible situation. Once you play this game, you might start thinking like I do, that there is a challenge behind every corner, and you really have to be prepared, and make the right choices at every turn, or you will find this game very difficult. The first three battles are quite easy. A team of halfling bards could survive with no armor, if you play it correctly. But, could a team of halfling bards make it all the way through? I doubt it. It would be nigh impossible. This is the attraction. They designed this game to kill you, and destroy your party. While it helps the more times you’ve been through a dungeon, you will find new challenges along the road the further you travel, and often times you’ll find regrets. But it is overcoming these obstacles that makes it addicting, and seeing your character with just a few hit points make a miraculous save is always heartening.
If this game was made for the PC, it would be a five star must buy since all the problems could be overcome. Even with the limitations of the PSP, it overcomes much of its negatives by giving us so many positively creative ‘tactical’ challenges, and enduring replayability.
Recommended.
2 Stars Horrible interface hobbles a good game.
It took me a long time to get into this game. The first time I played it I became frustrated trying to move equipment around between characters. The interface is the worst I’ve ever seen in a video game. Once you learn how to work around the shortcomings of the interface, you’ll find an enjoyable and fairly challenging strategy game.
This game is probably strictly for D&D players, though. You won’t find any spell descriptions in the instruction manual, you’ll need to pull out your Players Handbook, which the game stays true to for the most part.
I recommend this game for D&D fans who like strategy RPGs.
4 Stars pretty good
It’s a great game if you play D&D 3.5 or even 4 (but not so much for 4ed players) but for people new to the game it’s a little challenging at first and could start off a bit slow. I’d still recommend this game for psp users who want to play D&D but can’t for some reason.
4 Stars Great gift
My husband is an avid gamer and when he has to go away for duty with the Marines he gets rather cut off (Boot Camp broke his WoW addiction). So when his birthday was coming up and bought him this game only having read the reviews. Let me tell you this has been the hardest game for him to play but he is loving the challenge. It takes his mind off the Marines completely.
3 Stars D & D without the social interaction, or endless variety.
For $2[...] I got what I expected. A steep learning curve, even though I already knew 3.5 rules (I had to keep looking up spells, as well as how the mind flayers kept murdering me). A large variety of character customization (but not enough faces). A paranoid experience brawling through dungeons (every step can get you smeared). A review with a ton of parenthetical asides (yup).
Replay value is good, as one play through won’t give you the full experience, and if you made your characters poorly, you’ll be starting over pretty quickly.
I did not like the set lists of available magical items. Diablo made random items, way back in the 90’s. Surely, the PSP can do somewhat of the same.
The graphics in the battles are excellent, especially the settings though I ended up turning them off to speed up the game (a great boon!).
The camera controls are decent, and easy enough to pick up.
It’s no Disgaea or Final Fantasy, but it cost half as much!
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