Dungeons - The Dark Lord Review

Playing the evil villain can be fun, creating dungeons, setting up your paths, letting heroes plunder your treasure, and then when the moment is ripe, strike the hero down. This is exactly what the game Dungeons did back in February 2011. Now here we are again, taking up the role as Dungeon Lord, with a full blown stand-alone expansion pack, Dungeons – The Dark Lord released by Kalypso Media. Building on the foundation of Dungeons, the add-on does many things right, fixing some flaws found its predecessor. Realmforge Studios went the extra mile for this expansion, adding in a new campaign, more gimmicks, multiplayer and new game modes.

Fellowship of the Other Ring

Previously in Dungeons, the Dark Lord was kicked from his throne and sets out to regain it, conquering everything in his path. Eventually getting the throne back, the Dark Lord begins going insane, wanting to construct the ultimate relic to control all the underworld inhabitants. The relic he creates turns out to be a ring, which his then sidekick, a little green goblin steals and proceeds to look for help in destroying said ring. He encounters Calypso, she agrees to help destroy the Other Ring. With her not wanting to become a slave to the Dark Lord, they both set out and encounter the other evil Lords from Dungeons. Together they form the Fellowship of the Other Ring.

Sounds familiar doesn’t it? Dungeons – The Dark Lord’s campaign is a spoof of a series of books about lords and rings. The games follow the rag tag group of Calypso (female demoness), Minos (A Minotaur), Sidekick (Green Goblin) and The Zombie King (King of The Zombies) on the quest to destroy the Other Ring.

Massive Battle

Dungeons – The Dark Lord campaign ran me about 8-10 hours, with taking my time building dungeons and increasing my Dungeon Lords power. Divided into chapters, each chapter is a very long level, spamming multiple types of dungeon from ice or fire to the basic dungeon, sometimes taking over an hour to complete. A big flaw in Dungeons was how repetitive the campaign could be. In Dark Lord the developers helped remedy this, by having players do different things to help keep it fresh. Usually at the start of a level, you guide your characters through a dungeon like maze, fighting monsters, making sure nobody dies, until you find a dungeon heart. You would then proceed to gather soul energy, gold or whatever task the objective wanted. Since you are with 3 other bosses most of the time, you can easily switch between them to fit your play style, but stats and skills do not transfer over, so you have to spend gold and soul energy for each one. Some of the more interesting levels split your group into two, as you manage two dungeons or combine the dungeon maze with dungeon building. It puts your multitasking skills to the test and provides different experiences. Some of the levels do repeat themselves, however it is not nearly as bad as Dungeons.

That's not an old wizard!

The campaign is full of humor and cheesy dialogue, like the first game, some of it feels forced but never cringe worthy. Since the story is a parody, it is very predictable, the light hearted story was enough to want to push forward, while still enjoyable, just did nothing new. The ending of the Dungeons – The Dark Lord was over abruptly and was very unfulfilling. Dungeons – The Dark Lord does not take itself seriously but it still offers an enjoyable experience, those hoping to be the evil villain bent on destroying the world, will be very disappointed.

Skill Trees are out

As an add-on, Dungeons – The Dark Lord expands on the base game, adding new features and tweaking others. One of the major changes, no longer will players deal with earning stats or skill points or even a skill tree. Instead Realmforge put all the piles of gold you would accumulate in your dungeon to better use; you will now buy stats, increasing the amount of gold or soul energy needed as you add buy more points. Each Dungeon Lord has its own unique skill set and when switching between them, I found it a hassle to manage each one’s ability set. Which I ended up just picking my favorite, sticking with that choice the whole game. Gimmicks also work slightly different, when a hero examines one, they will give a slight increase in prestige. They are now divided into two different groups, floor and wall. Floor gimmicks have less cost, less prestige given, but more bonuses when a hero examines them, with the wall gimmicks they cost more, give more prestige, but give fewer bonuses from heroes. A new type of special gimmick was introduced, specifically for certain rooms, these gimmicks can only have 1 of each type placed for that room and give special bonuses, the skulls gimmick makes gives a 50% bonus to soul energy drain in your jail room, making heroes give you soul energy 50% faster.

Heroes enter your dungeon quicker, often flooding your dungeon as you wait for them to become satisfied before you can harvest them. It is not uncommon to be chasing your happy hero and find 4 or 5 of his allies attacking you. This is a better change, as your dungeon feels livelier with parties of heroes wandering your evil domain, upgrading equipment and stealing treasure, but with the downside as you have to eliminate other heroes in the process to get just one. Also gone is heroes finding your dungeon boring, you were constantly left wondering what was wrong, with no explanation.

Hero traffic jam!

Goblin workers dig much faster, which is a great tweak to the gameplay, no longer must you stand around waiting for them to slowly dig, tapping your evil foot away, watching them slowly dig out your dungeon. Monsters also received a change, with three types, one for expanding your territory, the second for dishing out damage to heroes and the last as a glutton for punishment that can take a beating. Along with the monster change, which was much needed, was the ability to change the monster shelters. Once you capture a monster shelter, you can then change it to any of the other monster shelters at will, but lose the old replaced monsters in your dungeon.

New to Dungeons – The Dark Lord is multiplayer. Modes include King of the Hill, which you must hold an area of the dungeon as long as you can, Every Man for Himself has the Dungeon Lords duking it out until only one survives and Soul Survival makes players rush to gather as much soul energy as possible while it steadily drains from them. The Steam only mode Piñata which awards players prestige for slaying heroes and is the only way to gather prestige, jails and gimmicks are disabled. At the time of the review, the multiplayer servers were not up.

Guys? I could use some backup!

Dungeons – The Dark Lord’s core gameplay has largely remained the same, but with tweaks to elements that help make it more enjoyable. The basic gameplay of tending to heroes needs is at the core of the experience. Building monsters for them to fight or take damage from, treasure to plunder, equipment or knowledge to find and traps to disable. All of this is done to make them happy, so that you the Dungeon Lord can slay them, and drain their soul energy, helping you become more powerful. Unfortunately traps or monsters still take a huge penalty if they finish off the hero, so you must be a janitor running around the map, harvesting your heroes before they leave your lair. This hurts the game, as you cannot put your evil plans to fruition, making the heroes lives a living hell and instead must make them happy, then you must be the one to land the killing blow.

Graphics for Dark Lord are the same as Dungeons, except with a bigger variety, more monsters, spells, gimmicks and heroes. An all new dungeon theme, an ice cave was added. It features all ice themed monsters and gimmicks, which look great and are well animated, a much needed changed from the standard dungeon tile set. Heroes look better, with prettier equipment and designs, giving them a more heroic or seasoned look. A great new addition is that heroes have a variety of spells to choose from along with graphic effects for these. Rogues will now stealth and sneak around, mages can cast area of effect spells or heal and necromancers summon an undead pet. Each Dungeon Lord also has its own theme of pets, to help keep more variety between the Lords. One bug that was present, every so often heroes would have a jerky combat move animation.

This is my stylish Necromancer tier armor

On max settings, textures looked nice, character models although small are well detailed when zoomed as close as possible and the UI was clean, easy to navigate. Except when switching between Lords, the skill bar does not change when switched to a different one, making skill management a pain. The skill bar also reset every chapter, except for the default spells, which created a hassle as you can forget that you didn’t have the skill learned again when you need it in the thick of battle or taking time out at the start of every chapter just to organize your spells on the UI.

Your agonizing screams please me...

Dark Lord’s main theme remains unchanged from Dungeons, which is a shame, since the first theme was enjoyable, it would have been nice to hear something new. The voice acting improved a little, but due to the writing, still sounds off, especially Zombie King, who still takes forever to finish a bit of dialogue or Minos who snorts between every other word. When these two characters speak, the cut scenes just drag on and on. During play, you will hear Sidekick constantly say something is happening off screen, which can get rather annoying as he repeats the same bit. In game music helps set the dungeon theme and while it isn't memorable, it's not terrible either. When heroes attack they let out a battle cry, which is campy and cliché, something you would expect from a MMORPG.  Old sound effects are all recycled from Dungeons, except the new ice dungeon, they don’t sound particular amazing, but they are fitting to the monsters or traps. To fit the new dungeon, heroes should have had new voice overs and new sayings, they get rather tiring after you see “Taste My +1 Dagger” for the 10^th time.

Fans of Dungeons and newcomers will be pleased with the expansion; it offers a better dungeon building experience. Improving on aspects in Dungeons, with a better campaign, tweaked gameplay, more gameplay modes and variety. Even with many tweaks and additions, being a Dungeon Janitor is what keeps Dungeons – The Dark Lord from truly becoming great.

GamingCX gives Dungeons - The Dark Lord 7 out of 10