Dungeon Lords - Steam Edition

Last year when playing Outward, I started reminiscing Dungeon Lords: another third person action RPG -- little known and one of extremely janky nature. The game was originally released in 2005 with a lot of stuff missing. In 2006, when I beat it, the game was rereleased as more polished Dungeon Lords Collector's Edition. After the game's publisher Dreamcatcher Interactive's remains were acquired by Nordic Games (now THQ Nordic), the game got yet another rerelease: Dungeon Lords MMXII (2012). And finally, in 2015, the game's latest version Dungeon Lords Steam Edition came out.

Unpolished and unwelcoming decades-old fantasy adventure

I could never recommend Dungeon Lords to anyone, even though I personally still found it oddly captivating, be it nostalgia or something. But the game is so far from a premium experience. Animations are stiff and the game is opaque with how things work -- if they even work. There's co-op but I have a strong hunch that it's as glitchy as it was 20 years ago.

Dungeon Lords' almost a signature feature is its random enemy spawn system which tirelessly keeps sending enemy waves at you whether you're exploring a dungeon, trying to beat a quest encounter, or talking to an NPC. Very few locations are free of the random spawns. The feature has an adjustable frequency setting which defaults to Medium (pretty damn frequent). You can't turn it off and even on Less there's not much breathing room between waves. On the maximum setting, Dungeon Lords is like a horde shooter.

I think this game may have had some foundational effect on how I experience games. My aversion to quest items getting stuck and taking space in inventory may have very well started with Dungeon Lords. And upon seeing the throne room's floor in this one again, I realized why I keep laying checkerboard floors in my Minecraft throne room builds. Dungeon Lords also has curious similarities with early World of Warcraft.

I don't know how much the original developer Heuristic Park had to do with the last two editions of Dungeon Lords but I think the rereleases hurt the game in some ways. Because it isn't popular by any measure, there's not a lot of information available about its inner workings. And due to the many editions, what information there is, might not match the game version you're playing.

Unnecessary changes

The newer editions did add undeniably positive stuff like new player classes and bigger resolution support but they also homogenized the game's magic systems, which is rather unfortunate. I thought how Arcane, Crystal, Nether, and Rune magic differed in the manner of spellcasting frequency and requirements was cool. Now each school works on the same single cast cooldown and mana cost principle, although Nether spells do still have their spell component requirements.

In the CE, Arcane spells could have more than one charge before you had to wait to get for the charges to come out of cooldown. You got charges by reading found and bought spellbooks and the Mage class had a bonus on how many charges they would learn. In the Steam Edition, picking Mage as your starting class will automatically teach you every Arcane spell with level ups. Spellbooks still have their use in teaching you spells which are not for your starting class's magic school. The game's ultimate nuke spell, Cataclysm, used to be available as one of two exclusive reward options of a quest. In the Steam Edition, you're free to pick whichever as a Mage and others, too, because the spellbook can also be found as a random drop.

Cataclysm does massive damage to your target and every enemy around. It comes with a lengthy 3-minute cooldown and I'd recommend to use the Mage's casting speed buffing ability first to make sure you get the spell to go off. If you get stunned or such, the spell will go on cooldown without being cast.

Nearly 40 player classes

You can pick up to 5 classes for your character: two of tier 1 and tier 2 classes, and one of the final tier. I picked War Angel as my tier 3 class because it was added in the Steam Edition. The rest I picked to fill War Angel's requirements and to get the widest selection of skills and the ability to dual-wield: Mage, Fighter, Valkyrie, and Samurai. Fighter gets a charge attack, which does damage to its target based on your Rune magic skill. However, when picked as your second tier 1 class, the charge deals no damage. But at least it works otherwise.

To get classes beyond your starting one, you have to join guilds. There are four guilds to match the four tier 1 classes: Guild of Mages, Fighters' Guild, Celestial Order (Adept), and Guild of Mystery (Rogue). You can join up to two of these four guilds and then there are also the Eastern Houses and the Sisterhood which are always available, though the latter is only for female characters. Your tier 2 class choices determine which guilds' quests are available to you in full. For me those were the Eastern Houses (Samurai) and the Sisterhood (Valkyrie).

I wanted to dual-wield because the War Angel's unique passive skill gives a chance to heal on melee attacks. I reckoned two weapons would give me the most out of the passive. I decided I would use two swords so that I could keep increasing just one weapon skill. However, upon gaining the Samurai class, I discovered that I was unable to equip a sword in the off-hand slot: only a dagger would go there.

So damn opaque

Weapon skills and categories in the previous editions of Dungeon Lords used to work a bit differently, and even though it's not apparent in the Steam Edition, I think the system is still the same under the opaque surface. Dual-wielding used to have more than one skill: you had to get enough ranks in light weapons dual-wielding before you could unlock dual-wielding for medium-size weapons. With there now being only one skill, I guess you only get light weapons in off-hand -- at least with the Samurai class. I later discovered that there are light axes and swords, although it's not stated in any way on their descriptions. I still stuck to a dagger off-hand because I kept finding good random drops.

Weapon and magic skills increase on use in addition to skill points as long as the target's level is not more than 10 levels below yours. It's not hard to over-level the game, especially if you have the random spawn frequency at max: enemies always grant full experience regardless of level difference. You get so many skill points from levels that not getting the on-use bonus doesn't really matter, though.

Picking locks and disarming traps -- every single chest is trapped -- is quite bothersome. However, instead of Picklock and Disarm Traps, you can spend points on Bash, which allows you to simply click-spam chests open. Sometimes the chest might get jammed shut and the traps do tend to go off but their damage becomes negligible after a few character levels.

I think I beat the game without looking anything up back in 2006. I remember going over the wilderness map's hill ranges and in the Labyrinth getting on top of its walls to skip over traps and enemies. I don't see why I would've done so if I had been following a guide. Getting over the hill ranges is not intended because you can skip quest phases by going past settlements and locked gates like that. And it's not like you can simply run up the hills. However, it's not too hard to accomplish either due to the backflip move you get with 4 ranks in Athletics. Blocking large enemy attacks with a shield might also push you up a wall.

The moon bridge fast travel system is cool with how you need to enter the target bridge's address like onto a star gate. Also: because the game was released only on PC, it has two 12-slot action bars to hotkey your stuff on. How often do you see that in games?

It was fun to revisit this game despite its questionable quality. It wasn't quite as large as I remembered it being, though.