Dungeons & Dragons has always been a fairly popular pastime amongst many people, it has also been made in many forms, so it was obvious that it wouldn’t take long to hit the PSP, after all who wouldn’t want to slay goblins on the go? I have to admit that when I was younger I always found Dungeons and Dragons fun to play so my expectations for the game were quite high as I was loading it up.
Unless you are familiar with Dungeons & Dragons, you may (at first anyway) find this game a little daunting, this is due to the RPG elements such as armor class, encumbrance, attack multipliers etc.. that are all taken into account when you are using you character to fight or even move, although to be fair after a while it really isn’t so difficult to understand.
Before you even begin to think about adventuring, the first thing you need to do is make a party of characters, there are two ways to do this, you can either choose from a selection of pre-generated characters or you can make your own, which I personally would suggest. Making your own character is a fairly in depth affair, as well as allowing you to choose from a selection of different looks for your character you also must choose a class to play which include the Barbarian, Bard, Cleric, Druid, Fighter, Monk, Paladin, Ranger, Rogue, Sorcerer, and Wizard classes as well as the two new additions the Psion and Psychic Warrior.
Obviously each character has it’s own strengths and weaknesses, but just to complicate things a little further you must also give your character’s their own alignment which affects the way they will behave in certain situations, so for example if one of your character’s is of good alignment they will treat certain aspects of the adventure different from one that is evil.
Once you get started there is certainly plenty to keep you occupied, in fact there are over 30+ levels which equate to over 40 hours of gameplay, which you have to admit isn’t too bad for a handheld game. To begin with most of the map is blanked out, however the most adventures you complete the more open the areas surrounding you will become.
Movement in Dungeons & Dragons: Tactics is actually tile based, this means that you character can only go so far before having to end his turn, this also counts for combat, therefore once all of your party have performed thier actions, it will then be the turn of the enemy, while this may sound slow paced it actually works very well, however if you want to speed up proceedings you can always use chess mode which speeds up the animations and cuts out the non essential moments in play.
While winning fights and completing the missions will gain your party experience it won’t make you money, so when you find a treasure chest it’s always wise to search it, this way you can make money to buy your party new equipment or if your lucky you may even find the piece of equipment that you were after anyway.
Graphically the game holds up really well, especially when you encounter some of the fiercer enemies later on in the game, the combat is also well animated, although the camera could do with being moved back slightly, if there was one complaint we could have in this department it would be the 2d cut scenes which don’t really work that well. The sound compliments the game nicely although the music can skip sometimes, however this really is a minor issue.
Overall Dungeons & Dragons: Tactics is a very good game, it is very enjoyable and given it’s on handheld will help you pass time on any journey, it has it’s flaws, but it more than makes up for these with it’s in depth gameplay and excellent graphics, we highly recommend this one of all you closet D&D fans out there.
