Dungeons and Draggings…
The fantasy hack-and-slash genre is easily my favorite type of game. From Diablo, Path of Exile, Vikings: Wolves of Midgard, and of course, Baulder’s Gate: Dark Alliance and Champions of Norrath, each of these games consistently offered up memorable and grand adventures and many still are fantastic to play to this very day. When Dungeons and Dragons: Dark Alliance was announced, I was beyond excited. Every single time there was a new trailer or preview, my eyes were glued to it. But, it wasn’t until I got my hands on the game where I found my excitement misplaced, and what I felt instead was then massive disappointment. Dark Alliance is burdened by so many bad design choices and unspeakable bugs that it’s hard to give it much praise, and that greatly saddens me.
Even despite its flaws, there is something here. Occasionally, the game works, its vision within grasp, but these moments, like a legendary piece of armor, are incredibly rare. Where the game is at its most consistent, is being a slog of agility and a buggy mess of a release. Its movement and controls are hindered by a delay where most attacks don’t happen until well after your finger has left the button, a movement that feels like your trudging through mud. Nearly every effort is plagued by seconds of nothing and the animation locks of your combo attacks can spell doom in a second. I would consistently find my character performing attacks and combo strikes that I wasn’t even inputting, resulting in cheap hits as my character would just stand there, slowly building up speed to get away, but it was often already too late. This is a game that can look appealing in screenshots and trailers but its handling is something that needs to be experienced to have a true understanding of how bad it feels and whether you’ll get on with it or not. Thankfully, the game is available on Xbox Gamepass, so simply trying it out is more than easy enough to do.
Borrowing the name from a beloved series, Dark Alliance is not associated with the Baulder’s Gate original. However; one thing it does share is that it rarely is about any actual Alliance of any kind; at least one that plays out throughout its story in a way where it is actually acknowledged. “The Dark Shard” would have been a better title, considering that is what the story is actually about, but the chosen moniker is one that has a history, one now seemingly tainted by this disappointing release. Dark Alliance has you seeking a lost shard of power, one that goes missing during an opening cutscene, a story that actually seems far more interesting than what we actually get here. While you’ll meet up with the shard’s original host, the story moves past that into a showdown with a few of the series staples, a threat that will shake Icewind Dale to its very core. However; that’s me dressing it up for that extra little bit of drama; It’s nowhere near that exciting.
Playable as a single-player experience offline or online with friends, Dark Alliance supports up to four players, but oddly enough, no cross-play apart from Xbox and the Windows 10 version. There is cross-gen, but that’s about it. While the team is hard at work bringing local two-player co-op to the Series X, PS5, and PC, it’s undecided yet if any work will be taken to bring that feature to the PS4 or Xbox One. Still, the fact that the game can be played entirely offline is something to at least be impressed by, given that a great deal of “single-player” games nowadays are connected to some sort of server for the most ridiculous reasons. In my experience, co-op does work, but the tiny bit of lag I’ve had only looks to exacerbate the already painful delay in performing any action. Granted, it wasn’t all the time, but it was just enough to make survival harder than it ever needed to be. That, and unless you are playing with people you can communicate with, don’t bother.
Now, playing online certainly has its advantages. First, the game’s difficulty seems far more tailored towards co-op play as enemies will often have scaling health that can be bizarre in single player, and playing online allows for you to revive your companions, or stay alive long enough for them to respawn. In solo play, when you die, it’s back to the checkpoint you’ve made with your camp. While the game isn’t terribly hard in most cases, there are numerous bugs and glitches that can result in completely unfair deaths that you’re very likely to die for no good reason and then attempt that fight all over again. When playing online with my friend, we discovered a few annoyances. Often, and I mean that in the general sense of the word, we would take damage from enemies or traps that were not even close to either of us and despite being leveled appropriately for the mission, each of us would get one-shotted by regular enemies every now and then for no reason. One of the bosses in the first act would lob rocks at you if you got too far away, and despite seeing one fly right by me, my friend, on the other side of the boss arena, would suddenly get knocked down and take damage, despite not being anywhere near the rock.
Despite playing most of the game solo, Dark Alliance really wanted me to know it is built for co-op. It would leave a “You are playing offline” prompt up on the screen the entire time I was in the hub world, making me fully aware of my lack of being online. Your death has a ten-second respawn timer that is followed up with five to ten seconds of the game fading to black and loading back in, and the camps you refresh your health at will “gather the party” for about five seconds and then reload the instance and mark your checkpoint, even if you don’t have a party when you are playing offline. You also have your rewards screen at the end of a mission which is clearly designed for co-op that is not skippable and takes forever to get you back to camp. Why this can’t be skipped entirely, or even sped up, is beyond me, especially considering most of the trash items I’ve earned don’t stay in my inventory for nearly as long. While I was lucky enough to not have any disconnects with my friend, I’ve seen many reports of players disconnecting after every completed level.
Between missions, you’ll retreat back to your camp, a safe haven where you can browse an upgrade shop, collect your rewards, gawk at trophy representations of each of the chapter’s bosses, when it works anyway, and admire the terrain details that graphically pop up as you run around the area. Picking a mission from the map will trigger a glowing portal at the far side of the camp, having you all collect there to teleport to the next location. The shop, which is run by a talkative merchant who just will not shut up, will allow you to sell items, though oddly enough just one at a time, sporting a line of dialogue after each transaction. Here, you upgrade items, convert your crystal currency into higher tiers, as well as purchase and upgrade your consumables. Each tier of an item requires a crystal currency of the same color and a bit of gold as well. It’s not a bad system, but a single crystal currency could have easily replaced this, or even just larger denominations of gold could have sufficed as well.
Dark Alliance has you picking from four heroes; Bruenor Battlehammer, his adoptive daughter Catti-Brie, Wulfgar, and Drizzt, who is not only a fan favorite but a character who would eventually become Catti-Brie’s husband. Each of these characters has a rich history within D&D and it’s unfortunate that the game doesn’t do more to honor that. Characters are here merely reacting to the story in brief moments of dialogue, yet never feeling like they are involved in it. They don’t feature in any of the game’s wonderfully rendered cutscenes apart from the opening where they are introduced. It’s a shame we don’t see them interacting more, or scenes of the group traveling. They will banter back and forth in co-op, often talking over each other with totally different conversations, but this group feels fairly wasted here given their deep and vast history. Now, having paper-thin stories in co-op games is all too common, due to the urgency of needing to get players back out there, it’s just a shame that seems to be the case here as well.
Missions are rated via power score difficulty, one that is measured across the team. This difficulty changes the reward values in regards to earning more experience, gold, or loot should you opt for a more challenging experience. As you explore, you’ll find chests, as well as earn loot by simply completing the level. Dark Alliance only rewards loot once you are back in camp, meaning you won’t ever have that moment during a level where you’ve unlocked something that is really cool and then immediately see its value during the next encounter. This method of only accessing your loot back at the hub location is to prevent players from standing around in missions retooling their setup every time they get something new, so I get it, it just sucks that it comes at the cost of getting something really cool in the moment and immediately taking advantage of it. Thankfully, loot does change your appearance, and can see a total of three upgrades given to each piece. There are perks and stats per item, skins to change their appearance, as well as set bonuses to look out for as well. I will say that some of the sets you can track down are absolutely awesome in appearance, while some are far less impressive.
Each of the game’s 21 locations largely act the same way. You'll progress through each environment, which are largely strung together corridors with a false sense of scale around you, and then tackle a boss at the end. Each chapter is split into 3 acts, with a more challenging boss at the end of each chapter. Locations have several campfires that can be propped up to rest, gain back health, refill your consumables, and trigger a checkpoint as well. However, you can forgo the camp entirely, and instead, take a boost to your loot drops. The catch? If you end up selecting the camp option at any point during that level, you'll lose the loot bonus. This comes into play a lot as you’ll need to choose one option over the other. Most of the time, it’s better to take the camp checkpoint as most levels have either completely invisible traps that can cut your health down due to many of them not having strong enough visual indicators on their range, and in fact, we kept finding random spots on the map where we would suddenly start on fire, despite not coming anywhere near any sort of flame trap.
Levels also have a strange emptiness to them, for as much combat as you’ll get into, I found most levels to be far too vacant, and devoid of that many enemies. In the original Baulder’s Gate: Dark Alliance games, you were often at the mercy of hordes of enemies, taking down dozens of them in a single fight. Here, most encounters are maybe 10 enemies, split that up between four players, and well, you do the math. I also found weird places with small steps or inclines where my character couldn’t run up them, and I had to either keep moving to find the gap needed to progress or just jump or roll over them. I’m talking like inclines of an inch or two that would somehow stop me from just walking forward. Also, characters only have a stationary stance on flat ground, so if you are standing on such an incline, your foot is always hovering in the air.
Now, combat is where Dark Alliance really struggles to remain fun, and since 90% of the game is built around its combat, that is a huge aspect of the game to get wrong, and yet here we are. Combat feels lethargic as every single attack feels almost a second too long to even see happen. While the attacks themselves are fast in their animation, it’s the response time it takes for those moves to occur where the problem lies. Catti-Brie, for example, the archer, doesn’t have a single bow attack that feels fast or intuitive. Her light attack is a kick, and her heavy attack is an arrow strike that can also be charged up by holding LT to pull the camera in close to aim. Tapping the arrow button is probably the slowest use of a bow I’ve seen in a game to date. I also had a lot of issues with the game not recognizing that I would be slamming down the button to fire off arrows, often just having her holding her bow out and not reacting to my inputs. Also, the animation for her firing off the bow is just her arms moving as her body will remain motionless during the whole attack. It’s a very bizarre and oddly looking animation regardless. I also had a lot of issues with arrows just hitting enemies and them not reacting to them or that they wouldn’t do any damage despite clearly hitting them. I had this issue with Drizzt as well as while I would be cutting into them their health just wouldn’t drop, until it would suddenly just start accepting my attacks randomly.
Each character has a special skill mapped to Y with holding Y to initiate a different skill, and as you earn more of these, this button is customizable. These don’t feel as bad since most special moves should have some sort of delay due to their power, but regular attacks? Those should be quick and feel good to use since they are meant to be your most used attacks. The only issue I had with these Y buttons skills are the cooldowns associated with them would often either not refresh the icon to let me know the cooldown was over, or that they would show ready and still be on a cooldown; this happened consistently through my playthrough. Your characters also have access to a block and parry system, which are functional, and seem to have pretty forgiving windows to act on. The best thing about the block is that it can skip through most locked combat animations, to aid in preventing incoming damage when your character decides to do that move that annoys you when you’re trying to perform something else entirely. You also have a lock-on, but I found it would zoom in and remove my peripheral vision, thus making it far too easy to get ambushed, not to mention, it rarely would work.
Now, as you start out, stamina will not be your friend. As you level up and unlock your stamina feats and armor that also grants stamina bonuses, you’ll find the game very limiting in what you’re able to do until then. As my main character here is Catti, I’ll use her as another example. Catti uses stamina for everything she does. Her special moves, regular arrows, heavy attacks, and dodging all use stamina. While her dodge is the only one that feels absolutely useless among the four, special and heavy attacks will actually lower her maximum stamina on each use, to a point. Eventually, this means you’ll have harsh limitations on stamina use unless you use a potion or your ultimate attack, which will replenish all stamina limits. Regardless, having attacks and movement tied to the same system can often make using your moves feel punishing, and oddly enough, Catti is the only character here that feels this harsh of a limit as Wulfgar can do his heavy attack all f’ing day and not feel this tug at the leash so harshly. As Catti, I felt extremely limited in acting on my abilities, as if I was to be punished for their use each and every time.
Now, as you earn gold, you can purchase more moves that range all over the spectrum for their weapon and combat type. With Catti-Brie, this includes jumping attacks with the bow, raining arrows down from above, and a variety of kicks. The issue I have with these moves is that they use the right trigger and the left analog stick along with another button like RB in a way that reminds me of a fighting game. Since you are always moving to avoid damage, it is far too easy to hit the stick the wrong way, and some moves require the button and stick to be hit at the exact same time, as holding the stick and that same button will perform a very different move, often leaving you exposed and vulnerable to take damage. Often, I would go to perform an attack as Catti, and instead of the move I wanted to do, she would do this incredibly slow kick that looked like she was slowly trying to climb over a fence. Often, this was due to be stamina deprived, but she would do this even when I had loads of stamina left. I lost track of how many times I died due to this, or at least, had my health severely depleted because of it. This would happen multiple times during each encounter through my entire playthrough.
I get what they were trying to do here, in making the moves based more around your movement, but other games simply map moves to the face buttons, with the shoulder buttons flipping between pages of different equipped moves. It’s a system that works well because each button is already tied to a move, so you know what you are getting each and every press. Had Dark Alliance done that here, it would have made a world of difference, especially since you cannot look up your move list during a mission. In fact, you don’t have access to your moves, feats, or equipment screens at all. Again, this is to keep players focused on the mission and not have anyone hold up that progress as they retool some ability or check out their equipment stats.
Now, I’ve mentioned feats before, and these are similar to moves, but require an attribute point that you’ll get as you level up, or find them in missions at special alters. Drizzt, for example, has three categories: Expertise, The Hunter, and The Ranger. Expertise revolves around your health, stamina, cooldowns, and merchant prices, whereas the Hunter is based on your stamina costs and physical damage capabilities. Lastly, The Ranger is targeted at increasing your armor and max HP bonuses. I do find it a bit odd that these seem to be placed into categories at random as they don’t really match up with the category name. Catti-Brie is the same way as while she has a category called “The Archer” only three of the eight skills here are arrow-based in any way.
Each character also has a single big move called an Ultimate attack, these are triggered by clicking down both analog sticks. These attacks are pretty effective, and building up the meter to use them takes a while in the early stages of your character, but eventually, you’ll be charging them, or using items as well, to perform them pretty frequently. Bruenor, being the protective father he is, places down a circular area of effect that provides elemental and physical resistances to all allies inside. Catti is able to fire off arcane arrows which do deal a lot of damage but actually feels slower to pull off than your normal arrows, not to mention it comes with a glowing haze that blocks most of your view. Drizzt lets loose Guenhwyvar, his spectral panther, who is immune to damage as he leaps from foe to foe. Lastly, Wulfgar has a spinning attack that is useful and does significant damage to those caught up in it.
Now, each character feels very different to use, and some of the rapid presses of regular attacks can lead to combo strings you likely don’t want to perform. Each character has a speed of their own, and yes, all of them do feel a bit slow in nearly anything you do. I know I harp on it a lot here, but the game just doesn’t feel as responsive as it should. Had that not been the case, and moves also mapped to the face buttons, I would have a very different outlook on this game by a country mile. Now, as you level up, and start to find gear or moves that reduce your cooldowns or your overall stamina, combat does get better despite its delay. Eventually, I got used to it and while I wouldn’t say I made my peace with it, I ended up having to shift how I entered into encounters, playing the game how it wanted me to play, instead of what I wanted from it. Having a larger pool of stamina meant I could cut loose more, my ultimate meter filled faster, so the most flashy attacks became easier to do. I still absolutely hate the delay that comes with pulling off almost anything, but there does come a point where parts of the combat does click, even if it’s an uncomfortable click all the same.
As you explore, you’ll encounter various treasures and lore items, but interacting with objects or loot requires you to face those objects at a certain distance and angle. I don’t know how many times I had to literally jump onto a table to collect some tomb or relic as simply standing in front of it just wasn’t enough. Hell, I found a painting I was supposed to collect that just wouldn’t let me; so I had to leave it after almost ten minutes of trying to snag it. Ladders are also a pain as while it’s nice your character will auto climb them once you click on them, finding that sweet spot in front of it feels more of a hassle than it’s worth. Jumping any sort of long gap can feel really off as if you are going to fail the jump, but as long as there is a red draped fabric hanging off the edge, your character will mantle up regardless of it clearly looking like you failed it. Another issue is when you are knocked down, as you’re character will just lay there for like 3 seconds, and then spend the next 5 seconds getting up. It just feels like a lifetime when you’re in the heat of combat and are just then bounced around as you’re getting your bearings.
As you move around each environment, you’ll encounter small groups of enemies. Often, you can pick them off with Catti-Brie at a distance, and nearly 90% of the time, they won’t even react to you. In fact, you can pick them off while they continue to chat amongst themselves. Enemies will also not follow you past a certain point, and won’t even acknowledge your presence, meaning you can stay at a distance and just clear a room with ranged attacks. This happens frequently if you attack from a higher or lower position. Also, Catti-Brie’s arrow volley needs to be used on the same level as your foes, as using it from above, will have it stop short just above them, complete with the animations of the arrows hitting the ground, but you’ll see these just hit the air above your foe. During most of my playthrough, enemies had almost no AI, and for the first few levels, not even a health bar. I’ve never seen such bad AI as I could often kill some while others just stood there, three feet from me, and acted like I didn’t exist.
While most bosses have interesting encounters from a mechanical point of view, they rarely work and are often broken. I had an encounter with a boss named Kronus Seven Scars that ended suddenly when I got him to half health. He just instantly died for some reason as I was getting my ass kicked by his relentless high-HP minions. Then there is Thurn Dreamreader, a boss with such low HP that I killed him in a single attack by accident. I had to save a video of the fight so even see what happened. In a fight that is clearly a rip-off of The Butcher from Diablo 3, there is The Chef. This is an encounter on a boiler floor that will spray up fire in certain locations. However, if you keep him trapped in the center lane, and move to the wooden platforms on either side, you can keep him there while you deal ranged damage and let the fire burn away at him. Then there is Hamboog, a Goblin that while the fight starts out with some actual mechanics, you can simply walk around him in a circle and fire off arrows as he just can’t touch you.
Despite some pop-in details on the terrain, Dark Alliance is a good-looking game. The level design here is decent with lots of paths and routes to take, rewarding that little bit of exploration around every corner, even if the corridor approach to much of them feels too similar to one another. The aesthetic in most environments is good, I just wish there was more variety in some of the locations as a lot of them take place underground in very samey environments. Enemies and effects all look good, but I don’t know if the game really takes advantage of the current generation of consoles as some details just feel less than impressive, especially when you see spider webs that looked better on the Nintendo 64. The game does run at 4K 60fps on Series X and PS5, even if the responsiveness of the game’s combat doesn’t quite feel as fluid.
I really wanted to love Dark Alliance, as I adore these types of games. I enjoy the world here and a lot of what it aims to do, but the execution of its combat and how laggy it feels in its responsiveness just holds it back and it just doesn’t feel fun to play consistently. Combine that with some horrendous AI and a few bosses that feel very broken, and you have a game that just doesn’t feel finished. If that responsiveness can be fixed, then there could be a good game here, despite the fighting game controls of its moves that don’t feel as intuitive as the developer likely was aiming for. I think the characters could have been better developed and integrated into the story better, and that very story could have been far more satisfying given the source material. Personally, Dark Alliance is a below-average game for sure. I don’t think it’s the worst game I’ve played this year as I did find some enjoyment once I leveled up more, but it certainly is not a great experience regardless of the things it does mostly right. Dark Alliance for me is a massive disappointment that capitalizes on a name that it doesn’t deserve to have adorned to it.
Developer - Tuque Games. Publisher - Wizards of the Coast. Released - June 22nd 2021. Available On - Xbox One, Series X/S, PlayStation 4/5, Windows. Rated - (M) Blood and Gore, Language, Violence.
Platform Reviewed - Xbox Series X. Review Access - Dark Alliance was downloaded off of Game Pass by the reviewer.