Dungeons 3

Well, So far I have been playing the campaign, and must say the game itself is quite enjoyable. The dungeon building and defense is nicely combined with the conquest above the ground. Also switching from "Above" to "Underground" is quick and natural - with single click on the appropriate mini-map. The storytelling is a bit annoying with rather forced humor, that seems to be directed at younger, immature audience. Kind-of "Wohho, lets's do evil evilly" kinda style. It sets this goofy mood for the game. I suppose it is continuation of the style, but I rather would have the DK more serious and sinister mood. The interface looks nice, but on the other hand a bit clumsy in use. For example the way the creatures and spells building and traps are accessed - by panel that needs to be opened, and once open is taking a HUGE amount of the screen. It is hard not to compare it again to DK where you had things practically directly accessible, with small and clear icons. The creature management could have been better - for example there could be some clear indication whenever it is above or underground, and with more creatures the management gets a bit more annoying than it should. They could also have something like a survival instinct - for example they could at lest try to flee when overwhelmed/low HP. But the most important thing is, that while Dungeons 3 is far from perfect, Overall in-game experience is very positive.

Finally a game that not only do justice to the genre but also improves upon it. The narration is brilliant and actually funny, the story is fun and the gameplay is addictive. This feels to me like if Blizzard were to make a dungeon management style game, in terms of technical polish and graphics.

I love the game, got it on sale, very happy with everything the game has to offer.

This is a solid Dungeon Keeper inspired game thoroughly enjoyable if you want to relive that experience. However, the gameplay is pretty repetitive from map to map. Each map pretty much plays out the same way, and you are more or less forced to build your dungeon in a prescribed order to a certain point. The game starts very slowly because you have very limited Evilness so you must scrounge up enough creatures to go capture the closest Good location to generatge Evilness. Then you just have to hunker down and go down the tech tree slowly as you are too weak to really conquer much more of the map. Evilness generates slowly and you have to wait quite a while before you can "do the next thing". Getting traps setup so you can move more freely in the overworld without having to teleport back to constantly defend takes a gargantuan amount of effort and time. Just to get the first useful trap set up (Rolling Boulder) you will have to research and build 3 rooms, research 3 levels of traps, build machines, and have some Horde creatures working on the traps. This could take you a good 20-30 minutes before you get to that point with the rate at which you generate Evilness from only 1 location. By and all you can get the gameplay experience from just doing a few skirmish maps and playing around. The campaign is pretty much the same experience over and over, each time though adding 1 more room to the tech tree. I regret buying the DLC because it is just what I thought it would be, which is more of the same. Except with themes.

Dungeons II was a better game with less bugs. From attacking through walls to bad pathing (heroes can walk around a tar pit down a single tile wide hallway and other bad pathing models) this game was not ready for release. Heck there is even a joke about it in the game calling it a "release with hair on its' chest". However if you only play the campaign or skirmish mode on normal difficulty you will likely notice none of these things. If you enjoy Dungeon Keeper, this is no Dungeon Keeper II. It is like how Diablo 1 atmosphere is nothing like Diablo 2 even though the games share many mechanics. Where Dungeon Keeper II had the right mix of humor and seriousness, Dungeons III just feels like a bunch of stale joke (which many were recycled from Dungeons II). It had some fun concepts that needed polish such as the right hand henchmen "Talya" (being only useful in the opening of a skirmish on Diabolical difficult, never put points into leveling Talya, even the first level is useless) which could have gained from having an indpendent tech tree with real varibility depending on play style and strategy but the game was too caught up on trying to be league of legends warcraftian lite with just a touch of a dungeon managment game. Trap balancing is horrible, challenege is front loaded as a room of 4 thrasher can deal with almost anything, a room of 4 icy thrashers can deal with anything, a long hallway with one icy rolling stone trap and a few icy crushers can kill a swarm of a 100 elite heroes in one click while automatic traps take a ton of resources (evility, gold, tool boxs) just to get off the ground. In short too many bugs, balance issues, and stale humor will break immersion. This is not Dungeon Keeper II, this is league of legends and warcraft in a Dungeon Kepper trench coat.