On the plus side the DAH remake has largely kept the gameplay the same as the original games, The story, music, voice acting and humour has all been kept the same which is a breath of fresh air in this politically correct world we now live in. Graphics have been brought up to date, some new abilities such as dash and repulse have been added and transmog has been imported from DAH2. All of which improve the game over the original. Why then do I only give it 4 stars and not 5? Firstly some skills have become more fiddly to use than they were in the original, holobob and refilling your saucers shields are particularly fiddly. Secondly your telekinesis abilities feel nerfed, I was unable to pick up the robots even with it fully upgraded which you could in the original. You also get the best skills much later now than you did in the original. Awareness of the npc's also seems much higher than it was in the original and far more enemies will be spawned, this is a double edged sword, more enemies can make the game more fun but can also make missions more annoying. However all of these things would not make me drop a star from this game, what did however is what they have done to the final boss. In this remake they have added some total BS moves to the final boss which can totally deplete your shields in one hit, it can also hit you from anywhere, so you spend most of the fight hiding or retreating trying to get your shields back, it is also a very long fight which I found more annoying and artificially difficult than genuinely challenging. This is something I've noticed in a lot of recent games such as Ashen, Remnants from the Ashes, Sekiro, Bloodstained Ritual of the night etc which all have artificially difficult cheap and nasty final bosses. There was no reason for them to do that here and it left a sour taste in my mouth, Overall A brilliant game but be aware some things have chenged for the better and some for the worse and the final boss is BS.
This is an odd game for me to review, In some parts I absolutely loved the game in other parts I hated it. Firstly the good, Graphics are gorgeous, Music and voice acting are top notch, some of the rpging, particularly the underground areas reminded me of rpg classics like BG2 and Hordes of the underdark and the combat is generally pretty good. The bad parts are the developers have nerfed your characters, you have access to only 2 skill trees now per character while in SF3 you had 4 on your main character and 3 for your team mates. Also your perks and skills are also now weaker. On top of that the RTS parts have been made harder through cheap AI. On some of the later RTS levels you'll start with one area, half a dozen troops and one building while the AI has the entire rest of the map and will almost immedietely start sending an endless stream of enemies to destroy your base. In SF3 this wasn't a problem as your team were a wrecking crew and could handle anything that was thrown at them. Here your nerfed heroes will get quickly overwhelmed which just leads to the games pace grinding to a halt. Some boss battles are pretty cheap, One in particularly will see your entire team getting one shot unless you have a character with a particular skill. SH is a good game but just feels more rushed and less play tested and balanced than SF3 was.
I'm a big fan of the classic real time with pause rpg's as well as the more recent ones however this game is nothing like Baldurs Gate, Icewind Dale, Pillars or Kingmaker. What you get is a game that is totally linear with pre generated characters, pretty crummy unbalanced combat and RNG. While in the classics of old if you got stuck you could change your party, your build level up, buy items, or just go somewhere else and comeback later here when you get stuck which you will, you will find yourself with two options, keep trying the same battle over and over again until maybe you might get lucky or lower the difficulty which is a choice no gamer wants to make. It looks fantastic and the story seems promising but I'm just finding it extremely unpleasant and unrewarding to play.
Just buy the main game and Heart of gold, there both brilliant, this I can only describe as all the most hated levels from the original Dungeon keeper rolled into one package. You'll just be constantly rushed by the enemy AI's and most of your defensive options will have been removed as each of the four underlords has been nerfed in some way. Apparantly the AI was "improved" by suggestions from the 4 best players in the world. If by "Improved" they mean a frustrating tedious mess. I know a lot of people will jsut say GitGud etc but It's really not worth the effort for this dlc and the maps are far too confined.
