Having been a huge fan of Dungeon Master on the Amiga (and it's sequel Chaos Strikes Back) and then the Eye of the Beholder series (the sound of the EotB spiders still makes me feel a bit ill) I was excited by the news of LoG and ordered it pretty quickly. I would like to mention some positives, some negatives and some neutral "I wish..." just like my gaming friends and I used to always say about games as kids. Just so you know...now...I love the game.
Positives:
Old school gameplay with classicRPG elements - level up, skill points, hero key stats, classes. hunger (for some reason this really adds something). Unless you find and hang around the couple of endless spawn points you will need to pick your preferred skills and focus your prisoner team - you won't be able to max them out with standard play. Why is it so much fun and exciting to earn 4 more skill points and deciding where to allocate them?
The graphics, whilst pretty samey, do a good job and,when combined with the atmospheric sound effects really create a pretty immersive experience.
The level design is pretty damn good, including those deliberate little side-step dead ends you naturally step into (for some reason) when trying to run away from an awkward enemy.
Save anytime you like and as many save files as you like.....yes! Thanks LoG developers. I am big enough to know that saving after each minor victory is sort-of-cheating-kind-of but gaming is a treat these days and I am very pleased I do not have to replay the same bit over and over and over thanks to the dreaded checkpoint save system found in many games.
Hooray for symbol based, get your spell ready, spell casting.
Auto map with ability to add your own notes and, for real old school players, the ability to switch it off. I for one left it on - at the end of the day if you are drawing the map out you are just wasting time. If you don't want to play with a map don't hit the button.
I know some people don't like the square/pit dance combat but I found most battles were pretty intense and would induce certain levels of panic.
Oh....the team automatically picking up throwing/missle weapons is really nice too.
Negatives:
Not many here really. Some of the puzzles were a real ball ache. In particular the timing puzzles. Easy enough to work out what to do but they took ages to get the timing just right. I actually found that by turning the resolution down I could move quicker (I was playing at a rather high res and movement was sluggish) which helped alleviate the problem. Having read the review by the disabled gamer I feel for him with regards to this as I too wished I could skip these bits as they weren't actually a puzzle just frustrating. Not sure how possible they are with mouse-only controls. LoG developers - give us a secret pressure pad or something that slows the things down.
The last level, or what I imagine is the last level as I haven't managed to complete it, is REALLY tough. To the point where I seem to be dieing and reloading more than actually playing. I have really enjoyed playing the game but my motivation to keep trying and trying and trying and trying and trying has really dropped off at this late stage. If it is near the end then my character development has pretty much peaked and the challenge is getting really annoying, Maybe I am just rubbish though :)
When closing doors the monster animations appear through the door and look a bit rubbish and seemed to really be a grating weak spot in an otherwise emersive experience,
Some wishes:
Ok, some of these thoughts stem from DM of old but I wanted to mention them.
I was disappointed to find out that you can't close doors on top of monsters to do extra damage - that was always rather pleasing. If the monster attack animation is playing and the door closes, hit them hard on the head rather than the graphical glitch mentioned above.
In DM I loved the ability to increase the power of spells (resulting in bigger, more damaging, fireballs). It really felt like the character was learning his craft. I know the skill points sort of achieve this but I remember the sheer joy when a character eventually managed to pull off the next level of a spell. I also felt smug about the trick of clicking a symbol, sleeping, then clicking the next, then sleeping...etc. as in DM the mana would decrease as the spell symbols were chosen.
It would be nice to have a use for the old stuff (clothes/weapons) that your characters shed throughout the game. I felt like I wanted to sell them to get gold or XP or something rather than just drop them. I know there is no use for gold in the prison I just wanted something good to come out of them. This has nothing to do with DM but a lot of other dungeon crawlers.
Overall a VERY enjoyable and emersive game. Am so pleased to have played it and I recommend it 100%. I just hope I can get it together and finish the thing. I hope that a sequel will come out very soon.
