Dragonshard Review

Average Reviews:

(More customer reviews)The goal of the developers was to make a RTS with RPG elements and they definately accomplished it.
When the game begins you can start out with either the Order of the Flame (Basically the human/elves/dwarves) or the Lizardfolk. Each race has a hefty amount of units to choose from beyond the standard warrior/rogue/healer archtypes. You have about ten types of Captains, four heroes and one Juggernaut character to use. Each has their own special abilities in standing with the Dungeon and Dragon's universe. For example, Clerics will get cure light wounds/hold/ressurection type abilities. Addtionally, there is a skirmish mode where you can launch and play up to seven other teams on a map as well as multiplayer.
The tutorial on how to play the game was pretty good although the Narrator voice tended to draw his words out and made the tutorial very slow and a lot of stuff in there you really didn't need (I think all gamers can see the glaring difference between what a green checkmark and a red X signifies)
For building construction, you have a preset number of building squares. For example, in a main Nexus base you have a total of 16 squares on which to build with your structures. So depending on what structures you place will relate to the capabilities of your army. Each unit has a primary attack element and resistances. This is a major factor in the game because if your unit uses a primary attack of lightning and the unit it is attacking is 95 percent resistant to lightning it's not going to do hardly any damage so there is some skill and thought involved. There are other elements to the strategy of fighting as well, but that is the key element in the battles you will fight.
Personally, I didn't like the RTS elements of the game so much as I did the RPG elements of Dragonshard. I liked taking my little guys down in the Underground and doing the little quests and exploring. However, they blend fairly well together. Your units will go down to explore and quest and pop back up outside to build your bases and collect resources. Now, everything happens in real-time but the RPG underground elements are paced out so you won't be in the predicament of disarming traps, etc. For example, one of the missions has you against the Lizard folk but they aren't attacking and holding a river pass while building their troops up so you can explore the underdark without having to defend against his armies. I was skeptical buying the game on how they would pull it off, but they developed it quite nicely creating a really fun expierience.
Speaking of resources there are three types. EXP which is gained from monsters or scrolls, Gold and Dragonshards. EXP and gold are practical in that you get both from killing monsters and questing underground. The dragonshards are kind of a pain. They are scattered across the above-ground map and respawn when the world gets dark and they fall from the sky and make little craters where you have to send a unit to go pick the stuff up. Gold and Dragonshards are the two resources required to build anything and exp is just used to upgrade your units.
The bad part is that you cannot set a unit to auto pick-up dragonshards all over the map so if you are running low you need to take one of your guys and go click around on the shard droppings. It's not TOO bad mainly because you don't need a ludicrous amount of shards and gold to keep armies in the field and if you play well you shouldn't have too many "wipes" with your units until the later missions.
In later missions your armies will become quite large and give little system burps mainly due to the massive amount of units on the field. Each captain you build can also have soldiers attached to them depending on the level, so you can have upwards to 60+ individual little fellas on your side alone on the screen. It's difficult in later stages when you have sooo many units on the screen it can become overwhelming to manage them all. You can assign hotkeys to specific groups but it's still a little overwhelming. If you are a pro at Warcraft/Starcraft type games then you should have zero problem with the RTS elements of Dragonshard, however.
As far as bugs I've only had a few so far and that was a glich with Save/Loading which only happened once and a few minor crashes. There is an auto-update button upon launch which makes getting patches pretty easy.
Multiplayer. I have not tried the multiplayer out yet, but I can see it being a good expierience mainly because the unit types are varied and unit balance is excellent where no one unit except for the Juggernauts and Heroes are the end all and be all. Even the Heroes and Juggernauts are balanced because you can only have one on the map and they take a lot to build. Unsupported they will fall quickly to a group of regular captains.
Summary of Pros and Cons:
Pros
- Resistances add a lot of strategy to unit mix in armies
- Graphics were well done.
- Sound was good and voice characterization
- Excellent unit balance
- Replayability and length of game will give you a lot of game time for your money.
- SUPERB storyline.
Cons
- Tutorial too dummified and long.
- Dragonshard collection is not very user-friendly.
- Large battles turn into a massive slugfest and will probably lag out low-end computers.
- Few bugs.
Overall I enjoyed the game. The developers succeeded in creating exactly what they said - RTS with RPG flare.

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A Dungeon and Dragons Real-Time Strategy Experience!Product InformationEnter a world of natural magic and ancient races...war-torn Eberron theacclaimed new Dungeons and Dragons realm home to an artifact to supreme powercoveted by all. Commanding your troops is only part of the war. Deepbeneath the conflict you will send leaders to an RPG-based underworld of beastsand bounty. Be shrewd: experience gained underground affect your RTSpowers above.Deliver the world into light...or bury it forever in darkness.Product FeaturesReign over the land with armies of legendPlunge warriors underground for vital RPG battlesMaster unique "village grid system" building strategiesThree desperate races will converge in a struggleLead your warriors underground to thrilling RPG-style dungeon campaignsControl armies of haunting powerThree playable warring factions: the human-based Order Of The SilverFlame the evil power-hungry Umbragen and primal beings of unstoppable rageWindows RequirementsWindows 2000 XPPentium 4 2.0 GHz or AMD Athlon 2.0 GHz processor1 GB of RAM2.5 GB free Hard Disk space8X CD-ROM drive or faster64 MB Hardware T&L compatible Video Card - Hardware T&L VideoCards that do not support shaders such as the GeForce 4 MX or Intel ExtremeGraphics family are not supportedDirectX 9.0c compatible Sound CardDirectX 9.0c (included) or higherInternet play requires Internet connection 56 Kbps or faster (Cable of DSLconnection recommended)

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Age of Empires III Review

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(More customer reviews)When I sat down with Age of Empires 3 I was hoping for a little more - something new and refreshingly different (ala the Lord of the Rings RTS for example). There is a new feature, the Home City. The rest of Age of Empires 3 is the same as the previous games at heart, with some new makeup and some new units. Don't get me wrong, this new Age of Empires installment is fun and just as addictive as its predecessors, but also feels tired at the same time. If you still enjoy the previous Age of Empires games, you will likely enjoy this one equally.
It has been some time since I played the previous Age of Empires 2 but I remembered a simple, relatively clean interface. In Age of Empires 3 I was a little taken aback by the clutter of information, and juggling Home City shipments (and Deck Building) with what was happening on screen requires a lot of micro-management.
This new installment has some great civilizations and in this regard, the units are new and refreshing. In an Age of exploration and the shift from archeic weapons to gunpowder, you have a variety of new units, and a few units that are unique to each civilization to help set them apart. In addition each civilization has its own unique advantages (and disadvantages) that set it apart from the rest. This is primarily done via a new feature: the Home City and the shipments you are allowed to send from it. I liked the idea of the Home City, but wasn't overly impressed with some aspects of its implementation.
The new units are fun and consist of both modern (for the period) and archeic units giving you some flexibility in what you want to field - however don't expect their power to be equal. The cannon physics are really well done, you can track cannon balls throughout their flight and watch the havoc they bestow upon enemy buildings (which now fall apart in peices instead of as a whole) or the holes they punch in rows of infantry. The charachter animations on most units are really well done, and occasionally you will see them adjust their weapons for long range of short range combat (they throw burning items at enemy buildings instead of firing their highly ineffective muskets). I beleive that musketeers can also fix bayonets to make them more effective at close range, although I didn't notice a signifigant difference, mine continued to fire their muskets regardless of the range of the enemy.
There is another new feature in Age of Empires 3 in the form of an Explorer. He is a powerful unit you can use to explore the map (although any unit can still do his job). The Explorer can take damage, and fall in battle, but doesn't die. He can be rescued and revived. The Explorer has the special ability to deal with treasure guardians in one shot, but a hardy group of soldiers can also take down the treasure guardians without too much difficulty. The Explorer can retreive treasure found on the map and can also build Trading Posts (settlers can build them as well) - this is how you interact with the Native Americans. Building a Trading Post near a Native American outpost forges an alliance with them and you are then allowed to train Native American warriors which are useful because they don't count against your population limit - but they do have a population limit of their own (15 seems to be the norm). In a bizarre twist, the Native Americans are not hostile to these new invaders unless they are allied with one of your enemy players - intersting.
In summation, I did enjoy trying out Age of Empires 3. My initial impression was that the civilizations and corrosponding diversity in units and Home City shipments helped add some variety to the Age of Empires format, but also meant more added juggling. Even with the new ability to zoom in and out a little, I still found it difficult at times to juggle my units. In combat, my nicely organized ranks merged into one wave of units that were impossible to divide up and thus made tactics difficult. You can assign numbers (via Ctl+#) to a group of units to help this, but I didn't find anyway to assign formations to the units (you could do this in Age of Empires 2). When left idle long enough - seeemed to take a long time - my units did auto-arrange themselves into formation, but didn't maintain that formation during attacks. I wish they would have borrowed a little from another RTS game that allows you to train units in groups that are then treated as one unit. This would have made Cavalry and Infantry units that much easier to manage, especially in large numbers. In addition, in that same RTS game you can assign different unit types to merge together and form a new formation of units that is again treated as one unit. This greatly simplifies training units and then moving them about the map and maintaining formations for attacks.
I do look forward to spending a lot more time with Age of Empires 3 as I'm sure there is a lot that I haven't noted in my initial observations. I think the game is true to its heritage and I think that Age of Empires fans will flock to this new installment. However, I don't think that Age of Empires 3 delivers enough new variety in either design or implementation to steal away the fans of other RTS games that are working to reinvent and revitalize the genre.

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Strategy Game - 1 User - Complete Product - Standard - English - PC

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