This will be the first of quite a few games I’ll be reviewing that no longer requires a monthly subscription. DDO (Dungeons and Dragons Online) has a unique gameplay style – as you play your adventures are narrated. The narrator tells you if your character can hear trolls in the next room for instance. A welcome warning, but you’ll only get that warning if your listen skill is high enough. The goal with the narration of course being to provide the same feel as if you were sitting in a room, playing a traditional game of D&D with a game master, and it works to a point. The only caveat is that you can’t tell the game master that you want to try something unorthodox, and have him come up with some general rules for it on the spot. The D&D rule set is quite robust, and D&D online does an impressive job of replicating it, that being said there are some omissions, and minor tweaks to make the game translate more readily to a video game. Perhaps the most notable of which is a change to the cleave and great cleave skills, which now, instead of giving you a free attack after killing an opponent, have become an area of effect attack, hitting multiple targets at once. The game doesn’t waste any time introducing new players to the narrative style, directly after making your character, you’re dropped off on a beach, shipwrecked, with no personal belongings, luckily for you there’s a small group of people nearby who are all too willing to help; they get you some armor, and a weapon, but then drag you into their business, fighting off bloodthirsty monsters, and solving puzzles for this small group. Once it’s over you all part ways, and you can begin your quest on tutorial island! Where DDO starts to introduce you to the types of missions, puzzles, and enemies you’ll face in the game. the world is instanced, with town areas being a common ground where players can bump into each other, form parties, trade, etc. But once you enter a mission you won’t see anyone who isn’t in your party; part of the fun of early MMOs was bumping into players who were also out hunting in the wilderness, however it also prevents areas from getting “camped”, and also allows DDO to present more challenging problems that might be too hard if monsters kept respawning all around you. There’s plenty of content to reach the maximum level without paying for anything; however, you will have to run some missions multiple times, and probably travel to the wilderness areas to do a bit of grinding. While you only get experience for completing objectives, the wilderness areas provide some limited, grind-like kill/discover objectives that take more and more kills to reward experience as you go along. It’s worth noting that if you’re willing to drop a couple dollars here and there on new missions, you might never have to replay a mission twice, or have to do anything that feels at all like grinding. As a free game, 3.5 stars, but as a paid game 4.5 stars! DDO is truly a masterfully created title, but probably won’t be satisfying without paying for it. You can create your free account now at http://www.ddo.com/
| Dungeons and Dragons Online (as a free title) | |
|---|---|
| Overall |    |
| A combination of the reviewer's bias, and the objective score | |
| Reviewer's Bias | |
| Some games are more than the sum of their parts, this category allows the reviewer to reflect that in his overall rating. | |
| Gameplay | |
| How fun is the game | |
| Graphics | |
| How good does the game look? | |
| Sound | |
| Sound effects, music, etc. | |
| replayability | |
| How long can you play this game before you need to take a break? | |
| Objective score | |
| An average of the gameplay, sound, graphics, and replayability categories. | |