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Dragonshard
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Game Name:
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Dragonshard |
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Console:
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PC |
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Reviewed:
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Unknown |
Welcome to the world of Eberron, one of the many D&D worlds. Some time in the distant past there were three dragon gods – one good, one neutral and one evil. The good dragon sacrificed herself to quell the evil dragon. The evil dragon became the underworld, the neutral dragon because the world and the remains of the good dragon turned into crystal shards which orbit the world. Every so often some of the shards crash down to the surface of the world. These dragonshards are the source of all magic in the world and so are greatly valued by the inhabitants.
Dragonshard is the first ever RTS/RPG hybrid set in the dungeons and dragons setting. The most famous of all RTS/RPG hybrids being Warcraft 3 which in some ways Dragonshard reminds me of. There are many differences though. In Dragonshard you have a variety of things that could be considered resources. The first two are gold and dragonshards. These can be used to construct new buildings and create new units. Gold is obtained in two ways. The first is taxation – the more buildings you have the more gold you earn each second. The second is loot – money can be found lying around in the underworld on the ground or in chests. Monsters in both the underworld and the surface will sometimes drop gold as well when you kill them. Dragonshards are generally only found on the surface world. Almost every unit under your command can be ordered to go and collect them. Every so often (I think it’s mostly when the amount of shards on the surface gets low) more shards will rain down from the sky. Note that the AI for collecting dragonshards is a little bit lacking – any unit(s) ordered to gather shards will grab those near the area specified but won’t go looking for more. In some ways this is a blessing since they are less likely to get into trouble that way – you generally don’t need a huge number or at least not in the single player campaign.
The next main resource is experience. Anybody who’s played any D&D (or almost any RPG) will know what experience is – you get a certain amount for killing monsters. Being part RTS, experience is handled differently in this game. To fully understand it I’ll need to explain buildings first. Located around the game map will be a limited number of areas where you can create either an outpost or city. In the single player game these start off occupied (I’ve not tried multiplayer) by the factions in the mission (one of which will be yours). An outpost has four building squares, a city has four set of four building squares. At a cost of gold and dragonshards you can construct buildings that can create a particular captain unit. Each race has their own units and each unit has a particular role. The Order of the Flame (the good guys) can recruit barbarian dwarves, human clerics, rogues etc. The barbarians are grunt melee fighters. The clerics are used mainly for healing while rogues are good at handling traps, scouting and unlocking chests. Each unit has their strengths and weaknesses – you can customise your army to match your play style. When you begin each mission these units are at level 1. The building that is used to create them is also used to upgrade them. Initially this is just at an experience cost, that is, to upgrade units from level 1 to level 2 it just costs a small amount of experience points. After that however you need more buildings of the same type for further upgrades. These building must be built adjacent to existing buildings of the same type. For example, to build level 1 Dwarvern barbarian you need to construct a Dwarvern armoury. For the cost of some experience points you can upgrade them so that all Dwarvern barbarians will be level 2 (upgrading improves all units of the type including those already built). If you want to upgrade them to level 3 you need a second armoury next to the first one and you have to pay even more experience points. If you want to get them all the way to level 5 (the maximum) then you need to have four of that building type next to each other. Remember how I said that cities have four sets of four building squares? Each one of them is equivalent to an outpost and only buildings within the same groups count for upgrading purposes – it doesn’t work if you have two in one group and two in another. If you have multiple buildings of the same type you can also build units in each of them at the same time. Interestingly enough, once a unit has been upgraded in a particular mission they stay at that level even if you demolish some of their buildings. This can be used to make way for other units. Alternately, instead of unit buildings you can construct monuments which upgrade any units who have adjacent buildings – this applies even after a unit has been built as well. So if you’ve upgraded your barbarians to level 5 you could knock down 3 of their armouries and replace them with monuments to give bonuses to that unit. The same monument can’t be built more than once in any given group of 4 squares. I’m not sure if you can stack a bonus by having the same monument and the same unit building in two different areas. Having buildings also increase the number of units you can have under your command – up to a maximum of 20.
Upgrading units has several effects. The first is an increase in their stats – hitpoints,. mana and attack value being the main ones. The second is new abilities being unlocked. Abilities come in two types – passive and castable. Passive abilities stay active at all times or will trigger at an appropriate time. Castable abilities use up a certain amount of mana to utilise. They have a duration for which they last, an effect value (for whatever they do) and a cooldown time which is how long until you can use that ability again (mana allowing). Another main effect of increasing level is recruits. When a captain is standing near a city/outpost they will gradually being gathering soldiers to their cause. These soldiers usually look like smaller versions of the captain unit. They will follow the captain unit around and help them fight enemies. They have their own hitpoints and can be killed off but can be replaced if the captain returns to a friendly city/outpost. In many ways they act like a meat shield as the soldiers will always go down before the captain does. The number of soldiers a captain can have is usually one less than their current level. It can be more if a particular magical item is used. Recruits seem to have their own mana bar but I’m not sure how much they contribute when using abilities or even when fighting. I’m also not sure how strong they are in comparison to the captain unit they are following – the game documentation is lacking in many ways.
The camera controls in the game are kind of similar to those of Warcraft 3 - you can zoom in and out (zooming in tilts the camera upwards and zooming out does the opposite). However there is one annoying camera feature that I’ve noticed. When you have multiple units selected, their icons will be displayed at the bottom of the screen. If you click on one of the icons you will keep all the units selected but the character portrait will change to that unit type which lets you access the abilities for that unit type. However, clicking on the icon also moves the camera to centre on the unit you clicked on. If this unit isn’t on the front line of combat (because they are a ranged attacker for example) then you can suddenly find your view pulled away from the front line of a battle. This is especially a problem if you’ve clicked on that unit in order to choose a special ability for them to use on the enemy. You have to quickly scroll back to the front line of combat which can waste precious seconds. This matter is compounded if you have several units with special abilities that you wish to call upon. For that matter, using special abilities can be harder than it should be since some of them don’t mass activate. For example, say you have a half dozen barbarians selected, if you click on their rage ability they will all activate it at once. On the other hand, if you have some sorceresses selected and click on their fireball ability – only one of them will cast a fireball spell where you specify. This is inconsistent and can waste time when you are trying to quickly hammer a dangerous enemy. On the plus side though, there is no friendly fire when it comes to spells. It would be nicer if more spells/abilities could be set to automatically cast though. Combat between large armies is hard to control with so much going on. It’s difficult to try and switch between different units to activate their special abilities. It would be better if most of the spells/abilities could be set to automatic – possibly with AI settings so you don’t waste mana on trivial battles, or with the ability to turn the extra AI off until you get into a really big fight. One glaring case of a spell that should be auto casting is the paladin’s lay on hands ability. This restores a lot of health to a paladin when used and can save their life. It would be nice if they’d use it themselves when they are getting low on health rather than me having to monitor them and use it at an appropriate time.
Each game map works on two levels – the surface and the underworld (kind of like heroes of might and magic 3). The underworld tends to be more filled with monsters, traps and treasure. Traps can only be spotted by having a rogue with you. The rogue can disarm the trap and even rearm the trap so that it will only hurt enemy units. You generally have to go down into the underworld in order to complete your mission but otherwise it provides a good place to gain gold and experience. Entering the underworld is done through various entrances located around the map. The underworld isn’t all interconnected – sometimes you need to use several entrances to reach everywhere. Because of the narrow passageways of the underworld, captain units do not have their soldier units with them when they enter the underworld. They will reappear if you return them to the surface though. Flying units cannot enter the underworld either. This can be annoying if you’ve built up a number of airborne units for your army. This would be less of a problem if you could disband units in order to make room for other units. You can’t – you’d have to send a unit to their death in order to clear a spot.
Aside from your captains and soldiers you also have your hero units. In the single player campaign you generally only have one of them for each mission but you can select which one. Each hero is from one of four classes – fighter, cleric, rogue and wizard. They each have special abilities based on their class and offer a special bonus to all allied soldiers – for example a wizard type hero increases the mana regeneration for all allied units. The heroes are central to the plot of the single player campaigns of which there are two – one for the Order of the Flame and another for the Lizardfolk. Strangely there is no campaign for the third main faction – the Umbragen. If a hero unit dies, they can be resurrected at the central keep of a city under your control. There seems to be some kind of bug involved in this. In the last of the Order of the Flame missions my thief hero, Kael, got zapped by a Beholder while my army was in the underworld and vanished. I assumed he’d been disintegrated so I went back to my city and clicked on the button to resurrect him. A few minutes later I was surprised to see Kael alive and well with my army. I thought that was odd since I’d expected him to reappear back near the city but just continued playing. When I resurfaced I noticed a blip on the game mini map indicating that an allied unit was near my city. I scrolled over and found Kael just standing there. I check my army and, sure enough, he was still there as well. The game had provided me with two Kaels.
During the game you will find treasure items. Some of these are quest items which can always be picked up; others can be used to provide some benefit. Some items are single use like a healing potion. Others provide a single, permanent bonus to a unit like improved attacking power. Some are like the special skills of heroes – they can be reused many times or indefinitely but have a cool down time before they can be reused. You only have a limited number of item slots though. As soon as an item is picked up it can be used on any unit, anywhere. So if a unit in the underworld picks up a healing potion you can use it to heal a unit back at your home city. Any items left over at the end of a mission will be put into a vault and can be sold or equipped for the next mission. If you choose to sell them it won’t be for gold but for reward points. Reward points are assigned after you complete each campaign mission. You can spend them to buy new items for your army to take into the next mission. You can also take items from the vault for the next mission but you can only take 3 items. You can also unlock permanent upgrades for each hero using reward points. Most of the points are given for questing, so performing all of the quests will give you the most points. A smaller number of rewards points are given for how efficient you were during the mission. The amount of time taken to complete the mission, the number of captains who died under your command, the amount of money you spent etc. You are also rated on how you did certain tasks – for example, in the first Order of the Flame mission you fight a large frost monster. Earlier in the mission you will have found a ring that can cast fireballs spells. If you use the ring the monster goes down quicker, but you’ll receive fewer reward points for fighting dishonourably. This is an interesting feature but a slightly annoying one since you won’t actually know the conditions which will lose you points until after you’ve finished the mission. This is compounded by another “feature” which I’m strongly tempted to call a bug. In most games, reloading a save game will take you back to how things were exactly. However, in Dragonshard the save games and the campaign progress seem to be somewhat detached from each other. For example, when you kill the aforementioned frost monster it ends the first mission. When I did it the first time I noticed that I’d had some points deducted because one of my captains fell in battle. At first I just shrugged it off, bought a couple of items for my hero and started on the next mission. Then I decided it wouldn’t be that hard to win the fight without any casualties and reloaded. I beat the monster and the game returned me to the campaign victory screen again. There I was shocked to see that the points I had available were only those left after my previous purchases, and the items I’d bought were nowhere to be seen either. I felt this to be very poor design since reloading is the normal instinct of a gamer when things don’t quite go as they wanted. From what I can see, if I want to get a better result I need to replay the mission from scratch. The game will let you replay missions that you’ve already completed in the campaign – I assume the new reward points will get added to your current total. There was another problem with reloading after a mission is finished that I found. During one mission I obtained one of the seals of light which ended the mission. However, there were a number of areas I hadn’t explored (I hadn’t realised that the seal was in that particular location) so I reloaded and searched the other areas first then came back to claim the seal. Result: nothing. Even though all of the quests in my quest log were marked as being completed the mission refused to end.
This game differs from many RTS games in the area of base defence, at least for the single player missions. In most RTS games you have to quickly build up your defences to deal with each wave of attackers that the enemy sends at you. This continues until you have built up enough of an army to counterattack. In Dragonshard your home city is almost never under attack. The only exceptions seem to be when a) in one mission they send a few units every so often, but that ends as soon as your city walls are finished being repaired and b) when enemy units wander too close to your city walls and the defence towers automatically open fire on them. This does make sense in a way since you’ll need all of your army to go off fighting monsters and claiming loot but it makes the game a bit too easy and means you never really feel under threat. You are constantly receiving gold from taxation and dragonshards rain down every so often so you can’t run out of resources and will always rebuild your army eventually. This would be different in multiplayer of course – but in that case you’ll need to toe the line between having defenders for your city and having units to go out earning loot and experience. You can upgrade your walls to have better defence towers but you can’t build static defences yourself.
Dragonshard is a reasonably fun game that is let down by a variety of minor problems. The single player game is fairly short with only two campaigns – I don’t know if a third campaign was cut, never planned or if they plan to save it for an expansion pack. Still, this is a different style of RTS and I like that it’s reasonably easy. The problem I have with many RTS games is that it’s so difficult to defend your territory and attack the enemy at the same time. There are no game breaking problems with this game but it could have done with a bit more polish.
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