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Dully Keeps Its Promises
The “dungeon crawler” was one of the first types of computer role playing game. You pick a party of adventurers, pop right into the dungeon, and have at it. Dungeon Master from 1987 was the first “modern” dungeon crawler, featuring actual real-time exploration of the dungeon.
From Dungeon Master, this type of RPG ventured off into ever more detail, offering more to the world than a dungeon to explore, evolving into the RPGs of today with deeper stories to them than the basic formula of “kill everything, take as much stuff as you can, and finish the game.”
The dungeon crawler has made a bit of comeback of late, with the relatively successful (and fun) Legends of Grimrock. The Fall of the Dungeon Guardians hopes to add momentum to the genre, and while it does deliver on many fronts, it relies a little too heavily on the old school formula to fairly say it’s a good addition to a games library.
The main story of The Fall is good enough: you’re a guard in the dungeon that has recently lost a bunch of prisoners, who headed even deeper in the depths. Your mission, which you must accept, is to take three other guards (luckily, the usual character class options are available) and go kill the escaped prisoners, exploring monster-infested level after level, finding better loot and equipment along the way (the escaped prisoners, of course, also have found nice weapons and armor, and aren’t bothered by the monsters…).
Random loot is less exciting when you can't cash it in for something useful.
A dungeon crawler needs some things to be successful. First, the dungeons need to be interesting, with puzzles and the like. This is Legends’ strength by far, and something of a shortcoming in The Fall. The dungeons are ok, I guess, but the barrels and stuff on the walls are dressing, and you don’t even get a map unless you find the magic map for each level or (shudder) draw one by hand. Mercifully, there’s an option to “easy mode” the game so that the important things are highlighted and you get the map for free. That said, I do admit that old school games made you hand-draw maps, and there was a special phrase (rhymes with “pixel-witching”) to describe how you had to find things. Since the game is promising old school play, I guess I can’t really fault it for having the standard play being old school (but, man, good luck finding a gray key lying on gray stone…). Still, I wish the puzzles here were more interesting than “pull the lever” and the like; a few riddles or something would have gone a long way.
Time to click well.
The next thing a good crawler needs is fun combat. Again, the combat here, while solid, just lacks. It’s mostly just a flurry of clicking on each timed ability to whack the monsters while they’re whacking you. It’s real time, but you can pause every few seconds and queue attacks up, so it’s not bad, just…dull, as much about watching numbers drop to zero as epic sword-and-sorcery fighting. The graphics are fine, but you generally don’t notice them, because you’re staring at the four different little buttons you need to click. The only interesting ability is a “kick” ability that interrupts the monster’s attacks. This is easily the most fun, as getting the timing right means you can counter some pretty brutal assaults. Alas, this one, single, ability is on a 20 second timer…so fun, but frustratingly slow. You can also try running around, but your timers don’t reset while moving, monsters heal quickly when not in battle, and even ranged attacks don’t work past 10 feet, usually. That’s a shame, as allowing these tricks would have opened up combat tactics that make similar games fun.
So many options, so little relevance.
Part of what makes combat less than fun is the character development, which is the third thing a game like this needs to excel. Yes, there are plenty of options, but the options are…dull. I gain a level after an hour of play, and get a choice of +2% dodge, +1% chance of criticals, +10% to armor or something similar…yes, those are improvements, but hardly exciting. After a few levels, you get more options for your attacks, but it’s slow business, and it made me miss the fun of the “figure out your spells” system of Dungeon Master…if you’re going to use old ideas, why not pick the great ones?
A good story could save the many “not necessarily weaknesses, but definitely not strengths” of The Fall, but darned if I can find it here. I know you’re supposed to give a game its premise, but it’s tough to accept all the hostile monsters around the ridiculously deep prison, but okeedoke, maybe the prisoners are all super-stealthy. Why not give some explanation or hint early on about how the prisoners escaped and how they got equipped? I could also use an explanation why the prisoners stand, alone, at the end of each dungeon level, just waiting for me and the rest of the party to come and kill them…do they really have nothing better to do? This is not exactly compelling stuff.
Bottom line: you’re going in, killing things, finding stuff, and finishing the game. If you’re looking to get an old school vibe, The Fall of the Dungeon Guardians manages to do it all decently, but it might be worthwhile to wait for a good sale, at the very least.
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