Buy Dungeon Lords Steam Edition

I never played Dungeon Lords when it first came out. I only picked the game up because of two things: 1) I have never heard of Dungeon Lords (probably for good reasons) and 2) it was on sale for $3.74. I make enough money to throw at games of questionable quality on sale so I decided to roll the dice on this unknown aRPG.
When first entering the game world, you are greeted with a very cold opening. Not cold in the sense that the game throws you into the action, but cold as in lifeless. You start in a forested area and immediately receive a letter from an NPC instructing you to travel to town. You have no particular motivation but you do it because thou must. You walk roughly 20-30 feet and you come to the town in question only to find that it is closed off.
This is where the game tricked you into believing that you would start the game playing through a woodland/town area. Instead, the game forces you to enter a sewer level no more than 5 minutes into the game. Many people find sewer levels to be egregious and not particularly thrilling. Ironically Oblivion tutorial level was a sort of sewer level but Elder Scrolls games have always somehow been able to make sewer levels fun and interesting. As stated before, Dungeon Lords is not an Elder Scrolls game. Dungeon Lords does not do sewer level justice. But, as with everything else, Dungeon Lords sewer section is almost serviceable.
Before going any further, I should go into the actual gameplay and controls. The game movement is WASD with mouselook/cursor mode on a toggle. All of the menus can be accessed via keyboard bindings or using the cursor mode to click on the desired menu icon. Combat is done with mouse click and some mix of auto targeting and manual aim. You physically need to move up to the enemy to being able to hit but your activated skills can target the enemy for you. Active skills use the number keys similar to most MMORPGs and you are even able to use the F number keys above.
Dialogue is handle through a text box with keywords used to make inquiries and find out information. The textbox and keywords are reminiscent of Morrowind’s system, except lacking the details or volume of that game (which could go either way as a good thing or a bad thing). I was very pleased to see this system in place though I did find it lacking in comparison. All in all, it was serviceable.
Combat itself can feel very cumbersome. In essence, the game is very much a clickfest where you are repeatedly just clicking to get strikes off. While the combat itself is not the engaging part, it is the enemy encounters that make the combat feel more satisfying. Some rooms have fixed enemy placement, making the challenge being how to deal with a certain set up, such as archers on rafters or a ballista perched on the other side of a bridge. Furthermore, some enemies have special abilities or characteristics that make them unique from one another. The slime release gas that temporarily makes it so your PC cannot attack. Archers will take potshots at you and fall back. Rats spawn in large groups and will rush you. The combat is a little above average but it is due to some very challenging fixed enemy placements. However, in stark contrast to this game design are the random encounters (which I will go into detail later on).
The level design of the sewer never reaches the height of an Elder Scrolls sewer level but yet has some redeeming features. The level itself appears linear, but rewarded some exploration with hidden rooms with extra treasure and paths that folded back onto itself. It gave hope that the game had some form of challenge and interesting design in store. However the second half of the level undid all the goodwill I had afforded the game based on the few merit I have awarded it thus far.
It was not enough for the developers to make the first dungeon a sewer level, but they committed a graver sin by designing the second half as a maze. Worst, technically there are two mazes in this level. The first one is the transition out of the sewer into a basement area. The level contained no load screens, which to its credit is great given how large the area was. However, for the purpose of this analysis, the lack of a load screen makes so that two subsequent mazes count towards the first level. The first maze is slightly annoying since you are required to manually open doors that automatically close behind you. Even with the auto map feature, it was still confusing on which way to proceed.
It was during the maze that I realized that the game not only had respawing mobs, but “random encounters” that are triggered far too often. Encounters can spawn just by merely reentering a room or area that you had just cleared minutes before hand. The spawn rate is so obscene that it nearly made me want to rage quit and refund the game. However, more on that later.
You immediately enter the second maze after exiting the first. You take an elevator that gives the hopes of freedom only to be disappointed by locked doors. While short (and it can argued that it is not maze but I argued it is) the maze is frustrating in itself due to the fact that you require two keys to open the doors. While you already found one of the keys earlier, there is no indication on which door require which key. These doors appear the same and the only method to ascertain whether it will open or not is to manually attempt to open it. While it is quick to find the correct path, this scenario left a sour taste as the player would have immediately just completed one maze only to find another slightly more annoying maze.
Once I found the correct path, I stumble upon the boss encounter for the level. The boss is a level 12 ogre. This ogre is challenging in itself due to a very significant level difference (I arrived at level 6 and this is after a copious amount of random encounters in the maze). The boss hits hard, tanks a lot of damage, does get staggered easily and is also assisted by a large mob consisting of 4-6 easy goblins, 1 goblin mage and 1 goblin ballista slightly to the side on a raise area which is difficult to get to. The mage and the ballista are rather hard mobs to begin with, both requiring a lot of hits to take down and also being able to deal a lot of damage to the player. Thankfully, the random encounter supplied me with a sizable cache of healing potions.
With the ogre’s defeat, I finally exit the first dungeon and enter the town area. Once on the surface, I was ecstatic to finally get out of combat and seek some NPCs to offload my loot. The first NPC engaged me in dialogue and gave me a reminder that I liked the game dialogue system. The second NPC to immediately follow was a brigand.
There are random encounters in the town area.
After some research, I discovered that the game has 8 player co-op and an adjustable respawn rate. This new information was a revelation since it gave insight as to the reasoning behind the logic of the game design. Like any sensible person, I immediately adjusted the spawn rate to low. While on this matter, it is necessary to point out that the game does not come with a manual (at the time of writing). A search shows only one walkthrough on GameFAQ (a poor one at that). This game required a lot of figuring out on my part, in terms of controls and game logic. I haven’t struggled playing a game since Morrowind. While this may seem like a slight on Dungeon Lords, it was actually fairly refreshing to not suffer tutorialization or hand holding.With only 100 minutes of gameplay at the time of writing, I still have the Steam refund as a form of recourse. However, I will not be refunding this game and will be giving it my recommendation (how much you’re willing to pay for the game is up to you as personally I find anything more than the sale price of $3.74 to be too rich for my blood).

I really like Dungeon Lords and I have the disk version, but this steam version has horrible controls.

ATM I cannot recommend this game until they fix the unintuitive spellcaster controls. You pretty much need 3 hands to be a spellcasting character.

If you only want to play as melee classes there is no issue. You will like the game.

Im kinda surprised they changed the magic using controls from the disk version which were set up perfectly. Anyway that is the only beef I have with this game. But its a big beef, because its unplayable for me(as a mage character) Once they fix it, I will change it to recommend.

And of course, if they dont fix it, I will be getting a refund, and you shouldnt buy it either. I see no reason why they wouldnt fix it. Its a simple UI change and benefits everyone.

Edit: I managed to fix my problems with the disk version, so Im refunding this. Still dont recommend until they fix the UI. The old UI was perfect, no idea why they dumbed it down.

I think alot of people buy this expecting a good coop or multiplayer experience. Its more of a solo game to be honest. I dont think multiplayer adds to the experience.

I highly recommend you buy the collectors edition on disk if you can find it. This game is one of those hidden gems of times past.

I've played this game before, back when it first came out. I've had a similar experience now as I did then, pleasant. It's a nice mix of Third Person and Adventure-Dungeon crawl RPG. Level design is good, the controls are responsive, combat is somewhat fast paced but it has a good system with the possibility to either block attacks or attack, depending on your click, similar to Gothic. The difficulty is hard enough not to get booring and you can even adjust the frequency of random encounters of mobs. Works well on 1920x1080 resolution, not to mention it makes the game look a lot more visually appealing. Another interesting thing about it is that you can revive after you die and you lose a a random stat by doing so.

Now I haven't played this game too much so I can't really think of any CONS right now other than not having a way to escape persuing mobs that are faster or just as fast as you without running outside that area.

dunjins is the greatest coop game ever made, it works when you least expect it but when you most need it

Favourite game since I was young. I really hope there will be a sequel one day

It looks alright, but it isn't really worth getting. Multiplayer too is terrible.

This is a nice Adventure RPG with dungeon crawling. I love the spells and the way you can combine classes and be a pure or a hybrid. The game was plagued with many bugs and glitches when it was first released, but newer editions including this steam version have fixed all of them from what I can tell. I would recommend this for anyone who loves RPGs.

I played the original Dungeon Lords and though I've heard about the original having bugs I never had a problem with it. Me and my brother also never had an issue with multiplayer. With the steam edition the game has trouble starting up the inventories and menus in game have all benn changed and they are harder to use. I wanted to get this game for multiplayer but after a few seconds the person I was playing with would have their character freaze. The game wouldn't let them exit out, and it wouldn't let me exit either. This game was always fun to play, but the steam edition is barely playable in multiplayer.

It has the potential to be a great game, Diverswe spells, challenging at times. Bugs however kill fun. In coop mode second player loses keys and both need to talk to the same person for the same quest. Coming out of doors get lock into space and often can't break free. Save don't work especially after one character dies. ressuection scrolls only work on the person who has them. You can't raise the other. No resistences to speak of . So i can't recommend this game even for cheap.

ahhh...the memories