reviews

Name: Dungeons and Dragons Tactics
Genre: Tactics RPG
Platform: PSP

Dungeons and Dragons has shaped video games since the first nerd locked himself in his basement with some friends instead of going out for the night. From Final Fantasy to World of Warcraft, every single RPG created takes one thing or another from D&D and tries to make it a video game. It seems like a natural leap for the game to be a tactical game and it has an opportunity to copy the rules perfectly and make a game that Dungeons and Dragons fans would die to for.

At first there was not a problem, character customization was seamless and close to the rules. It let you pick a race, a class, and skills just as you would playing pen and paper D&D. It even let you pick a face for the character and a pretty little body to put it on. So far it was impressively simplistic – as it should be.

There is always a however, however, and this games however is just blatant failure. I played this game for thirty minutes and was too angry to proceed any further for one main reason: they do not show the die rolls.

Let me explain, since they may seem nitpicky. Many games have automated dice rolling in the code of the game to figure out what happens. Most of the time it is invisible and behind the scenes but in some games it is shown. Even highly popular games like Knights of the Old Republic had small indicators showing what you had rolled. In a game like D&D whatever you roll directly indicated the outcome of your action. If you need to hit someone with an armor of 14 and you roll a 15 or a 10 and have a +5 bonus you hit them. Simple. Dungeons and Dragons: Tactics did not include this so I declare it a piece of crap that no one should do anything other than spit on.

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