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> Results: Dungeons & Dragons: Dragonshard
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The Dungeons and Dragons fantasy setting is rich in mythology, spawning numerous games over the years, mostly role-playing. With the release of Dragonshard, the D&D world gets a solid real-time strategy game that has enough depth for strategy game fans while including enough role-playing elements that general fans of D&D games will find much to like.
The majority of the gameplay consists of traditional real-time strategy elements such as building strongholds and filling them with specialist structures so you can recruit your army. You then use the armies to complete quests and defeat enemies in order to gain experience and gold to build new structures and upgrade existing facilities. However, once you venture into the underworld, the game plays more like an action role-playing game, as your captains become adventurers led by your hero through battle and exploration. The skills your heroes have on the surface nicely translate directly to underground skills, and the same is true for the captains. There is a tremendous amount of strategy involved, as the game limits the size and location of your stronghold and provides significant bonuses for creating balanced forces. You'll need those forces to deal with the interesting variety of prototypical D&D enemies such as mind flayers and dragons.  The single player campaign is fairly short and feels like some parts of it were cut out. That is made up for by very robust multiplayer. After a short time in multiplayer matches it seems like the single player game was just a warm up for the real action. There are a wide variety of skirmish and rule-based game options available, or you can just try to wipe out a friend's forces faster than they decimate yours. The depth of the game resources makes all of these options entertaining and challenging. Dragonshard is a solid real-time strategy game that has a short but entertaining single player campaign with side quests. It incorporates enough role-playing elements to make it appealing to fans of multiple game types. And it offers a robust and lively multiplayer mode that will keep you busy for a long time.  
Strategy games are a wonderful learning experience for kids. They teach organization, resource management, responsibility and the direct consequences of actions. Real-time strategy games further teach that life goes on while you are sitting still. So while you are contemplating your next move you opponent might already be making theirs. Combine those two with a fantasy setting familiar to so many from countless fantasy realm games, and you've got a compelling gaming experience.
The game features some intense and visceral battles with blood and devastation, which is the sole basis of the T-rating. There is nothing else objectionableﾗno strong language, nudity or use of illegal substances. It's just lots of blood presented in a violent battle setting. However, the majority of the game is witnessed as an outsider. You click from above and manage troop movements. This level of detachment greatly diminishes the impact of the bloody battles. So while the game is fine for teens 14 and older, I also think that many kids between age 10 and 14 could handle the setting and situations with ease. This review edited by Dave Long Comments? Chat about it in our forums! Format For Printing | Tell A Friend | Digg | Slashdot | del.icio.us | Buy This Game Browse Amazon.com's selection of "dragonshard" themed games Home > Review Archive > Video Games > Results: Dungeons & Dragons: Dragonshard |
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