Introduction
Dark Alliance is a third person action game that was developed by Tuque Games. It was published by Wizards of the Coast for PC and Consoles in June 2021.
Review
With the many stories that are possible to tell in not only D&D, but the Dark Alliance line, I went into this game with my head held high. Even after hearing all the reviews for it, I still decided to say I’d play it when a friend asked. What I found was a terribly buggy, disjointed, unbalanced experience.
The story is so forgettable I honestly don’t remember anything about it. There are seven “campaigns” that you work your way through, all consisting of three levels. Two long ones, and one boss fight. Each of the levels are all set up with three small paragraphs that I tried to pay attention to but ended up not remembering what the hell was going on five minutes later. So, when we came across the bosses and even the “last” boss, I felt no joy or satisfaction when we finally finished it. Hooray, we stopped all the evil henchmen from taking the shard of power or whatever the hell it was supposed to do and returned the lands they were in back to normal.
Again, I was so disappointed with the storytelling. I truly thought that at least that portion of the game would’ve been well done, but I was so disappointed as I said. There were some DLC campaigns that were added to the game, but considering I didn’t have them, I had no idea what the “story” would’ve tried to tell for them either.
The gameplay is a third person action game, where you get to play as one of four classes, five if you have the DLC. I only ever truly tried one class, which is the ranger, and it was so overpowered I never really had an issue with killing enemies. But the damage I took was insane, no matter what difficulty we played on. My friend played the DLC class, which was the most useless thing in the game. It focused more on debuffing the enemies and putting in what looked like fighting game combinations to do a variety of spells. Why would you do such a thing in an action game!? Better yet, why would you make your characters stand still to attack!? Luckily if I aimed my bow, I could move and attack at the same time.
The game wasn’t exactly riddled with bugs, so it ran pretty well, and nothing was game breaking. The absolute worst bug I experienced wouldn’t let me attack me though. So, I’d be aiming my bow and holding R2 over and over, but the game wouldn’t load an arrow into my bow, so a few times I truly died in the middle of an enemy encounter, and it was the most infuriating thing ever. A few times the game acted as if I hit different buttons, so I would end up doing a melee animation instead of a charged bow attack. I got so infuriated I never bothered trying the other classes after I finished all the levels.
After some enemy encounters, you’d get the chance to take a “small rest”. This lets you either create a checkpoint in the level or upgrade your loot rarity. This let the loot you get become rarer, which I felt like it didn’t actually make it better quality. After each level, you’d get all the gear from a big chest in the hub area, and it would basically all be a random roll. The colours would range from gray, which was common, to orange, which was legendary. Equipping better gear raises your power level, which then lets you pick higher difficulties, which would get you higher tier pieces of gear. But again, it was all absolutely random. So, while my friend had a full set of tier 4 gear, I had only two good pieces of tier 4 gear. So, if you ever wanna play higher difficulties, you’re left at the mercy of RNG. I’d also like to mention, even though the devs promised cross-gen play shortly after release, there’s still none to be seen! So, I hope you don’t try playing on your Ps4 with a friend on a Ps5 version, because it won’t work!
Rating
Pros:
- …. Nothing
Cons:
- So Damn Much!
Summary
This game was at least a little enjoyable with a friend, and some of the art was pretty, but there was nothing else good about it. The gameplay was broken, some characters were absolutely useless, the gear system was some of the worst I’ve ever seen, the story was just not there, and nothing else could fix those issues. Not even a group of good friends. Just skip this game entirely.
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Game & Developer Information
Developer Website: Tuque Games
Developer Socials: Twitter
Publisher Website: Wizards of the Coast
Publisher Socials: Twitter
PSN Store Links: £24.99/€29.99 Europe / $29.99 North America
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