 Review By: Jared Black |
Developer: | SOE |
| Publisher: | SOE | |
| Genre: | Action RPG | |
| ESRB: | Teen | |
| # Of Players: | 1-2 (1-4 online) | |
| Online Play: | Yes | |
| Accessories: | PS Network (online play, content DL), HDTV 720p | |
| Buy Now: |   |
This could’ve been such a great game. After two good installments on the PSP, the Untold Legends franchise appeared ready to make the leap from Sony’s capable handheld and step into the brave new next-gen console world. Action RPGs are at heart visceral experiences that thrive when the player is allowed to simply destroy everything that crosses his or her path with panache and plenty of fancy special effects, which makes the series seem better suited to the console realm by its very nature. After all, moving to the PS3 has enabled Sony Online to add to the mix high-resolution graphics on a larger display, full support for the Havok engine, and vast 3D worlds more interactive than either of the previous two installments.
Unfortunately, Untold Legends: Dark Kingdom ultimately fails when it comes to implementing that technology in a way that actually enhances the gameplay experience. While it is still a decent action RPG, a few key problems (most notably the bane of many 3D titles, the camera) prevent it from being anything but a step back for the franchise.
As expected, the storyline in Dark Kingdom is sparse and standard fantasy fare. The player takes on the role of one of three playable characters – warrior Golan Kor, mage Malakesh, or Zala the Scout – as a member of the elite Dragon’s Shade. The Dragon’s Shade is charged with protecting the kingdom of Dureth, with its members given special magical powers to go along with their honed combat skills. The game begins with a barbarian uprising in the borderlands, and the king sends this elite unit to investigate and handle the situation. Soon however, these knights realize that it is their own kingdom that has become corrupt, and must fight to save the land and citizens they’ve sworn to protect from its own rulers. Storyline scenes are sprinkled throughout the rest of the game, breaking up what are otherwise fairly linear paths from one area to the next.
As in previous titles, and indeed virtually every other action RPG in history, each playable character has their strengths and weaknesses. The warrior is the strongest of the group, with powerful destructive magic to match that strength. The mage is a weaker attacker, but controls the elements with some devastating magic. Finally, the scout is nimble, and uses shadow magic and poison to complement her whirlwind of bladed fury.
Unlike previous games in the series, this time around SOE didn’t even bother with the most basic of character customization…unless you consider the ability to choose one of several preset colors for your character’s clothing to be true customization. This is oddly preferable to the few options they provided before though since you were never going to get a truly customized character out of those, but not of course to having a robust character creation system. This sparse approach is found throughout the rest of the game, including leveling up and equipment. When a character levels up, all the player has to do is allocate two points to various attributes (including Health, Mana, Attack Power, Magic Power, Melee Defense, and Spell Defense) and improve the level of one spell by one point.
Equipment is divided into five different body parts, including the head, chest, shoulders, legs and feet. Up to five of each type can be carried at a time, with each piece of armor affecting different attributes in various ways. Equipment cannot be bought or sold; rather, items found in the world can be converted into “essence” that can then be used to create new types of armor at save points.
In general, inventory management has been streamlined quite a bit from the PSP versions. Not only do slots replace the weight-based system of old, but potions are also no longer used. Instead, players can restore health and mana by defeating enemies, spending essence at save points, and finding special fountains that rotate which type of power they provide. Changeable weapons have been completely removed as well, with the player instead using the same weapon while equipping it with up to four enhancements providing basic customization. On the whole I found the slot system to be a little too restrictive, and missed the freedom that carrying my own potions provided versus having to rely on fallen enemies and save points to restore health and mana.
In almost all cases the armor created at save points outclasses armor found in the world, making the whole idea of picking up items in the world and managing inventory at all seem almost pointless. Not only do acquired items give very little essence when converted, but essence is often rewarded after defeating common enemies as well. To be fair there are occasions when finding and equipping items in the game world is almost essential to continued success; for example, orbs that can be added to your character’s weapon to randomly destroy certain types of enemies with one hit. Overall though, these instances are too few and far between.
What this all boils down to is that the game focuses on the actual combat more than ever, and eschews all but the most basic resource management and storyline. That’s not necessarily a bad approach to take with a game of this nature if the combat is superb, but unfortunately it’s not. Let’s start with the fact that it’s simply incredibly repetitive, with the player fighting the exact same enemy dozens of times in any given level. There are usually only a few different enemy types in each area, meaning that what you see in the first few hallways of a large library are mostly the same as what you see in the last few aside from the occasional boss characters. While that’s to be expected in a dungeon crawl, there seems to be fewer enemy types (with many that fight very similarly) compared to other games in the genre.
Posted: 2006-12-16 11:56:55 PST