 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: |   |
As for the actual combat, there is a decent selection of melee combos that players can pull off. There’s no real benefit to mixing it up and performing a number of different combos however, so you’ll end up just using the button combinations that result in the fastest and most effective melee attacks. Magic can be used by first mapping it to one of the four face buttons, then holding down L1 while pressing the corresponding button to unleash it. The variety of spells is interesting, and using the right magic in each situation will definitely improve your chances of surviving. Still, out of the ten or so spells each character receives, I found myself only using a few of the most effective ones (one targeted at a specific enemy, one that attacks the group as a whole, etc.) most of the time.
On occasion puzzles also break up the action just a bit, but these are laughably easy. That wouldn't be a big deal (they only need to serve as a diversion, not a real challenge in an action RPG), except the game sometimes gives away the answer (in a thinly-veiled "hint") if you happen to linger on a puzzle for more than a minute or two. For example, in one area I was tasked with moving two large silver chains below me to open up a new area. In front of me was a wall with five switches on it, two being silver, which could only be activated by throwing barrels at them. Although it was obvious to me that I needed to hit just the silver ones, the game still felt compelled to tell me that when I missed with my first few throws. What’s the point of having a “puzzle” if you’re just going to tell the player how to solve it at the first sign of trouble?
While a lack of variety alone isn’t enough to make a game bad, what really kills this one is the camera. Simply put, it’s horrible and not optimized for the game’s mostly narrow hallways, linear caverns, etc. Should you venture into a corner, the camera is forced to pan up showing the player very little of his surroundings to work with. Then when you come out of that corner, the camera will often wildly spin around trying to reorient itself. Even when the camera is fairly stationary while trailing behind the player, it still has a tendency to get stuck on or behind the environment itself. As a result of that, there were many times that I couldn’t see any of the enemies I was fighting off…and simply fading out the environment in the foreground would’ve solved that problem completely. Locking on to an enemy is far less effective than it should be, because the camera will swing around wildly anytime the enemy moves in relation to the player.
This goes hand in hand with the one problem I had with the game’s controls, namely the way the character interacts with the environment. I encountered a number of glitches throughout the game, primarily when moving up or down the environment. Most often, this resulted in my character literally floating in mid-air for several seconds, frozen in the middle of the “falling” animation. Enemies had trouble negotiating heights as well, although in that case they’d do something stupid like take the long way around a wall when they could simply jump down a foot or so to get to me. It was also far too easy for my powerful Dragon’s Shade to get temporarily “stuck” on things in the environment, even if I wasn’t actually touching the thing I was “stuck” on. For example, I even had trouble getting through a few doorways, despite the fact that I was right in the middle of the opening with plenty of clearance on either side.
The game also supports online co-op play for up to four people, and if you’re wondering how the game plays online with others…well so am I. This is not from lack of effort; I’ve tried for days to play online, even holding back this review in the process, before finally giving up. Apparently the game’s online play has actually been broken since December 8th (well over a week at the time of this writing), with little apparent support from Sony Online. I was never able to play others online, encountering various network errors (while my PS3 was otherwise perfectly connected to the network and the ports specified in the manual were wide open), problems creating rooms, and joined numerous rooms with hosts that simply never started the game. Again, the latter appears to be because the game’s online component is simply broken right now, and the hosts couldn’t start a game with other players. My own tests back this up; I attempted to host rooms with others on a number of occasions, yet everytime I started the game the only player that actually made it to the game world was myself. Even the chat system proved to be unresponsive, failing to work for me and presumably everyone else since no one ever typed a single word.
At least I was able to play online when I created a room and played by myself, so from that experience I know the game plays mostly the same as it does offline aside from a few omitted tutorials and other tweaks. Due to this unique circumstance I'm reserving the right to revise this review later if/when the online component is working properly again (and we'll let you know with an article if that happens), if it results in a substantial change to the game's final score (which I doubt).
SOE has also promised a wealth of downloadable content in the future (as I explained in my preview), but thus far none of that has materialized. If it does indeed come to fruition in the variety that has been promised, it could extend the game’s replay value quite a bit. As far as other extras are concerned, it's worth noting that the game has no support for motion controls at all. I'm actually not disappointed by this, because I never saw it working well in a game of this nature, but undoubtedly it'll be a big deal to some gamers looking for the full "next-gen" experience.
The sound work is really the one area where Untold Legends: Dark Kingdom shines. The soundtrack is very effective, with a combination of pounding war themes and haunting choruses performed by the FILMHarmonic Orchestra & Choir of Prague (as they're credited anyway). I’ve even found myself humming the game’s main tune when not playing, which is always a good sign that a soundtrack has resonated with its audience. Although there isn’t a lot of voice acting in the game (due to the lack of storyline), what is there is delivered competently despite the cheesy lines you’d expect to find in a fantasy-based action RPG. The sound effects are also pretty good as well, with a nice variety of effects used for various enemies, spells, attacks, etc.
Bottom Line:
The sad thing is that there are flashes of brilliance throughout Untold Legends: Dark Kingdom, and it's almost solely for these alone that I give the game an "average" score overall. When it’s all working like it should, it’s a visceral display of destruction and mayhem with enemy body parts flying through the air while the player mows down legions at a time, all while utilizing beautiful spells and powerful attacks. Unfortunately, these blissful moments are few and far between, for the most part replaced with frustration while fighting the camera, boredom after killing the same low-level bad guy for the 100th time, and watching tumbleweed bounce across the horizon as you desperately try to play a game online.
Untold Legends: Dark Kingdom was clearly rushed out the door to make launch, and the result is a game that’s far less than what it should’ve been. Give these developers a couple of years and we could have something truly special on our hands, but as it stands now Untold Legends: Dark Kingdom is another victim of the infamous launch day rush job.
| Pros: | Cons: | Final Score: |
|---|---|---|
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| 5.3 |
Posted: 2006-12-16 11:56:55 PST