Rating of
4/5
Dungeons & Diablos
Nelson Schneider - wrote on 08/13/16
“Sword Coast Legends” (“SCL”) is a long-time coming return to the classic party-based, Dungeons & Dragons-themed RPGs (redundantly referred to as ‘cRPGs’) that marked an incredibly brief PC gaming Golden Age around the turn of the millennium. The developers behind these previous classics, Black Isle and Bioware, were either disbanded or bought-out by bigger publishers. The last D&D cRPGs to amount to anything were titles like “Neverwinter Nights 2” and “The Temple of Elemental Evil,” before Atari, who came to inherit the official D&D videogame license, mismanaged the hell out of it with titles like “Daggerdale” and “Demon Stone” that never receive any acclaim or attention.
After Wizards of the Coast revoked Atari’s stewardship of the D&D videogame license, the torch was passed to a small developer called n-Space. Despite my never having heard the name before, n-Space was apparently in business since 1994. Unfortunately, most of the developer’s projects were horrible, licensed shovelware. However, with “SCL,” n-Space had an opportunity to really prove themselves, and they started the project by promising the sun, moon, and stars to jaded, disappointed D&D fans everywhere.
“SCL” was supposed to be the first cRPG to employ the new 5th Edition rules. “SCL” was supposed to include true successors to “Neverwinter Nights’” campaign creation toolset and adjudicated (e.g., Dungeon Master operated) online multi-player. “SCL” was supposed to be supported for years after release with reasonably-priced (or free) Asset Pack DLC for Dungeon Masters and official DLC Modules for players. Sadly, none of those things were allowed to occur, as n-Space closed down for good less than a year after the game’s release. Rumors hint that a foreign holding firm clamped down on n-Space after the release of “SCL,” but nothing about this angle is concrete. What is concrete, however, is that n-Space didn’t deliver on any of its promised, which pissed off half of the people in their target audience. The other half of the people who played “SCL,” in which I count myself, are content to take the game at face value, rather than mourning broken promises.
If more people had been less single-minded in what they required “SCL” to be, it could have lasted long enough to meet their expectations. As it is, “SCL” is not D&D 5E, does not have particularly impressive Dungeon Master tools, and was cut-off at the knees regarding add-ons due to n-Space’s closure… but it’s still a damned fun cRPG.
Presentation
“SCL” is built in the Unity Engine. Thus, it comes with all of the quirks and limitations we have come to expect from that particular API. The environmental graphics still look very nice and show a good amount of detail from the game’s classic isometric viewpoint. The camera can only zoom-in so far, and always remains isometric, which I really appreciated, as I never found a use for the trailing over-the-shoulder camera from “Neverwinter Nights 2.” Character models are slightly stylized, but still look quite good. I’d say that the chiseled details and glossy finish on certain character and enemy models makes them look like tabletop miniatures, which is a good thing!
The audio is one of the game’s best aspects. Both the soundtrack and the voiceacting are incredibly well-done, with memorable scores, dynamic battle music, and some very endearing performances by characters.
Technically, however, “SCL” is a bit of a mess. Naturally, some of the blame lies in the Unity Engine, but most of the blame really lies with the angry fanbase who killed the cash inflow to n-Space’s coffers from potential new players, thus preventing them from really being able to fix bugs and improve performance. As it is, “SCL” suffers from horrifically long loading screens, even when played from a SSD. Even on a PC with a new-ish i7 and a GTX 970, the camera sometimes stutters while panning around the game’s environments. There are even a few instances where character models are incomplete, such as certain female Drow elf enemies who are missing their neck/shoulder/cleavage area completely. Perhaps the worst technical flaw in “SCL” is the fact that the game was intentionally designed with only ONE save slot. Yes, it’s possible to create a large number of separate player characters, as they and their progress/equipment are saved as individual files. Yet progress in the game’s story mode is limited to one slot ON PURPOSE, which is absolutely insane. In short, “SCL” comes across as a game that was rushed to release near the end of its development deadline in the hopes of raising enough revenue to pay or its own bug-fixes… yet that wasn’t allowed to happen.
Story
“SCL” features a fantastic single-player campaign that takes place in the Forgotten Realms campaign setting. Focusing on the city of Luskan – the City of Sails – near the northern border of the titular Sword Coast, the story is centered on a mercenary guild known as the Burning Dawn. As a member of the Burning Dawn, our custom-created Player Character and a few colleagues are shocked when the find themselves hunted by a religious order of overly righteous paladins calling themselves the Gilded Eye.
It seems that their recurring nightmares involving demons and the death of all of their guildmates have marked the Burning Dawn with enough suspicion of demonic influence that the Gilded Eye has decided to hunt-down the entire guild and exterminate them to the last man. Our hero gets personally involved in the conflict when they and comrades Belamy (an extremely violent Halfling) and Jarhild (a fat lady-dwarf) are attacked by thugs hired by the Gilded Eye while escorting a merchant caravan to Luskan.
The Burning Dawn members soon find themselves in a surprise alliance with elven priestess, Illydia, and gruff dwarven rogue, Larethar, who are looking for an artifact relating to an ancient elven goddess and are convinced that the Burning Dawn and Gilded Eye are somehow connected to the location of the lost relic. Along the way, the player will join-up with a number of other characters, most of whom are rather quirky and entertaining (I’m especially fond of the insane Derro, Izhkin, Lord of the Dark). All of these characters have fully fleshed-out background and backstories, and each of them has a specific companion quest that further builds them up as unique individuals.
The main narrative of “SCL” is fairly long, with plenty of optional side content. It took me just over 40 hours to experience everything I could in a single playthrough, and I enjoyed it the entire time. Sure, character alignment doesn’t really do anything. No, there’s no real karma system to keep track of good and bad deeds. Yes, dialog trees all typically lead to the same result. But I don’t really care: “SCL” has a solid, well-written narrative with a great cast of characters and gobs of great Forgotten Realms flavor slathered on top. That’s all it really needs!
After n-Space closed down, the game’s publisher, Digital Extremes, went ahead and released a promised DLC expansion pack – for FREE – called “Rage of Demons.” This bonus module follows our player character into the Underdark beneath the Forgotten Realms, where the growing power of Orcus, Demon Prince of the Undead, is causing a stir amongst the deep races. When undead illithid attacks indicate the undead return of an illithid Elder Brain, the player and his party of returning friends from the main campaign must seek out the help of the legendary Drow, Drizzt Do’Urden, who killed the Elder Brain the first time around. Unfortunately, “Rage of Demons” is a clearly unfinished product, with numerous typos, occasional lore boo-boos, and an out-of-nowhere ending at what feels like the mid-point of the story. It’s really sad to see a story with such potential reduced to such an unfinished state by money troubles.
Gameplay
Gameplay is where “SCL” diverges the most from being a ‘proper’ D&D-based RPG. Instead of using all of 5th Edition’s rules, classes, races, skills, etc. as it was supposed to, “SCL” feels very much like a hybridization of “Dragon Age: Origins” and “Diablo 3.” While it does feature D&D’s traditional ability scores, “SCL” uses a lame point-buy system instead of random rolls to generate character stats, meaning that every character will be stuck with a maximum of two ‘good’ stats while the rest hover around 10 (which provides no bonus to related activities).
“SCL” closely resembles “Dragon Age: Origins,” in that all character skills are cooldown-based and sit in a hotbar at the bottom of the screen. These skills can be upgraded at certain character levels, as every character gains 3 points to spend on skills at each level-up. I wasn’t overly fond of “Dragon Age: Origins’” combat, but that was primarily due to idiotic AI not doing what I wanted it to do. “SCL” features toggle-able party AI, which allows the player much tighter control over the team when necessary. Another way in which “SCL” resembles “Dragon Age: Origins” is that the party is limited to four characters, where most D&D-based games have allowed six. I made-up for the lack of manpower by maxing out summoning skills on as many characters as possible, so my ‘meat shields’ were literally just summoned, expendable critters that kept my real characters safe from harm. Overall, for a game that so closely resembles “Dragon Age: Origins,” which I did not find to be particularly amazing, “SCL” does a much better job with its mechanics.
“SCL” also slightly resembles “Diablo 3,” in that it strongly loot-based. While traditional D&D games hand-out magical items deliberately and sometimes sparingly, “SCL” just drops them all over the place, often from nonsensical enemies (why was that rat wearing a magic belt?), and generates most of them using random attribute tables (in most cases, the bonuses from these tables are nonsensical when interpreted through a filter of D&D-ness). Usually I hate random loot games because they are balanced around players grinding for hours to get the ‘best’ loot before proceeding, which makes the difficulty curve awfully sharp due to the expectation of over-inflated character stats. As someone who isn’t fond of gambling or doing the same thing over and over hoping for a single rare drop, I frequently find myself under-geared in these games. Likewise, on the off chance I do find a good piece of loot, I hate having to get rid of it as my character gains levels and the loot’s stats remain stagnant. “SCL’s” random loot is mostly fairly even in power distribution (inspired by the Bounded Accuracy baked into 5th Edition, so at least some of the official rules made it in) and the difficulty reasonably balanced, if not a bit on the easy side (or it could just be that my summon-based team was OP). I found myself hanging onto good loot for a long time with no negative consequences, and I found ‘better’ loot to be common enough that I never felt under-equipped or stiffed by random drops. The main negative influence from “Diablo 3,” however, is enemy scaling. There is no such thing as a static Challenge Rating for any enemy in “SCL,” as they all have their stats adjusted based on the Player Character’s level, which can result in super-buff goblins, spiders, and wolves that can take a huge beating before going down. Spongy enemies like these aren’t the norm in any D&D game, nor any normal cRPG either.
So, with its influences from both “Dragon Age: Origins” and “Diablo 3,” “SCL” is really a unique beast that is only tied to D&D by its narrative features. The four-character party-based exploration and combat is fairly traditional cRPG fare, with pausable real-time battles and a point-and-click interface that works beautifully with a Steam controller. There’s fog of war to block off areas outside the party’s line of sight, and characters can actively ‘search’ using their Perception skill in order to uncover hidden lootable environmental objects, traps, and invisible enemies.
Outside of combat, there aren’t a whole lot of traditional mechanics. Characters can freely loot chests and furniture in front of non-player characters without anyone accusing them of stealing. There are a number of dialog options that require certain ability checks to succeed, but in most cases, those abilities will be abysmally low due to the aforementioned point-buy system. Buying and selling items happens one-at-a-time, even on stacks of 100 potions, while character inventory is a shared pool with a total weight limit before encumbrance kicks-in and slows-down the whole party.
Outside of the campaign mode, “SCL” features a ‘Crawl’ mode that allows players to host single- or multi-player sessions in randomly-generated dungeons. By providing the game with a few pre-determined bits of information, like which tileset to use and which enemy groups to use to populate it, players can freely grind their way through a nearly unlimited number of dungeons in search of random loot, which is tied to the character, and thus carries over into any other mode where that same character is used.
The main reason “SCL” gets so much hate, however, is the Dungeon Master mode. This mode was promised and hyped to be even better than the campaign creation tools in “Neverwinter Nights.” I never found the “NWN” tools to be all that amazing, and most of the user-generated modules I played back in the day were terrible, so I didn’t really expect much from this mode. However, anyone can objectively see that the DM Mode in “SCL” is woefully inadequate compared to one from 15 years ago. The DM is limited to enemy sets instead of picking and choosing from the whole menagerie for any given dungeon. Dungeon rooms and environments are snap-together affairs that, while easy to use, aren’t very customizable. The DM really doesn’t have much control over enemy stats or scaling, and doesn’t have ANY control over what loot falls.
I can understand players expecting something else being very disappointed in what “SCL’s” Dungeon Master Mode offers, but I’m very content to simply ignore it and not even worry about the feature, treating “SCL” as a decidedly single-player game. As such an experience, I couldn’t help but enjoy my time with it.
Overall
“Sword Coast Legends” and developer n-Space are victims of their own hype. While “SCL” isn’t authentically D&D 5th Edition in rules, it is very authentically Forgotten Realms in narrative. The fact that this game, which combines “Dragon Age: Origins” and “Diablo 3,” is more fun – and better written – than both of them is really impressive. Dungeon Masters looking for a medium for creating modules or running adventures should look elsewhere (*coughtabletopsimulatorcough*), while players that simply want a fun, narratively engaging single-player cRPG that blends tradition with modernization should definitely give “SCL” a chance.
Presentation: 3.5/5
Story: 4.5/5
Gameplay: 4/5
Overall (not an average): 4/5
