Dungeons (2011) PC Review.

Dungeons (2011) PC Review.

My first actual review, well it's certainly a nice change of things.

Dungeons (the incredibly inventive title that it is..) is a strategy game made by Realmforge Studios, published by Kalypso Media.  The spiritual successor to the series called Dungeon Keeper.  (People following my posts will note that Dungeon Keeper features one of the main characters of one of my Top Lists.)  Those unfamiliar to these games, allow me to explain the premise for you.  The game flips the traditional fantasy scenario on it's head, presented in such games as Dungeons and Dragons, or the infamous Diablo series in which you being the hero, go down into the dinky dungeons to fight the forces of evil.  Instead, you play a dark overlord figure that must use his impish workers to construct a grand, elaborate dungeon in which you lure stoic adventurers and heroes to their doom, killing them off with robust traps or monstrous forces in order to conquer the regions of land, each of them constituting a level.

(No, this was a screenshot highlighting the look of Dungeons in.. well, Dungeons.  Dungeon Keeper has a more beautiful, pixelated mess of glory kind of look to it.)

The game has a feeling of 'The Sims' meets a Real Time Strategy game, using your imps to mine the dungeon out and using different pieces to fill out your dungeon, giving it more defense, or calling out for evil creatures such as Orcs or demonic Warlocks to defend against the different soldiers and heroes coming into your dungeon to destroy the center of it - The Dungeon Heart.  Last but not least, the game featured a light-hearted feel to the entire thing, from the entrees of the manual to the way characters acted inside it.  The heroic warriors act very stereotypically stalwart and mighty while your small, pathetic imps are always so gleefully excited to the dark mayhem constructing your dungeons cause.


Personally, I am a big fan of the series.  Having grown up on DOS games as a child, I've been a strategy nut since a little tyke and playing them today gives me a great sense of nostalgia.  Unfortunately the Dungeon Keeper series was never continued past the second one, only birthing successors to the style and gameplay we cherished.  This brings me back to the newly released Dungeons for the PC which continues onto this style.  At first glance at the game, it is an almost carton copy of the source material; brooding dungeons, gallivanting heroes and slapstick minions and indeed it should try to be - after all, this is what drew me in to play the game in the first place! The feeling of returning to these games I spent countless nights playing.  However, despite the similarities... after playing the game, I can flat out tell you that I feel resenting disappointment with the overall product.
Although they did a good job of re-imaging the games for a modern audience, they couldn't leave well enough alone and changing a lot of things, for the worse.  Don't get me wrong, I'm not one of those people who hate when a game tries to do something different and gives it their own spin, I just can't stand it when they don't do it right.  Allow me to explain the differences, as the game otherwise plays mostly like just like an updated version of Dungeon Keeper 2 which I explained in the beginning.  I'll start off with the good things, before I forget to do so in the excitement of my built up rant. -/Spoilers-

(Featured: Same guy as the box art.  But more sash-dress friendly... Seriously, what is he wearing? It's so bizarre that I didn't notice until now... I need a little.. time.)

First off, changes to the Protagonist.  Although maybe not too important, when I started up the game it's the first thing that stuck in my mind. The boss demon in the Dungeon Keeper games was cartoon-like but overall did a good job of looking the part of a Dungeon Boss.. even if he did only show up to collect the Heroes crystal and gloat at the end of a level. To me he looked like he jumped out from the cover of one of those old school D&D books, which is a nice comparison to make.  In Dungeons, the demon was replaced with a more modern villainous character, an overlord stereotype that is obviously directly inspired by Lord of the Rings - 'Saron'.  One thing I like in particular about this change is that your overlord plays a more dominant role in the game, you're actually able to move him around as a character, capture monster nests and kill with him! This is much more improved than Dungeon Keeper's floating hand that casts spells non-sense.  Another thing to note is that as you advance you as able to put points into three trees of talent points, specializing in things like increasing your overlord's damage, or making things cheaper to buy. Very cool stuff.

(Always nice to see the RPG staple of skill trees here, some of them are actually pretty useful and can change how you play.)

Also, the light-hearted slapstick humor is back, the tutorial story and imp dialog before a stage providing most of it.  The story starts out as your Succubus-like girlfriend deciding to 'accidently' open up all of the dungeon doors, which normally restrict the flow of pouring in champions and then letting you in to the tidbit of information that she's dumping you before hurrying out, leaving you to your wits to escape your dark dungeon before the champions off you for the reward of epic loots.  Being the bad ass, cunning Dungeon Master that you are - you escape easily, but at the cost of hiding out while the next in line Dungeon Masters take your place in the Dungeon Food Chain, forcing you to start off at the dungeon entrances while building down to the bottom again.

(Just in case you're wondering, the girlfriend is pictured on the right.  You don't get to hook up with peg-legged pete.  Maybe in the romance sim version of Dungeons...)

 Yeah, it's a pretty lame, plot convince. You see, if I was the Overlord of a large dungeon, I would of probably kept that whore on a leash.  Sure, the Succubus is deceitful by nature, but that's exactly why I'd have a backup plan in case the minions, monsters and would be evil-doers I control decide to try to take over... By the way, I think it's kind of odd that the Overworld map shows you taking over the lands.. when you are controlling dungeons.  Underground dungeons!  That would only make sense if they had a level or cutscene where you took your monsters and burned down the nearby town or city.  You know, Diablo Tristam style.  There's an idea that would have provided some gameplay depth.. and that's just thinking off the top of my head.  I think it would be more effective if they showed underneath the lands, taking over the deep dungeons that adventurers try to conquer. Before you call me out on it, yes I am Nit-picking.  But when small nits in a game are enough to distract me and make me have to stop the review to complain about them, then I feel its justified. Though, insignificant bothers aside... I have to address the actual bad aspects too, of course.

(You fool! That is what you get for wearing plate armor as a Ranger class.  Enjoy your slow encumbered ass.)

The bad is conjured into the form of the changes to the gameplay.  As I mentioned earlier, this is re-imaging of the games for an modern audience and as such it would make sense if they re-tooled some of the gameplay and also as I mentioned... they should have left well enough ALONE! What I am talking about of course is the inclusion of the concept that you have to allow the heroes enjoy themselves in your dungeon, before you reap them for profit like the proverbial fat piggies that they are.  Yes, I am justified in using that analogy, the game uses it themselves in the tutorial levels!  If you are reading this and are skeptical as I was about it then great job.  If not, then you probably enjoyed this game a lot.  You probably also enjoyed the newest edition of Babysitter Manager 2011 as well. (No, this specifically is not a real game.. don't bother looking it up.  Yet...)

(My friends... THIS is the bane of this game.)

This is a change that is really a deal-breaker for me.  It's not just something that can be overlooked, it's the main part of the gameplay.  You have to build your dungeons around the fact that heroes have a kind of soul bar that fills up when they're having fun, whether it is by gathering treasure, battling monsters or the Wizard type hero that enjoys learning new spells in the damp libraries.  The fact is that this gameplay mechanic, for what it is to this game: Just does not work!


This is a game that is built around making a giant, evil dungeon complete with deadly traps and monsters! This is not a game about babying children and that is exactly what it feels like.  It's tedious, repetitive and one way or another the game forces you to work at it.  Your efforts should be rewarded for making grand death traps that fall all but the most master thieves or taming that giant red dragon to put to the front of your lair, giving even the most mighty champions a feeling of fear before they are roosted to the bone and used to decorate the dungeon halls. Instead, you spend your time making ways to attract heroes to large loot rooms and trying to beat their heads in to fill their bars.. if you can even get there first! I might complain about the features not being true to the setting and series.  That's true.  But, I might be able to look past it if it was done well and that's the part I cannot forgive.  It's not well made at all.  It works easily enough the first few levels, you give the heroes a gold chest, then you beat them down with your Overlord and place him in the prison to steal the last remaining soul energy, keeping their hard earning gold in the process.  To satisfy the heroes needs; to get more energy you have to open up the dungeon gates allowing them to spawn in on a timer, once you do they start investigating, looking for neat trinkets.

Putting in fancy items such as vampire coffins can let you lead the way for the heroes, which is a good idea.  Then you must grant them their needs, this is usually to get beat up by tough monsters, or collecting enough gold, or both.  Only magicians want to be lead to a book room where they gain new spells before you kill them.  However once the heroes start leveling up and you advance in the game, for-filling these requirements becomes harder and harder to do.  It's nothing to do with difficulty, in that you need to think better about constructing your dungeon.. it's that they become so powerful that they often kill your monsters in a few hits, until you spend gold to level them up.  (This, which by the way, wasn't explained to me, I had to look it up online to figure out when I was wondering why the level 6 heroes kept one shotting my monsters and leaving my dungeon afterwards.)  This is further infuriating that you have to use monster spawning pads to scout your dungeon, in that you can't build in areas that aren't in your control zone, pushed out by using monster's pads.  This sometimes means that you can't put monsters where YOU want them, you have to put them in areas to expand your influence.  Let me also bring up that the monsters are quite... dull.  Most of them with the exception of the last unit and your over-powered Overlord the monsters are fodder, vampire bats and spider-lings alike.

In Dungeon Keeper, you many, different monsters to choose from and the later levels gave you very neat monsters that you grew to really enjoy.  Besides the constant need to get their faces crushed by monsters, you have to supply gold to your heroes.  This is pretty straightforward. However as the heroes grow in level, they continue to want more and more gold.  This is remedied by having a huge loot room for your heroes to wander into, before dying at your hand.  However... I've encountered some bugs which hurt these tactics.  After a hero is satisfied, he will immediately attempt to run out of the dungeon, since your monsters can't do enough damage and are just a time distraction, you have to use your overlord to kill them.  This is annoying, but you can look past it... except that most of the time, heroes will actually want more abuse from the monsters then they can handle and they end up dying from the monsters at 40% to filling their monster bar.  Another problem is timing the monster spawns so that the hero can get to the loot room without the monsters respawning again and them getting killed.
This was before I knew you could level up the monsters at the dungeon heart (never explained, remember) so I had to fill up a hallway with tons of monsters to meet their monster bar requirement.  Then, I tried placing gold stacks in between monsters groups because sometimes they would spend too much time looting before monster respawns, but due to monster spawning in the middle of looting, etc.  the heroes would sometimes bug out and just walk past the gold chests without bothering to loot.


Then if all this nonsense wasn't enough, sometimes the heroes will loot one chest then immediately leave the dungeon without doing their intended routes.  I'm not sure if these bugs that can be fixed later in a patch, but all of this turns a repetitive task into an INFURIATING one!  So you spend a hour building your monsters that do just enough to hurt your heroes without killing them, a hallway that is short enough and pretty enough to interest the hero to get to the gold stack and then after filling it up their pockets you kill them.  Except for the times they leave with half gold, half getting beat on, or just for no reason at all.  This really pisses me off!

(From Dungeoning to Destruction.. shit just got real.  ...This was a path forced on me!)

So, after hours of frustration; I decided to completely forgo the path of reward and just butcher the hapless heroes as I please.  Whether this was an attempt at revenge or just attempting to make the game more interesting, you can decide for yourself.  So, using your powerful overlord to overpower the heroes is fun.. for a bit.  Then you realize you're playing a basic hack and slash game.  To prevent this style of play, the developers has quest objectives in the story mode for you to complete, and some of them are given out by the higher up Dungeon Masters such as the Skeleton King.  Many of these tasks require you to give sacrifices of gold and soul power and if you don't, they get what can only be described as 'butt hurt' and will begin spawning minions directly at your Dungeon Heart.  If you can put up with this, which you can if you just buff your overlord directly using the talent trees.  What else is there? There's no point in using the gold, traps, monsters and even playing the game at that point.  But I did anyways.  So, you figure to get rid of those annoying objectives by playing in the limitless mode. Well, it's not very fun and you basically get ran over by pissed off heroes and champions.  Did I not explain champions? Well, every once in a while a true champion of the people will enter your dungeon, not for petty gold, monsters or spell books.  No, his only objective is to destroy that Dungeon Heart.  So you will eventually become overrun, be it by heroes or just boredom.

You know, as I attempt to explain this game out to you, what the successes were and how it failed.. I start to form a particular idea in my head.  This all comes from that 'coddling the heroes' concept.  I try to think about why they would include such a thing.  I understand it is because they want to try to make sure you put detail into planning your dungeon, that much is certain.  So, why is it that the dungeons are planned out in such a way that the dungeon gates are located in a permanent spot? If they wanted customization, they would allow you to put the dungeon gates where you wanted and hell, they could even allow you to choose how many gates you could open at a time by building more of less depending of your preference.  Maybe you want ten heroes entering your dungeon at a time? Who knows..?

Getting back on track, it doesn't explain why they want you to take care of these valiant, idiotic heroes.  It's almost like they want you to care about these heroes, like they are encouraging you to make your dungeon fun for them. It's like they came up with this concept before implanting the familiar Dungeon Keeper motifs into it.  You've noticed I've been making a lot of Dungeons and Dragons references, right?
That's no coincidence.  I've been thinking that early in development before they came up with this idea to turn the game into a modern Dungeon Keeper that they were actually working on a game that allowed you to make a virtual dungeon for other players.  Like a multi-player Dungeons and Dragons that allows you to be Dungeon Master while your friends explore the dungeon you've created.  This is all speculation but it feels to me like this might be the case because taking care of heroes is just something that feels foreign to the Dungeon Keeper series, not that this is a true Dungeon Keeper game, thankfully. So, perhaps it was a foreign idea after all?  I get vibes like that because that's how strange the gameplay decision is to me.  It just does not work at all in this game..

So, it comes down to it.  What can I recommend for this game?  Despite my grievances, it's not a particularly horrible game.  It has some particularly puzzling flaws that restrict enjoyment for it, but if I saw it used on sale I'd take it for a spin and see if I like it.  It's not worth purchasing as it is, however.  It is a below average Strategy game.  There's a specific market for this game: hardcore fans of the Dungeon Keeper series or fans that enjoy strategy with a fantasy setting.  But, I can't recommend this game to any fan that this might appeal to, simply because there are older games that do what this game was aiming for much better than it.  If you have an interest in the spy genre such as James Bond, try out Evil Genius.  If you just need that fantasy environment however... just go and play Dungeon Keeper again because it will entertain you much more than this.  If you don't mind very low quality graphics you can try Dwarf Fortress.  It's free and has an insane value of customization if you can get over the beginning difficulty hurdle.


Well, better luck next time, Dungeon Keeper fans.  Maybe that Asian Dungeon Keeper MMO can strike gold? I'm skeptical but you never know.  See you next time.