Dungeons & Dragons: Dark Alliance

GamepurLaura Gray

9/10

Lore & Legends: A Visual Celebration of the Fifth Edition of the World’s Greatest Roleplaying Game is a must-have for every D&D fan. The beautiful, full-color images that fill each page, and the history carefully told by the writers of the book, make this a critical piece for any collection. There is so much to learn about the worlds we have played through, and it gave me a new level of appreciation for the time and energy the creators put into the game to make it available to us as players.

Impulse GamerChris O'Connor

I've always liked the idea of Dungeons & Dragons since at least the first time I played Heroes of the Lance (which would apparently have been around

Game InformerMatt Miller

6/10

Wanting something to be good doesn’t make it so. I have a deep enthusiasm for the D&D tabletop game, fond memories of the R.A. Salvatore-penned novels that introduced these characters, and I was even excited about the revival of the cooperative Dark Alliance title from 20 years ago – I am the target audience for this fantasy action/RPG. Those preconditions are enough to make Dark Alliance a passable adventure in its early hours, especially when enjoyed with friends. But the deeper I played, the more the level design, character progression, cooperative elements, story, and combat mechanics bega...

Sirus GamingCarri Grant Raffy Abenoja

5/10

We want to emphasize that 5 will always be the “average” number, not 7. So by far, it’s 50% great and it’s also 50% bad.

TheSixthAxisReuben Mount

5/10

Dungeons & Dragons: Dark Alliance fails to live up to both the potential of its placement in the D&D canon and the legacy of the Dark Alliance name. As a mediocre-to-good game, depending on whether you’re alone or with friends, the whole experience is sluggish and dull in execution, and sails close to the average tabletop D&D session where you play for four hours and somehow only walk down a single corridor, but without the enjoyment that comes with that experience.

GameSpewRichard Seagrave

5/10

At the moment, Dungeon & Dragons: Dark Alliance is just too rough around the edges to recommend, but some will be able get enjoyment out of it if they can work past its issues. As ever, it’s fun battling your way through dungeons with friends, collecting loot as you go – especially once you’ve powered up your characters and learned some new moves. But until the camera has been tweaked to give you a better view, enemy AI has been improved and bugs have been quashed, the action will always be accompanied by an element of frustration and disappointment. It might be a good idea to wait for a patch...

RPGamerAlex Fuller

Dungeons & Dungeons: Dark Alliance brings co-op hack-and-slash action to PC and consoles. A decent multiplayer experience is overshadowed by a pithy single-player campaign and unrefined mechanics.

DestructoidZoey Handley

4/10

Okay, I screwed that one up. Its other strengths are… Let me put it gently: there is some promise to its multiplayer. If its control issues are mopped up and the enemies recover from their collective hangovers, Dark Alliance could be reasonable fun with friends. For a little while. I guess.

WayTooManyGamesHeidi Hawes

3/10

While I’ve never gotten hugely invested in Dungeons & Dragons, I have played a few campaigns throughout my life and really enjoyed my time with it. The main reason I never got heavily involved with it had more to do with not having people to play with more than having a dislike for the game. So when I heard that Dungeons & Dragons was lending their brand to a new video game, Dungeons & Dragons: Dark Alliance, I got really excited. Finally, a version of Dungeons & Dragons that I didn’t nee...

Metro GameCentralGameCentral

3/10

A tragically awful attempt to revive the Dark Alliance name, with horribly repetitive combat, empty storytelling, and a dragon horde’s worth of bugs.

Analog Stick GamingJeff Young

Unscored

Dark Alliance should have been a home run. The world, its story, characters, and the gameplay should have been great. While the game does at least offer up some decent visuals, nearly everything else it aims to do is met with bad design choices and combat that feels lethargic in its responsiveness.

For all of the above criticisms, there was one feature that I really liked and felt was a genuine Dungeons & Dragons moment; after major battles, a campfire would pop up, and you would have two options. You could take a “short rest” (a term cribbed from Dungeons & Dragons) to restore your health and potions, or you could choose to forge on without resting, resulting in fewer resources for the next encounter, but in exchange getting a better chance of loot drops being of higher (rarer) quality. That risk-reward system added a lot of quick decision-making, especially in multiplayer (because…