Dungeons

Dungeons may not be for everyone, but it will more than satisfy the needs of anyone who takes a shine to it. Better yet, it probably won't imprison you and drain your life energy afterward.

The game switches from too difficult to boring all the time. In the end we had to force ourselves to keep on playing. A perfect example for game mechanics gone wrong.

A fun but deceptively shallow Sim-RPG-thing that would have benefitted from pushing the envelope for either genre a little more.

Combat quickly grows repetitive, even with talent trees and new abilities. Advancement is slow, and many missions and challenges seem more like busywork than fun.

So, if I had to pick a single word from the roughly 1000 that I have written above, it would have to be disappointed. I was completely primed for Dungeon Keeper, and what I got instead was kind of Diablo meets Rollercoaster Tycoon. Not good. Worse than not good.

A title with good potential that can entertain and give some satisfying moments, but that inevitably feels as a good opportunity wasted.

The worst thing about Dungeons: it's an extremely slow game. And when the pace changes, it fails to provide any challenge. [Apr 2011, p.101]

Overall though, this game is a serious mixed bag. Great graphics and an interesting concept, but the execution was sloppy at times, cumbersome and just plain frustrating.

Catchy mix of several genres offers a slick campaign with many hours of fun. A lot of unpleasant things and the lack of multi-player unfortunately spoil the overall score. [Issue#201]

Disappointing, but not necessarily boring.

Dungeon Keeper started with a good idea, but then it backed up that idea with some enjoyable gameplay. Dungeons takes that same idea, but misses on just about every point of execution. It's certainly time that gamers had another dungeon master type of game to play, but they'll just have to keep waiting for a good one.

Dungeons lost its chances for success due to errors of graphical and technical nature. The gameplay (especially at the beginning) gives some satisfaction - but so what? Programmers' sloppiness prevents you from having real fun and the graphics make this game look 6 or 7 years old. It's a mediocre game at best even though the mechanics and story are really good. The developers had ideas for 3 hours of game and lethal monotony can kill even the most patient gamer. It's not tragic but with that kind of content, without any multiplayer and with a boring campaign it wastes our time.

The graphics are nice, a well-built dungeon is a sight to behold, and there's a little bit of fun here, but ultimately you'll master everything you need to know in short order and be done with this game soon afterward.

Apart from that fairly strong central concept, everything else is distinctly bargain-bin quality. [May 2011, p.60]

As a pure idea the game is very interesting, but poor execution held this one back.

At the end of the day, we can't consider Dungeons a legitimate successor to Dungeon Keeper. In particular, the final evaluation has to consider the price of the game: on Steam, you can find much more complex and fun products, for a lesser price.

Quotation forthcoming.