Dungeons & Dragons: Dark Alliance Is A Tragic Mess - Kotaku

Dungeons & Dragons: Dark Alliance takes four of my favorite characters from R.A.

I’ve not been this disappointed by a video game in a long time, and I played Balan Wonderworld.

I grew up a voracious reader with a strong affinity for tabletop fantasy role-playing games, so I devoured the tales of Drizzt the dark elven ranger and his companions/adopted family.

Their adventures in the frozen wilderness of Icewind Dale and beyond are a part of my childhood, so I had high hopes for Tuque Games’ new Dark Alliance game.

I was also a huge fan of the Baldur’s Gate Dark Alliance games that serve as this new title’s spiritual predecessors, but as Ethan Gach pointed out earlier this year, that’s more a name thing than anything else.

The original games were Diablo-style action role-playing games.

My least favorite aspect of Dark Alliance is collecting loot, which is incredibly sad considering the nature and origin of the game.

Dungeons & Dragons: Dark Alliance launched earlier this week for Xbox One, Xbox Series X/S, PS4, PS5, and Steam, where it currently enjoys an overall “Mixed” score.

The positive reviews I am seeing often mention playing with friends to make the game better, which is good advice.

Kotaku elder, lover of video games, keyboards, toys, snacks, and other unsavory things?

Why would anyone be disappointed by this game.

It looked terrible; a blantant and unashamed use of established IP and characters to pull the gamers in, only to give them a tedious, unoriginal and uncreative game experience they haven’t seen a hundred of other times before, and done better at that; a cash grab.