During our first Dark Alliance preview, we sat down Game Director Kevin Nebeirt and worked our way through the first act of Verbeeg Jamboree. This time, we got to play the third act of the mission, which featured a heavier emphasis on traps and a few light platforming segments. The biggest difference, however, was playing with a party of four rather than a party of two – and quite the difference it makes.
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Playing as Drizzt Do’Urden with Bruenor, Catti-brie, and Wulfgar in tow, we course our way through a Challenge Level 1 run of Verbeeg Jamboree’s third act. With four people in the party, the opportunities for synergized attacks are much more prevalent, allowing players to combine their abilities to whittle down an enemy’s health bar. Catti-brie can root enemies in place while Drizzt slashes away at them or Bruenor calls down his massive, flaming anvil, for instance.
It’s flashy and stylish, packed with the sort of visual flair that Dungeons and Dragons fans expect when bringing the tabletop game to life. That’s been a goal since day one, with the Dark Alliance team often citing the game as “what happens after rolling for initiative.” That hasn’t been more clear until now, as the chaos transpiring on the screen matches some of the hectic moments we’ve seen in real-world Dungeons and Dragons campaigns.
After winding through corridors, dodging traps, and moving through a brief platforming section, our rag-tag group of adventurers is finally ready to face off against Verbeeg Jamboree’s big bad, The Chef. Big, imposing, and somehow uglier than most of the other Verbeeg, The Chef is well suited to being a Dungeons and Dragons villain. He cooks up dwarves that inhabit the mountains, singing a song as he does so. For a large enemy, his battle takes place in a small area, with three of the four sides cut off by flame traps that occasionally spray into the air.
On Challenge Rating 1, the fight moves fairly quickly, with our team whittling away The Chef’s health with speed and efficiency. A cutscene plays as we finish him off, showing The Chef fall into a lava pit after catching on fire. The Chef tosses a cheeky middle-finger our way as the lava overtakes him, and then we’re headed back to the basecamp to check out or new loot from the mission.
Dark Alliance’s gear system – from the bits we experienced – is fairly straightforward. As players progress, they’ll unlock new sets with different stats and bonuses, all in service of helping them advance to the next Challenge Rating. It’s here that players will find the core of what Dark Alliance has to offer. Progress through the missions, find better loot, and then increase the Challenge Rating. With opportunities to fine-tune builds and check out the other characters, it’s a similar setup to Warhammer: Vermintide.
With fresh gear, our second run through Verbeeg Jamboree’s third act begins, this time upping the difficulty to Challenge Rating 2. It might not seem like a massive jump, but it turns out to be quite the challenge to work through. Enemies are tougher all around, and it takes a lot more precision to tackle each room, forcing players to parry and communicate to work through its difficult sections. Dark Alliance has teeth, and after seeing how much the difficulty can climb from one rating to another, it’s clear that it will show those teeth to anyone that comes underprepared.
Where our group was able to work through the first level and take out the boss without using a short rest (which refills health and potions at the cost of weaker gear drops) during the first run, we now take every opportunity to restock before facing off against The Chef once again. This time, the outcome isn’t the same breezy boss battle that we worked through initially.
Fundamentally, the setup is the same. The Chef is cooking up dwarves, singing a tune, and ready to throw down. However, he’s relentless in Challenge Rating 2, knocking us down as our team scrambles to stay alive. It’s a frantic battle, and our first try ends fruitlessly. The second round goes the same way, with The Chef kicking our teeth in after just a few minutes. With the time on our demo whittled down to zero, we’re forced to call it quits, giving The Chef the last laugh. It’s easy to see how that could get frustrating on repeated attempts, but tackling the challenge as a group is admittedly refreshing.
There’s something inherently alluring about Dark Alliance’s flashy effects and tight combat. That big question mark will be whether or not the content can carry over repeated playthroughs. Similar games have struggled with that before, but Dungeons and Dragons: Dark Alliance’s core gameplay might be just enough to keep players coming back for more. With seven missions, each comprised of three acts, featured in the game at launch, players will have content to chew through. That content will need to go a long way, though.
The biggest thing helping that replay value will be the additional content releasing throughout the year. Dark Alliance will get three DLC drops in 2021, with the final one being a new expansion pack that adds an additional character. If Tuque Games can keep new content rolling out at a steady pace – the reps on our call wouldn’t confirm or deny new DLC in 2022 – then the future of Dungeons and Dragons games looks bright.
Dungeons and Dragons: Dark Alliance releases June 22 for PC, PS4, PS5, Xbox One, and Xbox Series X.
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title: “Dungeons And Dragons Dark Alliance Hands On Preview” ShowToc: true date: “2022-12-14” author: “Mitsuko Fitzgerald”
Game Rant recently got the chance to play 45 minutes of Dark Alliance alongside Lead Game Designer Kevin Neibert, tackling one of the campaign missions and spending some time at the game’s hub, which is dressed up as the player’s camp. Opting to play through as Bruenor, a key character alongside Drizzt and the rest of the characters found in RA Salvatore’s novels, we got a solid idea of how the game plays, from the combat mechanics right down to the loot system.
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During our session, we worked through the entirety of a level called Verbeeg Jamboree. Those familiar with Dungeons and Dragons will likely recognize the Verbeeg from the Monster Manual, with Dark Alliance’s depiction successfully replicating the creature on-screen. The mission is set up in a similar way to a standard Dungeons and Dragons campaign, just with the focus being on combat rather than any sort of roleplaying. Interestingly, though, the opening to Verbeeg Jamboree almost feels like an homage to The Hobbit’s Troll scene, with the Verbeeg discussing the best way to prepare Dwarf meat in a cutscene leading into the mission.
As the cutscene plays, Neibert tells the player that the team wants to capture the culture of each of the game’s enemies. The Verbeeg are a good example of this, but we spend most of our time in the level duking it out with Goblins, one of Dungeons and Dragons’ classic fodder enemies. These came in a few variations, from ranged to melee, and tanky to squishy. They manage to make combat a bit more dynamic, but it’s too early to tell if that feeling will last beyond a few missions.
What’s immediately striking about Dungeons and Dragons: Dark Alliance is how fluid the combat feels. Chaining together attacks in different directions has an incredible flow to it, creating a graceful but impactful combat system that changes based on input direction and attack type. This system is supported by interesting abilities that can be used to create meaningful synergy. Each character has four abilities total, though only two can be slotted at once, along with a third ultimate ability.
In Bruenor’s case, our selected abilities allowed him to taunt other creatures to him, drawing heat from his squishier allies. Another called down a giant anvil from the sky that dealt AOE damage, pairing nicely with the taunt move. Neibert played as Cattie-Brae, a nimble, bow-and-arrow-wielding fighter that complemented Bruenor’s beefy weapons and abilities, especially with a move that allowed her to pin enemies in place. Even team compositions that seem less workable should be fine when the game launches, though, as Dark Alliance is designed to be completed with whatever combination of characters that players choose.
According to Neibert, Dark Alliance is “about what happens after you roll for initiative,” and from the slice that we got our hands on, that’s an accurate assessment. Not everyone is after Dungeons and Dragons’ combat experiences, at least in the tabletop game proper, but Dark Alliance isn’t offering up the turn-based system found there. Instead, it’s all the flash and flair that one would reasonably expect from a Dungeons and Dragons movie. It’s a tight blend of working as a team and executing high-octane individual movements to brag about once the mission is done.
The level structure is something similar to Warhammer: Vermintide, at least as far as the objectives and layout are concerned. Outside of that, however, the game is a third-person hack-and-slash, with the camera angeled tightly over the shoulder. A key thing to keep in mind here is that Dark Alliance is a new game, and isn’t a remake or soft reboot of the original Dark Alliance titles, a point that Neibert emphasized while playing.
After tough encounters, players will have the option to take a short rest, which will restore health and act as a checkpoint. If players choose to forgo these breaks, though, they will earn better rewards. It’s something of a gamble, and while we opted to take the short rests during our playthrough, it will be interesting to see how the challenge moves the needle when it comes to gearing up characters.
That’s largely because the loot system is what will inevitably keep players coming back for more. Essentially, each item earned in Dark Alliance is part of a larger set, and each hero has 12 sets of gear to acquire. These sets will function like quasi-subclasses, offering a bit finer control over individual characters. There are also Feats and a character sheet for players to tinker around with, giving even better control where progression is concerned.
Part of the goal is to have Dark Alliance function as a “gateway” for those that have never dipped their toes into Dungeons and Dragons, Neibert tells us. Neibert is an avid Dungeons and Dragons player, just like many of others at Tuque Games. The game’s merchant character and some in-game elites are even inspired by some of the studio’s campaigns. The influence the tabletop game has had on Dark Alliance, despite being nearly as far removed from the core tabletop experience as one could get, shines through. Each campaign mission not only has an overarching story, but there are also smaller subplots for players to unearth as players explore the level.
The biggest takeaway from our session is, quite simply, that the game oozes the iconic style of Dungeons and Dragons. How that translates to the rest of the game is still quite a big question mark, but if Tuque Games can stick the landing, Dark Alliance could well be the first major hit in D&D’s massive lineup of upcoming games.
Dungeons and Dragons: Dark Alliance release June 22, 2021, for PC, PS4, PS5, Xbox One, and Xbox Series X.
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