Sword Coast Legends - It's Not Legendary

SBFord

Sword Coast Legends - It's Not Legendary - Read the full story here

Over the past few years there has been a resurgence in isometric cRPGs. Divinity Original Sin, and Pillars of Eternity paid homage to the classic Dungeons & Dragons games from Black Isle such as Baldur’s Gate and Planescape: Torment. The recent success of Divinty and PoE should have paved the way for Sword Coast Legends to be a resounding success and in the process place D&D squarely back in the forefront of cRPGs. The only problem with that dream scenario is SCL has come up a little short.

bartoni33

The sad truth is that your 2 Pros are minor at best. It's like you were just grasping at anything to put there. But the 2 Cons are a major concern. Myself I would rate it at 7.5 but that's because I have no interest in the DM aspect and am enjoying the CM for what it is: a nice dungeon crawl with a nice set of companions. I try not to think of it as a D&D game because it does fall well short there.

Vonatar

Very mediocre CRPG that would be easily forgettable if not for the Forgotten Realms setting. I have a couple of hours in it, but having a hard time deciding to play it over much much better options like Pillars of Eternity or the recently released and truly wonderful Divinity: Original Sin Enhanced Edition. Why can't we have a good Forgotten Realms RPG for modern times? Probably the thing I would most like to see made.

Albatroes

It had some pretty good hype for it too, what a shame.

Tekaelon

I too was very disappointed.

bartoni33

If you want to know why the DM aspect is so barebones I have a quote to give you from the president of N-Space Dan Tudge:“ We’re going to allow DMs to spend a lot of time building campaigns that are near limitless if that’s what they want to do,” said Tudge. “But I’ve got twin eight-year-old boys and I want them to be able to create campaigns, that’s my litmus test. If they can do it, then we’ve succeeded.”

Taken from http://www.pcgamesn.com/sword-coast-legends/inside-sword-coast-legends-back-to-baldurs-gate-with-the-director-of-dragon-age-origins

So there ya go.

Silverthorn8

Lets face it, they should have either focused on an awesome deep single player campaign with no multi-player (or minimal). Or upped the party size to 5+ for more tic-tacs and sold a weaker single player game as a trade off but gave the players what we all wanted - the ability to make persistent worlds ala nwn/nwn2. Or delayed launch another 6-18 months and make something to last a generation. Edit: why aren't my paragraphs separating?? Bloody annoying, please sort this mods

danwest58

This is such a let down you know. I was hoping this game would get good reviews from MMORPG and players likely before I bought the game. Well it didnt and I am glad I didnt buy the game. This just shows the low quality of games that continue to come out yet so many Gaming Media sites majorly over-hype these games. I think its time we start doing what I have done. Don't buy the game right away and let the developers know we will stop buying the crap they put out.

Banegrivm

Pretty much the devs don't listen. They said in a video that they made a game for themselves, and it shows in spades. Granted they didn't use those words, but still. The game scarcely resembles 5th edition D&D and the classes are so terribly unbalanced it's not even funny. I got a free copy from a friend, and had I not, I'd be getting my money back. This game just needs serious help.

carotid

bartoni33 said:

If you want to know why the DM aspect is so barebones I have a quote to give you from the president of N-Space Dan Tudge:“ We’re going to allow DMs to spend a lot of time building campaigns that are near limitless if that’s what they want to do,” said Tudge. “But I’ve got twin eight-year-old boys and I want them to be able to create campaigns, that’s my litmus test. If they can do it, then we’ve succeeded.”

Taken from http://www.pcgamesn.com/sword-coast-legends/inside-sword-coast-legends-back-to-baldurs-gate-with-the-director-of-dragon-age-origins

So there ya go.

Well, there's the fail! This game was made for two eight year old boys.

Tamanous

I firmly believe games that try to emulate the DM/player experience will ultimately fail. I find the vast majority of the D&D player base wants the video game itself to take over the DM's role ... not create a need for one.

This is true for CRPG and MMORPG but developers continue to not understand this. I've DM/GM'd countless RPG games and my soul existence in that role is to moderate and construct a living world ... because somebody has to do it in an RPG. It is a shit ton of work and meant to allow the players to have an incredibly fun experience. The entire point of translating an RPG to a computer game is use the computer to replace the DM's role and automate what they do within an RPG. A DM develops the content prior to gaming or on the fly within the game and it is meant to be appear seamless to the players. Call it a necessary evil and the vast majority of DMs out there wish things were easier or they could play without such planning ... hence the why computers were invented to begin with.

There certainly is a role for tools allowing players to create content but the game experience itself should be entirely from the player's perspective. Anything more is the developer simply being lazy and not creating real content.

D&D is a perfectly easy game to translate to computer gaming. It has nearly endless class construction for alt making. It has dungeon crawling built in and can easily scale any previous instance along a new story arc that separates players from others for such stories. It has massive world maps for various settings that offers grand exploring and challenges for all levels built right out of the RPG itself. DM tool sets for story (not content building) can be added for player created DLC using existing assets (modules) phased to those wanting to run them within the live world.

This allows anyone to explore anywhere for any reason and if they want specific stories driving the adventures the hooks can be placed in game through npcs and other methods then offering the players the option to initialize that specific modules. This way 100 players in the same areas could be doing entirely different quests from the very same npcs everyone sees.

The same principle works for CRPGs. The same maps and npcs can be used over and over again. People always have shit they want done. Leaders always have challenges they face.

TLDR version: Developers need to stop making linear games and devote post launch content to the existing worlds to make they a living, breathing entity instead of washing aside 99% of the previous content to never be played again. The game is the DM ... not the players.

Slapshot1188

Good review Grakulen. I'd differ on the camera. To me it was a huge negative that required a lot of management on my side. Really enjoyed the single player but as you said... the multiplayer should have set it apart but is just too limited and buggy. Not having a loot system is a really bad oversite.

Gdemami

I do not understand why the game is getting so much slag...

While it is not visually as pretty as PoE, imo it is still way more solid in core gameplay than PoE was at release. Sometimes try to raise your difficulty bar above Easy.

All I read are petty complaints about the game that end up with unjustified verdict.

Elbone

Didnt feel like a DnD game at all, spells are all streamlined versions of other fantasy RPG games, what was unique from the Baldur's gate games and Neverwinter by extension, is just not present in this game. Lacking classes, not like I adding more of what their vision is about one would help. Also lacking races. As an hardcore Baldur's gate fan, still play it nowaday(steam enhanced version) and having a blast, I just don't understand how they could mess this up so much, the recipe seemed simple enough to follow.

Wizbuiz

bought it last week, can i get my money back?

Thourne

bartoni33 said:

If you want to know why the DM aspect is so barebones I have a quote to give you from the president of N-Space Dan Tudge:“ We’re going to allow DMs to spend a lot of time building campaigns that are near limitless if that’s what they want to do,” said Tudge. “But I’ve got twin eight-year-old boys and I want them to be able to create campaigns, that’s my litmus test. If they can do it, then we’ve succeeded.”

Taken from http://www.pcgamesn.com/sword-coast-legends/inside-sword-coast-legends-back-to-baldurs-gate-with-the-director-of-dragon-age-origins

So there ya go.

Wow that quote alone just took me from "Back away slowly" to "Run and never look back"

Iselin

Good, fair review. 6.5 to 7 is the range of how I would rate it too.

Grakulen

Wizbuiz said:

bought it last week, can i get my money back?

Probably

Slapshot1188

@Grakulen BTW awesome title for the article.

Thebeasttt

I'm glad you guys had the guts to review this game properly. It is a thoroughly disappointing installment to the D&D series. 5 races and 6 classes in a D&D game? Constantly preaching about DM features only to find you can't actually build a real campaign or persistent world? Puuuuuulease. How clueless can WotC get? Even the graphics aren't much better then the 9 year old Neverwinter Nights 2.

Jorendo

Shame to hear this game didn't turn out to be as it was hyped to be. When i heard about the game i had hopes it would be like NWN/NWN2. Where we would get a nice singleplayer campaign and a awesome multiplayer where people can create their own worlds. It's sad that NWN/NWN2 are the only games so far that allow you to do that. There are still a lot of NWN/NWN2 servers online for every kind of player, from those who want to play trough a campaign with just a few friends to huge Roleplaying servers, from vanilla to servers with many mods, etc. I was hoping this game would give atleast a bit of that. But i suppose we will never ever see a succesor to those amazing games now that the rather boring and floaty MMORPG is released. Even if it wouldn't be like that i had still hoped for this game to be a good RPG. But alas it seems its not so great. Maybe i pick it up when its cheaper and perhaps they will fix a few things or add features to make it more like the hype made it sound like to be. But right now i rather turn to Divinity that released the enhanced edition and atleast gives me a great singleplayer experience.

Gretelda

Thebeasttt said:

I'm glad you guys had the guts to review this game properly. It is a thoroughly disappointing installment to the D&D series. 5 races and 6 classes in a D&D game? Constantly preaching about DM features only to find you can't actually build a real campaign or persistent world? Puuuuuulease. How clueless can WotC get? Even the graphics aren't much better then the 9 year old Neverwinter Nights 2.

it doesn't really take guts to review a game properly when there is no Major publisher behind it. most critics reviewed this title openly and properly. that's how it is with PC indies usually and PC games in general compared to console versions.

PottedPlant22

Well. I knew this a month and a half ago when I commented on the preview article. /shrug. The game was so not ready and it was obvious they were pretending to be so much more than what they had. Gaming Journalism dropped the ball big time by not holding these devs to more scrutiny BEFORE a release. I wouldn't say they lied, but they certainly gave some false impressions in my opinion.

Slapshot1188

PottedPlant22 said:

Well. I knew this a month and a half ago when I commented on the preview article. /shrug. The game was so not ready and it was obvious they were pretending to be so much more than what they had. Gaming Journalism dropped the ball big time by not holding these devs to more scrutiny BEFORE a release. I wouldn't say they lied, but they certainly gave some false impressions in my opinion.

I agree.  And I actually kind of enjoyed the game but it was certainly over hyped by all the gaming sites.  Same thing is happening again with titles like Saga of Lucimia as they already had 3 articles on here and their developer was bragging that a 4th was already on the way.   Sure a little blurb here or there... but 4 articles in like a month or so?   

Unfortunately I guess all the attention is drawn to pre-release games.. once they come out we know their flaws so the interest level drops...

Zulika

I am really enjoying this game and the players made modules. I saw Bill streaming it one night and jumped on it. I hope it continues to improve and gets more challenging - I think the hard mode should be default. Anything about D&D rules or books will put me right to sleep though as does pen and paper anything. So I may be an outlying datapoint. This game is going to make me try other games of this type. It is why I tried PoE in between the beta weekends, but it felt very sluggish in every way to me for some reason - to each their own. I picked that DoS:EE in the DoS 2 kickstarter too to try next. ***edit:Maybe I have to make more posts in order to use paragraphs ¯\_(ツ)_/¯

Iselin

Slapshot1188 said:

PottedPlant22 said:

Well. I knew this a month and a half ago when I commented on the preview article. /shrug. The game was so not ready and it was obvious they were pretending to be so much more than what they had. Gaming Journalism dropped the ball big time by not holding these devs to more scrutiny BEFORE a release. I wouldn't say they lied, but they certainly gave some false impressions in my opinion.

I agree.  And I actually kind of enjoyed the game but it was certainly over hyped by all the gaming sites.  Same thing is happening again with titles like Saga of Lucimia as they already had 3 articles on here and their developer was bragging that a 4th was already on the way.   Sure a little blurb here or there... but 4 articles in like a month or so?   

Unfortunately I guess all the attention is drawn to pre-release games.. once they come out we know their flaws so the interest level drops...

Seems to me that gaming sites do the same thing we do. Games in development are always more highly thought of than released ones. When something is announced, shows promise and has some cool sounding differences from what we already have, everyone is interested and fantasizes that it will be great... and then we get to play it and reality sets in.

Reviewers and sites are no different than we are.