Dungeons & Dragons: Dark Alliance Reviews
Dungeons & Dragons: Dark Alliance is a tedious co-op adventure with lots of goblins and even more bugs.
Dark Alliance has great potential for success, but missed the mark on what could have been a great time with your fellow party members.
Overall, Dark Alliance is a fun game for quick 30-minute sessions with friends. However, I’d personally want it to stay in development for longer so developers would fix some of the game’s issues. It’s highly detailed and beautiful, but that’s the only best quality I could say about it right now.
While there is some depth and enjoyment deep within the heart of the multiplayer experience, Dark Alliance fails to provide the engrossing gameplay experience that is required in order to sustain the sort of long-term community clearly desired by the game’s creators.
Just like with tabletop D&D, Dungeons & Dragons: Dark Alliance requires a party of friends to truly enjoy this buggy experience. Otherwise, it's just a source of frustration.
Review in Slovak | Read full review
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 or two before jumping in, basically.
The creators probably didn't quite know what the Dark Alliance should be, so it is... completely bland. But it has at least beautiful locations.
Review in Polish | Read full review
Dark Alliance lacks in diversity, with bugs littered throughout making it near impossible to remain immersed for more than 10 minutes at a time, if that. You will undoubtedly expect either a successful homage to Dungeons and Dragons or a high-quality action RPG with influence from that scene - at this stage, it does not quite deliver either.
Dungeons & Dragons: Dark Alliance isn’t a bad game, but it does feel insubstantial at the moment. The lack of character development, plot or world-building will probably turn away hardcore D&D fans. As for the fans of multiplayer action games, while the core of the experience is fairly solid, the lack of technical polish, repetitive structure and unexciting loot system will likely not satisfy for long. Hopefully over time, patches and additional content can flesh out the experience and make it the rollicking fantasy hack and slash multiplayer funfest it has the potential to be. Just make sure you don’t forget to bring a friend or three.
A cheeky take on Dungeons & Dragons lore isn't enough to carry the lacklustre combat, sluggish controls, and dodgy enemy hitboxes.
If you love co-op based games, just look elsewhere, or simply wait before Dark Alliance will get all the necessary fixes and story expansions. As of right now, you can ignore the game completely, even on Game Pass.
Review in Russian | Read full review
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.
As this is on Game Pass the only thing you’re spending extra is your time. If you have a few friends to play with there are worse ways to go about it, but if you’re looking at this game solo then I’d say it’s a hard pass, free or not.
Boasting solid combat marred by a woolly lock-on system and repetitive objectives, Dungeons & Dragons: Dark Alliance is, nonetheless, a mostly enjoyable hack 'n' slash adventure that's best played in co-op.
At its best, Dark Alliance reminds me a bit of the classic arcade game Gauntlet. Those games were a blast to play with friends but were a frustrating experience when attempting to run solo. I have enjoyed every minute of Dark Alliance that I played with other players, whether it was with friends or random online companions. However, the single-player experience of Dark Alliance was miserable, at best, and should be avoided by anyone who wishes to have a fondness for the game.
A game with solid offensive flow and a great soundtrack that is hobbled by a lack of quality of life features, poorly balanced combat, and atrocious AI.
Dark Alliance can lean on an enormous amount of lore. Many locations, friends, and enemies make an appearance. the level design is pretty good and challenges to explore. However, the game is held back by bugs and battles that just do not work. The game has huge potential but sadly falls short in execution.
Review in Dutch | Read full review
The fantasy genre is one we’re all familiar with. Whether it be The Lord of The Rings or shows like Netflix’s The Witcher, the genre has found a dedicated spot in modern pop culture. But it’s Dungeons and Dragons that really brought the fantasy genre to the fore, finding favour among the nerdiest of youths and the most famous of Hollywood actors. For a franchise as massive as D&D, you’d think that its adaptations and spinoffs into modern media would hold up pretty well. It’s why I got quite excited about the recently released D&D: Dark Alliance, which seeks to throw players into an epic campaign littered with all the trimmings of D&D’s vast universe. It accomplishes this to some degree, but as a whole, it feels closer to a critical fail than booming success.
Dungeons and Dragons: Dark Alliance is an alright adventure, it’s got a fine amount of content and it’s good fun for a group.
With its frustrating controls, and questionable AI the enjoyment that can be gained from Dungeons & Dragons: Dark Alliance is severely limited. If a player is looking to romp through a strongly realized D&D world, and a classic story of heroes scrambling to stop the legions of evil, it may be worth keeping the game on easy just to enjoy the setting and story. However, if you are looking for a full-fledged action RPG experience there are far better offering out there.