Are you tired of saving yet another village from the undead without receiving any reward worth remembering? Are you tired of the rigor of the lawyer on duty and the bigoted paladins who do not offer any opportunity for recreation? Then don't despair, since Dungeons 3 is here to restore balance to the Force, bringing you once again to the fun side of the Evil-Malefic, even in a cooperative. Prepare your caves, arm your armies, resurrect your undead: you go to conquer the Western kingdoms with the Complete Edition of that creature that at the time was able to bewitch countless gamers and now aims to be loved by a slice even wider audience through a complete edition of all DLCs released to date.
A dungeon to tame them
Every self-respecting evil lord has a dark and deep cave in which to design evil plans and amass his hordes of monsters. We will not be an exception: the dungeon will be our base, which will be designed and developed in almost all the missions of the campaign. Starting from a central room, the Heart of the Dungeon, we will have to build from time to time all the structures that will serve to ensure victory. In fact, it will be our task to build areas to rest our creatures, as well as to feed them and satisfy their needs once they have reached a certain level.. Does the Horde ask for beers? We will build a brewery. Do demons want a mana bath? We will also give him the whirlpool! The management of the subsoil is decidedly well structured, with three branches (Horde, Undead and Demons) to be developed, each with a certain independence and peculiar characteristics. In fact, these factions and the related researches serve to approach missions and the defense of their base in a different way, complementing each other and interacting more and more with each other as the technological tree branches out. We will also be able to build a labyrinthine entrance path for the Heroes who will have the unhealthy idea of attacking us, then filling it with traps so as to make us impregnable.
A careful development of your army is therefore essential, especially for the different characteristics that not only the individual units but the different factions have. The Horde, for example, tends to rely on units with different roles and rather easy death, but balanced by a quick increase in level. In fact, it is not uncommon to lose an ogre left without the charitable care of his naga. Demons and undead, on the other hand, are made to last after death and to be sacrificed without too much pain. In the event of premature departures, they will return to their resting place to regain their strength or be summoned again by consuming some of our precious mana. Nothing prevents us from exploiting multiple factions at the same time and indeed, this is the key to a balanced army that will allow us to besiege the cities of the surface. The units are numerous enough to be able to find different approaches and strategies and to these we can also add the converted Heroes, once the appropriate technologies are unlocked, further expanding our options.
War on the surface
If the time spent in our dungeon strictly divided into squares has mainly managerial dynamics, where the priority will always remain the defense of the central room, on the surface the game changes considerably. In fact, we will pass from the instantaneous movements of our troops underground to the much more classic real-time strategic commands. Via the giant hand of evil, then, and inside the familiar pointer to give orders to their units. The sections on the outside they don't particularly shine for variety, as we will simply have to go around the map in order to destroy or conquer key points for survival or expansion of the shelter.
On the other hand, they represent an excellent way to vary the passive rhythm of the management phase to the active one of the strategic action, thus keeping every batch of Dungeons 3 Interesting; all without losing sight of or leaving our cave excessively unguarded, unless we want the good guys to win. If managing the dungeon and the surface assaults at the same time is too challenging for you, or you just want to share the fun game experience with someone, the cooperative mode can be a great way to approach production, but be careful ... the resources are in common and it will be needed. good coordination so as not to step on each other's feet.
If playing it is fun, on the narrative side Dungeons 3 it's just hilarious. Between references and citations scattered in every line of dialogue and in every description, laughter is guaranteed. Star Wars, Warcraft, Buffy, Supernatural, Good Omens and many others find small and large spaces throughout the campaign, including expansions. Not that the videogame past is devoid of such narratives, but if you have appreciated Overlord and its atmosphere you will certainly be happy to find one so similar and familiar also in the title of Realmforge Studios. And when you get the feeling that the situation is getting a little too verbose, the narrator will not miss the opportunity to address the audience directly, apologizing for the intrusions in his story.
"Please sir, I want more"
If your thirst for evil is not quenched after the twenty levels (and dozens of hours) of the main storyline, you can resort to various expansions of Dungeons 3, seven to be exact. Of these, most are limited to introducing a short story long three missions in which to reproduce the old, but solid, elements of the game, while the most important innovations are contained in Clash of Gods. Here, in addition to having eight additional missions, the Heroes will be able to build and defend their structures underground instead of just attacking us. We too will have new tricks up our sleeves: new traps and spells and the possibility of conquering outposts on the surface. These will allow us to build statues and towers, thus guaranteeing us bonuses or facilitating the defense of the area, all in order to vary the normal rhythms of the title by tempting us with new approaches. The difficulty has also been slightly revised and, already at the normal level, we will face more demanding challenges. As mentioned above, woe to leave the dungeon unguarded!
As fun and varied as it is, Dungeons 3 it is obviously not without flaws or corners to be smoothed, which could have made the game more enjoyable. The main criticality of the title lies in the initial phase of the games, which tend to be repetitive, and in the resource balancing of game. In fact, it will happen that, once the mission is started, we will find ourselves having to build the same fundamental structures, spending a lot of time redesigning dungeons and rooms in a not very satisfying mechanism once you learn the basics. Expanding the dungeon is generally fun, but the resources needed for research are often sip in the basic campaign, thus forcing us to long waits aimed at simply accumulating and unlocking research. In Clash of Gods, on the other hand, it is easier to gather resources and advance, thanks to the bonuses offered by the statues of the outposts, thus making the game much faster and more suitable for cooperative play. Better balance could have made the experience more balanced, while still remaining fun and enjoyable.
