Dungeons & Dragons: Chronicles of Mystara brings reworkings of two of Capcom’s classic arcade hits - Dungeons & Dragons: Tower of Doom and Dungeons & Dragons: Shadow over Mystara – together in one definitive digital package.
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Fantastic Beat Em Up, does a good job with the theme.
I don't even like beat em ups and I can still say these games are fire
Time for another Beat-Em-Up! Only two of one of my favorite genres in one year..? Actually two games in one! Tower of Doom and the eponymous Chronicles of Mystara. These were arcade beat em ups from the very early 90's and it shows!
The first game Tower of Doom is pretty barebones as far as features go. There's four characters, you pick one and go through some pretty straightforward levels and punch kobolds til you find a boss. Well actually it was more like troglodytes rather than kobolds but... who the hell picked trogs btw? Those are DnD enemies that are basically no one's favorite! Oh no you're super smelly that's such a great defining characteristic... anyway you proceed through some decent enough environments, talk to 1 note townfolk (with some pretty solid art actually) and save the day from the Evil Lich... somebody I dunno. He certainly looks imposing and his final boss battle is bullshit. Thankfully these versions give you infinite game overs haha...
Chronicles of Mystara is the second game and things are a heck of a lot more polished. There's two more characters to choose from, the UI is a LOT slicker and better laid out, I could even read what my spells were!! I respect any game though that assumes I have an encyclopedic knowledge of early DnD - because I sure as hell do. This time you're out an adventure to defeat an evil sorceress, and she actually thwarts you several times through the adventure and has some cool "Shadow elves" working for her! Did the drow not have a name yet? I thought they for sure did at this point...
Mystara at least has some very segments where you actually get to fight a sweet dragon (and become legends!!), visit a gnome village, fight on an airship, go up a giant revolving tower (that moves in the background!! neat!)and general high level dnd shenanigans. Speaking of high-level, I had a lot of spells this time. I played as the Elf in both campaigns, who is basically a fighter-mage, and had a very nice time balancing the two aspects of the character. You can also free-swap characters when you die so I did try out the other classes for portions of each level just to get a taste, but I do love me some fighter-mage.
The combat in the games felt pretty solid, as the Elf I had a large variety of spells and since I didn't have to pay for each revive in the game, my spells came back with enough regularity to be fun. There were the very obvious and cool choices like chain lightining and fireball, but also invisibility, polymorph other and cloudkill make an appearance as well. There's an equipment system in the game as well as you find magical items but frankly I was not able to make heads or tails of it. I just beat up everyone and moved along!
I didn't spend an immense amount of time with the series, mostly just a few slow days during Thanksgiving weekend, but it was a good enough time. It has been in my backlog quite some time, but having a taste of DnD and a solid beat em up was a great way to pass the time. Not as complex or satisfying as River City Girls or even approaching Scott Pilgrim but damn good at what it wanted to be.
The first game Tower of Doom is pretty barebones as far as features go. There's four characters, you pick one and go through some pretty straightforward levels and punch kobolds til you find a boss. Well actually it was more like troglodytes rather than kobolds but... who the hell picked trogs btw? Those are DnD enemies that are basically no one's favorite! Oh no you're super smelly that's such a great defining characteristic... anyway you proceed through some decent enough environments, talk to 1 note townfolk (with some pretty solid art actually) and save the day from the Evil Lich... somebody I dunno. He certainly looks imposing and his final boss battle is bullshit. Thankfully these versions give you infinite game overs haha...
Chronicles of Mystara is the second game and things are a heck of a lot more polished. There's two more characters to choose from, the UI is a LOT slicker and better laid out, I could even read what my spells were!! I respect any game though that assumes I have an encyclopedic knowledge of early DnD - because I sure as hell do. This time you're out an adventure to defeat an evil sorceress, and she actually thwarts you several times through the adventure and has some cool "Shadow elves" working for her! Did the drow not have a name yet? I thought they for sure did at this point...
Mystara at least has some very segments where you actually get to fight a sweet dragon (and become legends!!), visit a gnome village, fight on an airship, go up a giant revolving tower (that moves in the background!! neat!)and general high level dnd shenanigans. Speaking of high-level, I had a lot of spells this time. I played as the Elf in both campaigns, who is basically a fighter-mage, and had a very nice time balancing the two aspects of the character. You can also free-swap characters when you die so I did try out the other classes for portions of each level just to get a taste, but I do love me some fighter-mage.
The combat in the games felt pretty solid, as the Elf I had a large variety of spells and since I didn't have to pay for each revive in the game, my spells came back with enough regularity to be fun. There were the very obvious and cool choices like chain lightining and fireball, but also invisibility, polymorph other and cloudkill make an appearance as well. There's an equipment system in the game as well as you find magical items but frankly I was not able to make heads or tails of it. I just beat up everyone and moved along!
I didn't spend an immense amount of time with the series, mostly just a few slow days during Thanksgiving weekend, but it was a good enough time. It has been in my backlog quite some time, but having a taste of DnD and a solid beat em up was a great way to pass the time. Not as complex or satisfying as River City Girls or even approaching Scott Pilgrim but damn good at what it wanted to be.