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Dungeons and Dragons: Tactics is the latest version of the pen-and-paper game ported over to the electronic format — portable electronic format. For the long-time pen and paper D&D player, this game is geek city. It replicates the feel of the game faithfully, and you can spend hours just creating and customizing your character. From stats to appearances to manually selecting feats and abilities as you level up — each step providing an automated option that you can then review and accept if you like it. The scope of the customization available is staggering, but luckily the game provides a helpful dictionary for quick reference — under Options and Glossary in the menu. Characters even have a back history, including gods and goddesses worshipped. Hello, St. Cuthbert! It's been a long time!

The standard six races — Humans, Elves, Half-elves, Gnomes, Dwarves and Half-orcs — are available for play, as well as a choice of 13 classes. Bard, Barbarian, Cleric, Druid, Fighter, Monk, Paladin, Ranger, Rogue, Sorcerer and Wizard — and a couple more esoteric ones that came in later rule-sets like the Psionist and the Psychic Warrior. This game, like Dungeons and Dragons Online, makes use of rule-set 3.5. You can create a stable of characters and then decide which one you want to take into any mission. Or you can let the game create a random party for you.

The tutorial system shows you how to take Actions, Melee Combat, Ranged Combat and Magic. Playing through it reminded me for a few things. Such as ... Magic Missile can be cast around your group members. Fireball cannot. Sorry, Sindariel. Heh. The acrid smell of singed hair in the morning ...

Gameplay is standard turn-based, role-playing-game fare. It is D&D after all, and D&D can be intimidating and confusing for newcomers to the game. However, pre-set characters are available in Quick Start, which throws you directly into the campaign by creating two characters for you in the first mission — a neutral Human Bard and a neutral evil Half-orc Barbarian. At the second mission, you are joined by a neutral evil Half-elf Sorcerer, a lawful evil Human Fighter, a lawful neutral Human Cleric and a chaotic good Elven Rogue.

Or else, you can start a campaign and pick a party from 26 different pre-rolled characters — two of each class to choose from. For some reason, the Wizards, Rangers, Psions, Paladins, Druid, Monks and Psychic Warriors were placed side by side for easy comparison of stats. The Fighters, Rogues, Druids, Bards, Barbarians and Clerics were not.

In the multiplayer game, you could play cooperatively with up to four players in three different dungeons and three levels of difficulty, or play in a Deathmatch battle in four different arenas — some arenas had choice of Deathmatch, while others were restricted to one type of gameplay, such as the Dragonkill.

This title took me a while to review. Mainly because I was having too much fun and it took that long to play. I am of two minds about this title, and I'll explain why. On the one hand, it's a faithful depiction of the pen-and-paper game that I enjoyed many years ago. On the other, it's a faithful depiction of the pen-and-paper game.

It's a two-part turn-based RPG. Let's take moving the party, for example. Every character in the party can make two moves in their turn. So you highlight the party member, scroll to the move menu, select move, and the squares he or she can move to are highlighted — depending on the character's base land speed, encumbrance and the environment. You select where you want the character to go to by selecting each adjacent square with the D-pad, then click "move." Next action, you go through the same thing. Now do that for every member of the party. By level three, I was wishing for that little deviation from this faithful rendition of D&D, wishing for a little lasso tool to move the entire party together when in exploration phase.

The biggest problem with this title was the clunky interface. Everything just takes too many darned steps to achieve — from movement to accessing your items to casting a spell. Every action takes an inordinate number of menus. Trading items from party member to party member is like pulling hen's teeth in the number of menu screens you have to go through in order to check the character's inventory and then make the correct characters show up in the trade screen. The merchant screen is similarly awkward. Buying and Selling are two different menus, and side-by-side comparisons — for example, of the weapon you have and the new one you are considering buying. Checking the stats of items is accessed through the party-management menu.

Trying to figure if the items you purloined from the poorly guarded treasure chest in the middle of the goblin camp are better than what your characters are equipped with is an even more painful experience as you flip through the menus, picking up and dropping items — you can't trade when you are in a mission. Gathering all the loot for later distribution is impractical, as your party quickly becomes encumbered by all that weighty junk. So, you do this often until you wind up only picking up ammo and coin.

Another flaw is the lack of hints for the newcomers to the game after providing the easy initial party setup. Forgetting to select your spells during level-up for your Sorcerer or Bard means spending the next mission or two with lower-level spells; whereas the other magic users simply prepare them during the mission and then rest. Resting can be done as long as you are not in combat, which can make life really easy for healing and spell preparation.

The camera — moved by the joystick — is a little awkward. It could be better, since you can't get more than a character's maximum movement view, but it's not terrible — except in dungeons, and many adventures are in dungeons. It is dark in the first place, something pops up somewhere, the camera pans back and forth, the dungeon wall blocks most of the view, and you are left wondering where the heck that "something threatening" is coming from. It also moves very quickly during combat, panning back and forth between your character and the enemy in ranged attack, and often the action is blocked by the landscape.

You do learn little quirks as you play. For example, when placing your characters, the first placement is always in the rear of the party. So with that clue, you know which way they will be facing when placed.

The graphics were made in a manner to reduce loading times. There aren't any superfluous animations or glorious splash screens. Cutscenes have portraits of characters moving in or fading in and out, and they're on a nice enough background. Mission loading seems much shorter than they are because the loading screen displays a description of the mission and a playing tip. By the time you've read the display — some texts are longer than others — half the 30 second loading time may be over.

Landscapes are sparse and characters are indistinct and except for some named NPCs lacking in detail. That's perfectly fine, except that the death "pose" (for want of a better term) is merely the character slumped over, so you aren't sure which goblin died in that melee, just that one did, because your party gained XP. In a particularly messy mix-up, I didn't realize my Cleric had bit it until I wondered why he didn't get initiative. Some animations are a tad irritating. When a character is healed by the cleric, for example, he/she turns around and faces him and leaps into the air doing a jumping jack. In the middle of combat, for Ehlonna's sakes!

Sound usually provides cues in combat, and I kept it up but turned down the music; the chorus sang the same phrase over and over and over. Speaking of sounds, I swore early on that if my female human fighter squealed one more time when she stepped into an encounter, I would drop her. I did after about eight missions. She irritated me so much I didn't pick or create another human female when I restarted with a different party.

I spent too much time playing the game, despite the squealing female and the clunky interface and began to wish that I could print out character sheets to better keep track of my characters as I wound through the campaign. Making manual notes would have made the game that much more fun. As it is, it is too much hard work with the menu system as it stands. Now see ... I've talked about the wrongs of the game, but what about the rights? I could rhapsodize over how faithfully this has re-created the table-top game. They got that part right. All the minutiae of character customization are there. There's so much right about that any D&D aficionado will love this game.