Sure there were some bugs and hiccups. Some features just didn't work, much of the content wasn't in. That's all to be expected from an early, pre-beta build of the game, right? The E3 demo and my excitement for it were about its potentiall. Well, here we are a year later. The game was released in late April and I'm sad to say its state has not significantly improved from when I first saw it...in many ways, it's worse. Many major features such as item decay/repair, item identification don't work. Others such as the game's mapping system simply don't exist at all. The game has a rough, unfinished feel to it and bugs - game-breaking bugs - abound.

In Dungeon Lords, players can choose from a variety of races including Human, Elf and Dwarf and a few others that are less common Urgoth, Wylvan, and Thrall. Each race has its own strengths and weaknesses, giving them advantages in one or more combat class. The classes include Fighter, Rogue, Mage and Adept (another kind of mage).

Melee combat is an absolute delight - for anyone who loves clicking the mouse button frantically. The movement keys (WASD) determine which sort of attack is carried out, but there's very little variety other than the aesthetic. A quick keypress switches to a ranged weapon, but the combat is still pretty much the same. It boils down to "face a monster and click until it's dead." Special combo moves and dynamic combat seem to have been something of a hollow promise.

The magic system is impressively diverse, but frustratingly unbalanced. Four schools of magic exist including Arcane, Celestial, Rune and Nether magics. Each has its own associated skill and the two magic-wielding character classes each have bonuses in two of the magic schools.

Arcane magic is primarily offensive. Fireballs, magic missile, freezing touch, etc. Magic-wielding characters have a limited number of 'charges' for each spell and that number depends on how many corresponding 'spell books' have been found for that spell. This is an interesting system, but the spells recharge much too slowly. A mage class character will manage to cast only a few spells before having to resort to melee attacks for the next several battles, as they wait for their spells to recharge.

Celestial magic is mostly healing and other beneficial spells. It works almost exactly like Arcane magic except instead of 'books', players collect 'star crystals' to increase the maximum number of charges available.

Rune magic includes some offensive and some defensive spells. Each Rune magic spell is powered by two or more 'rune stones'. The stones themselves have 'charges'. This means if a character casts a certain rune spell repeatedly, it could deplete the charges of other spells that use the same rune stones. Much like the other two 'charge' based magic schools, the recharge time for the runes is terribly slow.

The last school of magic is Nether magic, which includes all sorts of dark and sinister spells. Nether magic is powered by combining reagents found throughout the game. Mixing these reagents in the proper fashion 'recharges' the nether spells. Some reagents are hard to come by, so some more powerful nether spells are to be used sparingly.

Overall, the combat just isn't fun. Mages just can't cast spells often enough and of the spells they do cast, most seem to do very little damage. Melee combat is unimaginative and frustrating. Most monsters are blocking attacks constantly, making it hard to get in a hit at all. Larger monsters will knock the character silly, dazing them for several seconds.

The dungeons in Dungeon Lords are, predictably, filled with monsters. Additionally, random spawns of monsters appear throughout the game. I suppose these random spawns are supposed to keep the game fresh and unpredictable, but they only succeed in being annoying. More often than not, the random spawns are what I call 'junk monsters': rats or bats or the incredibly annoying slime creatures that emit green gas and cause the hero to have a choking fit that just goes on way too long.

Outside the dungeons are the sprawling cities like Fargrove and Arindale. This is where the game's unfinished feel is really noticeable. The cities are dead, empty. There are NPCs wandering the streets of Fargrove, but they do little to bring the place to life. The various city buildings stand nearly empty except for the NPCs. The Inn in Arindale has dozens of rooms...all of which are utterly barren.

I can appreciate many of the innovative things Heuristic Park was trying to do with Dungeon Lords, such as the diverse magic schools and the puzzle-like lock picking mechanic. When picking locks, a bar moves across a series of icons, highlighting them. When certain key icons are highlighted, the player has to click them. At low skill levels, the bar moves very quickly, increasing the difficulty of the task. Higher levels slow the bar down considerably. This clever approach leaves the success or failure of lockpicking largely in the hands of the player.

Overall, I was greatly disappointed. I wanted a good co-operative RPG. What I got was an unfinished, barely-functional game that was obviously rushed out the door with only minimal QA testing. The game had much potential and Heuristic Park came achingly close to making a great game. In the end, though, they fell far short and the game is a mess. I heart-brokenly recommend you steer clear of Dungeon Lords.