Dungeons 4 Review ([tlPlc] Sordolax der 3.)
i have mainly played the campaign and i think it fits quite well into the series, (whether one like thalia or not is up to each one but i like her)
but, as much as the story fits, progression and balancing does not.
balancing: in dungeons 3, the heroes had a clearly defined progression like; guard> stone guard> steel? guard> throne guard
i think there were a few more steps but this made tracking enemy difficulty easy and helped with picking engagements. in D4 however, there are only two or three stages for heros; rgular and elites. in D3, elites would spawn fairly late on normal difficulty but in D4 they arrive way earlier and in force, overruning traps and desenses. it basically lacks a mid-game rank of heros that your minions kan kill to level up and pull even. as it stands, it is like a switch is flipped and your dungeon suddenly drowns in elites.
the same goes for underground creatures like spiders and lava lumps. they too only arrive in two flavors, normal and elite. a few normal ones can be dealt with early on but each often comes with an elite that is a pain to kill early on. worse yet, the elites can pile up and you get the same problem as the heros. too many high level enemies but not enough minions in either quantity or strenght to keep them at bay.
the other point is progression: it somewhat ties in with the balancing part. there are four research trees, one for each minion faction and one for the dungeon itself. this sounds nice on paper until one sees the costs. each tree has ten main levels which need to be completed to unlock the ability to research higher level rooms. this also appears to set the max level of minions of that faction. aka, if undead research is lvl 4, your undead can reach only lvl 4.
combine that with the fct that minions have their own tiered research FOR EACH OF THE 12 MINIONS and it gets expensive fast.
and expensive isnt something you can afford. regula gold veins give 4k gold each, a gold tile give 100gold and diamonds are infinite. again, nice on paper, not so mach in execution. some mid to late game research cost one or two K in gold and all undead minions need more than one K to be hired in the first place. (that is less than 4 undead for an entire gold vein btw)
this is an issiue since we only get a handfull of gold veins out of the gat and digging up gold tiles runs the risk of unearthing nest; see balance ubove; making it rather risiky to expand early to mid game and at times even wors in late game when, again; see balance above; diamond veins are another issue, by the time one gets to them, the mission is almost over, making them less than useful.
next up is evilness. in D3 detroying good locations gave islands of evil which passively generated the suff. that was perfectly alright in my book. the D4 version feels like a downgrade in comparison. destroying good locations/ creatures now gives a flat amount, a few hundred for locations, 1K+ for creatures. sure, locations can be rebuild now an creatures respawn but both always come back stronger, ironically, it doesent seem to scale as stupidly fast as hero attacks do but that isnt saying much. sure, ther is now a lot of other things that give small amounts of evilness too but that dosent tie you over if you run a lot of demons or work well because they need heros to work as fuel so to speak (prison, torture chamber see; balancing above)
it often results in research stalemate where you have either a ton of gold or evilness but you cant research ways to expand to get gold or get better at collecting evilness, resulting in a stall that allows heros to scale right passed you; see balancing above. combine that with useful building being spread evenly between high level faction research and it is the perfect trainwreck.
the best way to sum it up is that dungeons 4 has a decent early game, absolutly screwed up the mid game and the end game is only fun if you somehow get through the non existing mid game.
i would recommend it for the story, in all fairness but otherwise, do not buy this game untill they gave it a ground up balance and progression overhaul.
(ther first 8 ish missions are fine btw)