The two storylines of the games featured in Dungeons & Dragons: Chronicles of Mystara occur chronologically one after another with the 1993 arcade release Dungeons & Dragons: Tower of Doom coming first. This game follows the story of four adventurous warriors on a quest to liberate the land of Glantri from the hold of a powerful enemy. Short monologues and cutscenes are scattered throughout the game to give a hint of a storyline, but the narrative never goes to in depth and leaves players with a cliffhanger ending until the next release in the series. While this obviously sucked for gamers in the early 90s, we now have the luxury of jumping directly into Dungeons & Dragons: Shadow Over Mystara directly after finishing the first game, unless you'd rather play the games out of order. Dungeons & Dragons: Shadow Over Mystara picks up right where the previous game left off, now with six different warriors heading the to battlefield to stop another evil force that has emerged from the shadows to threaten the land of Glantri. Storyline is once again an afterthought in this release, though it would make a great basic plotline for a game of Dungeons & Dragons with a group of friends in real life, but I digress. You shouldn't expect to find great storylines that accompanied great RPGs of the past such as the classic Final Fantasy series, but there is some fun gameplay here to more than make up for the fact.
If you've played any beat 'em up titles in the past 20 years of the gaming industry, you already understand the basic mechanics of Dungeons & Dragons: Chronicles of Mystara. However, both of the games featured in this collection contain many features that were ahead of their time and make the games very much playable in today's gaming generation. In addition to standard attack combos, jumping and secondary attacks, each character comes from a different class inspired by the world of Dungeons & Dragons including the Fighter, Cleric, Dwarf and Elf in both titles and the Magic User and Thief in Dungeons & Dragons: Shadow Over Mystara. Each character has their own strengths and weaknesses as well as unique inventories that will contain anything from different types of magic spells to projectiles that can be thrown at enemies. Each character also has a list of special moves that can be activated at anytime for various effects including sliding, heavy attacks and desperation attacks that will cost the character a portion of their life bar or hit points for attempting. Other in-game items include stat boosting items that break over time, and coins that can be spent in stores between chapters to gain new items, but try not to touch the shop owner.
New features to the games in Dungeons & Dragons: Chronicles of Mystara are plenty including new high definition graphics that make the games more playable than ever before. Helpful menus will help guide the player and teach the finer mechanics of the game, while switching between games is as easy as pressing a single button at the main menu. A new Challenge menu features many different challenges that can be completed in-game to earn Vault Points which are then spent in the Vault to unlock concept art, secret documents and in-game modifiers and options to give the game some pretty good replay value. The player also gains levels all the way up to the epic 21 for some more cool unlockables and a feature that keeps track of characters used and related statistics. Once you've seen all the game has to offer, you can head online to player with friends or random people over Xbox LIVE or your online service of choice in up to four player cooperative sessions. Much like in the long forgotten arcades of years gone by, multiplayer is the best way to experience playing Dungeons & Dragons: Chronicles of Mystara, only now you don't have to cramp around a single arcade machine and shell out endless quarters to do so! If you're a fan of classic games, Dungeons & Dragons lore or are simply looking for a new beat 'em up title, pick up Dungeons & Dragons: Chronicles of Mystara on Xbox LIVE Arcade, PlayStation Network or Steam today, and keep an eye out for an eventual release on Nintendo Wii U with additional features including an ability to switch between items on the Wii U gamepad.
Dungeons & Dragons: Chronicles of Mystara is now available for PlayStation Network, Xbox LIVE Arcade and Steam and can be purchased for $14.99 or 1200 Microsoft Points. Dungeons & Dragons: Chronicles of Mystara is rated T by the ESRB for Blood, Suggestive Themes & Violence. For more information on Dungeons & Dragons: Chronicles of Mystara, check out the official Capcom website.
Game Features:
Game Information:
Developer: Iron Galaxy Studios
Publisher: Capcom
Platforms: PlayStation Network, Xbox LIVE Arcade (reviewed) & Steam
Release Date: June 19, 2013
