Sword Coast Legends

Though this role-playing adventure tries to provide a rich D&D experience, the limited game elements prove that this novice adventure needs to gain more levels. Sword Coast Legends has a decent level of customization, which is a great selling point for RPG fans. For example, if players choose to be a thief, they can focus on stealth, making them harder to detect and find in combat, or a ranged specialist, filling enemies with arrows from a distance. The skill trees are large enough to give flexibility for all your party members so no two characters will play the same. Similarly, it's very easy to join friends or random strangers to fight your way through dungeons and monsters, making it easy to create a party of monster-bashing adventurers. On the other side, players interested in creating and controlling the gameplay will probably enjoy the chance to challenge (or perhaps torment) players as the Dungeon Master. This mode lets you build your own lairs with its own traps and monsters and even gives DMs the option to boost the danger these hazards pose as players travel through their darkened halls. It's this one-vs.-four action that's very engaging to play through.

Yet, while it's nice to have the option to create your own dungeons for Dungeon Masters, the tile set for creating unique stages is very limited. As a result, your adventures or campaigns won't be nearly as deep as they'd want it to be, and DMs don’t feel as powerful as they would in a regular tabletop game. Another issue that arises with the gameplay is the fact that it's so overly focused on combat. In D&D games, you usually have the flexibility to come up with creative methods to address battles, including talking your way out of fights that might be too difficult to engage in. Sword Coast doesn't give that option at all; instead, you're basically forced to hack your way through your enemies. A third issue is the limited races and classes. The fifth edition has 12 base classes characters can be, but only half are included. No Druids, Monks, or Barbarians. The same can be said about the races, which have half the base number of races for characters. It's a bit unfortunate when you run into a Tiefling (half human/demon) in the caravan at the start of the game, but you can't select one as a create-able character. The one plus is that the developers have promised to add a large amount of content for free in future updates, so many of these issues could potentially be addressed. That gives a certain degree of hope for players, but for right now, Sword Coast Legends is a tad shy of becoming a fabled RPG.