Legend of Drizzt Review

I can save you a bunch of time by simply stating, "Go buy this now, if you love dungeon crawls", but they pay me the big bucks to explain why, so let's get on with it, shall we?

The Dungeons and Dragons Adventure System series of games manage to very ably solve the problems that so many dungeon crawl games have historically had, the ultimate being that one player almost always has to be the bad guy, which can cause all kinds of problems, the foremost being that the guy who plays on behalf of 'the game' is not well suited for the task, resulting in a crappy experience for everyone. What this series of games has done is created an environment where everyone is on the same page, playing together on the same side.

Sadly, the first iteration of this fantastic series, Castle Ravenloft, lacked campaign rules and "buying", which limited its ability to keep the interest of people who were looking for an RPG-light style game. This was solved, to a great degree, by the second entry in the series, Wrath of Ashardalon, and it even added in a random scenario generator, which was a great idea, but the problem with that particular game is that it had a very thin setting, which was a mistake. This third game took the lessons from its predecessors and made an incredibly engaging game, with loads of immersion, a great story, beloved characters from the Dungeons and Dragons fiction, and campaign rules that make sense. In short, if you were to only buy one, this is the one to buy.

For me, the greatest strength of the series is that it has just enough 'leveling' of characters to pass the smell test with regard to the RPG-light vibe, but doesn't bog down players with a sea of statistics and extraneous garbage. The leveling paths are very limited, and while your character 'feels' stronger when it levels up, it's not overwhelming, and they did an exemplary job of limiting the strength of leveled characters so that they don't end up dominating the game and limiting other players' chances of killing enough baddies to level up themselves. Another great design choice was in the pricing of the items you can buy and sell; there is no super-weapon which creates a dominating situation which would, again, cause one player to do all the slaughtering while the other players are relegated to the back seat as what amounts to a supporting cast. In short, the game designers did a great job with balance.

Most scenarios amount to a slow exploration of randomly revealed tiles, ending in a boss fight which will usually see players dead or near death. In a lot of ways, this series is a bit like an analog version of the old side-scroller video games like Contra, where you fight through waves of bad guys until you get to the boss fight. Thankfully, the campaign design is such that you slowly, over a dozen scenarios, build up your characters through varied and interesting situations, until you meet up with the boss and stomp the mud out of it. One of the slicker mechanics built into the game are boost tokens which can refill your life, and are earned in various ways throughout the campaign. These aren't so much catch-up mechanics as a way to keep characters near the brink of the Grim Reaper's doorstep, slowly building tension at the right times and then releasing it when you gain a token.

Another feature that I greatly appreciate is the fact that there's a large selection of enemies to fight, and most of them feel different from one another. Nothing bugs me quite as much as fighting the same exact enemies, ad nauseum, because the designers chose to keep the model count low. With this series of games, and Drizzt especially, they just accepted that the game wasn't going to be inexpensive, and went for broke, including 17 unique bad guys in the box, generally in multiples of three. This means that during any given scenario, you can literally have a crowd of different models on the board at once, which is awesome to look at and even better to play against.

To add to the awesomeness of the series, all the previous games are compatible with Drizzt, and can have all the bad guys and dungeon tiles added in, so you can literally have infinite adventures if you own them all. On top of that, the unrelated Dungeon Command line of games includes cards and models which can be integrated into this series of games, varying the system even more. If there's a weakness with that last bit, it's that those models come pre-painted, so you will have some models painted and the rest unpainted, which is the precise recipe for Sad-Face Pie. I wish that all the models were painted, especially since every model in the entire series is taken from the Dungeons and Dragons Miniatures game system, and those are pre-painted. I guess Wizards of the Coast knew that there was a limit on what people would spend on a board game, but I sure wish they'd have released a 'premium' version with all the models painted, because I spent 60 hours painting the Ravenloft and Ashardalon models, crapped out, and have yet to paint my Drizzt models.

The long and short is that this game system is the cat's meow, and if you like dungeon crawls, you need to get this game, and really, the entire series. It's a phenomenal system that is easy to learn, quick-playing, and undeniably fun. I can't really see anyone not liking this, because the only weakness is the propensity for one of the players to become an Alpha Douche and start issuing orders to the other players like some half-baked Napoleon. Still, this is a people problem, not a design problem so I count this series, and Drizzt especially, among the best examples of dungeon crawl board games in existence.