Sword Coast Legends Review

A quick warning to all those arachnophobes out there. If the mere thought of digital spiders scares you, keep well away. If it doesn’t, then let it be known that there is a tarantula the size of a dragon in the Sword Coast Legends, and if THAT doesn’t make your heart beat a little faster, then you’re probably safe to purchase and play this game.

Now that that is settled, I would like to introduce you to a world of pure imag- err… fantasy. This is the world of D&D, and for the mere fact of keeping this shorter than the Scottish law book, I’m not going to go over what the world of D&D is. There is enough lore to keep all of you bibliophiles locked behind doors for a few days, until you stumble out into the light and realise the words have now embedded themselves into your retinas.

The section of the world we are looking at is the Sword Coast, a location in the Forgotten Realms which is separated by large white mountains that look like swords jutting out of the ground. You play as a customised character who works for the Order of the Burning Dawn. The Order were founded by two brothers who were on the hunt for an artefact called the Moontears. This was created by Sehanine Moonbow during the Godswar when she wept. The Order’s goal is to hunt down the artefact and control it for their own good.

As you can tell from the above, the story sounds pretty basic. If I’m being frank, it is quite basic in the motives and structure, but n-space have added in a nice twist where a demon is trying to rise up and reinstate the Age of Demons. You dream of this during a caravan trip and soon discover that the rival guild is trying to recover the Moontears to resurrect the demon and reinstate the Age of Demons.

See what I mean? Sounds basic, and each separate part of the story would be basic, but together they are enough to make for a complex story. Whether the story pays off is of another question for another day though, as at time of writing I’ve yet to finalise my journey along the Sword Coast.

You may be wondering what made me stop. Was it the underpowered mage class? Was it the ridiculously long load times and constant stuttering of frame rate? Was it the A.I. being coded like a lemming? Was it the fact that the giant dragon sized tarantula made my heart leap out of my chest?

The answer: Yes. To all those things.

Let me start with the mage class. We all know that mages are the class with low health but heavy damage, right? Well, Sword Coast Legends has opted for the low health, low damage model. This is really irritating in the fact that I was slaughtered by any enemy I faced on my own, but couldn’t get any kills before my companions smashed the enemy into a thin paste. I know that the experience is given to everybody, but it still makes me feel like I need not be playing at all. All I wanted from the mage was a heavy hitter that had to hide behind his allies. What makes no sense about the low damage output is the fact that the animations take far longer than they should. I take about seven seconds to cast a spell, yet the spell only does three damage?

Lets hit the other stop, the load times. These things take minutes longer than they should, and by that I mean they shouldn’t be minutes long! At one point the game loaded up a small little walk way with two demons on it, and that took three minutes – or at least what felt like three minutes. Mix in the fact that I then had to go through another door, with yet another load sequence, and you soon start to lose interest in going on all the side quests. Why spend my time exploring if the loading is longer than the actual dungeon crawl?

There are also problems with the frame rate in Sword Coast. The game stutters and doesn’t hold the frame rate when walking through Luskan, the main city are you travel through. The thing is, there are very few NPCs and events to render in the town, and it just doesn’t keep up with what is usually expected.

The next stop on our train of problems is in regards the A.I.. Usually I wouldn’t complain about this because it is just doing the best that the code has told it to do. Thing is, the A.I. commands should be overwritten by the player when you take control. This became a problem during my fight with Rhylfang, the giant spider I’ve talked about. She has an AoE attack that will decimate your team, and I would issue the command for them to move away from said attack, yet they would just keep running into it and dying. I also ran into the issue that the companions will spread out, even though their abilities would be best if they were bundled together, attacking the same group at once.

The constant micro-managing of the A.I. makes it very difficult to enjoy the gameplay as they will just swan off from their duties you’ve entrusted to them. Mix that in with a targeting system that is out to get you, and you don’t have the best of times with some gameplay that should be exceptionally well done.

My final complaint is that the boss really has been the ultimate decider in me calling it quits – at least for now. Rhylfang, is a dragon sized tarantula. I absolutely hate spiders in fantasy games, not just because I am an arachnophobe, but because they are some of the most over-exhausted enemy – right up there with those glorious sewer rats. You have a whole world to flesh out with interesting new breeds of monsters, but you choose giant spiders of various colours.

The main issue with her though is in the difficulty. As you wait for your A.I. lemmings to kill the newest wave of her minion spiderlings, she comes in with poison moves that will absolutely destroy you. Thing is, the moves don’t have to hit you. I was standing far enough away from the spout that it shouldn’t have damaged me, yet there I was, falling on the floor as my character fainted. The boss isn’t even the final boss and people all over the community admit that it is the hardest thing in the game. Throwing that to characters who haven’t even broken into double digits seems a bit too harsh if you ask me.

But before you think that Sword Coast Legends is the worst thing since teenage angst films, let me tell you about some of the great things about this game. Because you see, it’s not all bad. Much of it in fact is fairly good.

The first is the Dungeon Crawl mode. This is a mode that allows you to fight through procedurally generated dungeons, bringing you loot from quests that you specify. It is great for a little party venture with friends, but it is a little saddening that I can’t seem to bring any of the A.I. companions from the story into the crawl. It would allow me to help them level up and maybe solve some of the problems with fights being far too difficult for me to complete. The Dungeon Crawl mode also lets you fight for weapons, armor, or trinkets, which is great if you’re looking for replacements to your gear. The best perk to this is the fact that you can change all the little details about the dungeon; adding new levels and changing the type of enemies just allows for a great deal of fun. A further fleshed out version of this would be an even greater idea, and I hope that n-space, the development studio, might look into adding the ability to allow A.I. companions, and maybe even allow you to set buffs to specific characters that will affect the gained XP and gold.

Another positive is the presence of the Tactical Mode. This was my favourite mechanic that I saw in Dragon Age: Inquisition and was elated to see its transition into this game. Tactical Mode allows you to issue commands during a paused state of the game, letting you build a strategic gameplay method that may help you survive the most difficult of battles. The only issue with the mode is the fact that the A.I. ignores all of the commands that they are told, so you lose the ability to decide their placement and targets. The mode does however allow you to quickly get consumables out to your companions and turn the tide of the battle fairly swiftly.

A further upside to Sword Coast Legends is the fact that the Rage of Demons content comes for free. Taking you deep into the Underdark, this brings a swathe of new story content, a new playable race and a whole new class to get acquainted with. Let it be known that a free expansion pack is a wonderful idea, and it just adds to the amount of content that you get for $20/£16.

The final perk is the Dungeon Master mode – something which caters for a group of friends. The DM can spawn monsters, loot and all sorts of stuff to create modules that other players can enjoy. You can create your own campaigns and put your friends through absolute torment as they pass through the Land of Candy, or some other terrifying named place.

All-in-all, Sword Coast Legends is great. It does have its fair share of problems, but I feel that it pays back on some of them by having an awesome Dungeon Crawl and multiplayer mode that lets one of your friends be the Dungeon Master. Plus, you get a free expansion to access that adds onto the exceptionally large amount of gameplay already in place. Put that with the different races and alignments for each character, and you end up with a tremendously large set of replays that will be good fun for everybody.