Sword Coast Legends is a game set in the Dungeons & Dragons universe, which is the granddaddy of all things RPG. So if there are any modern-day games that can capture the essence of D&D and its pen and paper style of role-playing, then it ought to be this one. However, it does not; in fact, it fails in a lot of places by a lot of games, even those that are found in Kickstarter.
How Does Sword Coast Legends Fare?
Sword Coast Legends is solid enough, but it lacks that “wow” factor that most videogame manufacturers are vying for these days. As soon as you start a new game, you will be presented with the most basic of basic quests as it can basically be – gathering mushrooms. After that, it’s collecting lost goods, then you have to find two missing persons. After a series of nonchalant (or perhaps even boring) quests, the game will then throw you into more exciting quests such as killing boss-level monsters, or rescuing prisoners of cultists, or other more exciting quests.
However, the introduction is just agonizingly dragging for several hours. Sure there are some action involved such as fighting off goblins in caves and clearing monsters from ooze-riddled sewers, but there’s nothing more to offer other than those.
The Sword Coast Legends game favors more on quantity rather than quality. It gives you more quests to accomplish rather than giving you fewer, more difficult ones to complete. There are some fillers that tries to spark interests, such as there will be five packs of goblins that will always try to hunt you down while you’re questing. Furthermore, since the game IS based off Dungeons & Dragons, then it’s no surprise that you are going to explore dungeons, and this game has a lot of it, perhaps too many.
The game is even aware of this as at one point, there will be a dialogue that goes, “Let me guess: She’s holed up in one of three locations, and we have to figure out which one.” It feels like a running joke but the punch line is not even funny. No matter how much the game acknowledges its roots, it just doesn’t quite let up.
With subpar graphics and monotonous gameplay, Sword Coast Legends is not something you would want to have. This is unless, of course, you are a serious diehard fan of the D&D universe, and for the gamers that are not, you’re better off replaying your other games instead.