Tacking a loaded word like "legends" on the title of any game is a risky prospect, but Sword Coast Legends really shot itself in the foot. After all, it's set in the renowned Forgotten Realms universe of Dungeons & Dragons, the same one that spawned near-legendary cRPGs like Baldur's Gate II and Neverwinter Nights. And that's why it's such a letdown. It clearly knows the lore and it sprinkles its roughly 30-hour campaign with a cascade of in-jokes, but squanders that legacy on unfulfilling combat and a weak dungeon master mode.
I can't deny I enjoyed the overarching story, which follows a guild of adventurers as they try to find out why everyone's out to kill them. The voice acting, while serviceable, occasionally leaves an aftertaste reminiscent of a daytime soap opera with its unpolished delivery, and the repetitive kill 'n' fetch quests venture too frequently into cliché, but I nevertheless admired the way Sword Coast Legends sprinkles a bit of humor into its proceedings in stark contrast to the dour musings of a game like Pillars of Eternity.
As it turns out, that's not a good place to be. You can pause (unless disabled in multiplayer Dungeon Crawls, as it is by default), but the strategies you find in Sword Coast Legends are so simple that it's only necessary in tight spots. Abilities are few and chosen from short skill trees (with most of the branches merely amounting to more powerful versions of previous spells), and cooldowns are many. In the field, that leads to big spurts of violence from two or three abilities, followed by sloggy waits while the hero doles out tedious autoattacks in preparation for the next cooldown to finish. Sometimes the enemy's already dead by the time that happens. It's a setup that grows boring fast, and it doesn't help that some enemies have massive health pools that get even deeper on higher difficulties. In frustration, I eventually just cranked it down to Easy mode — not because it was hard, but because it was boring and I wanted it to end sooner.
The problem here is that there's not much you can do with it besides generate the same boring kill-and-fetch quests that make up the campaign. You can customize the look and actions of certain monsters, but it's always stuff you would have seen in the campaign proper. As a result, all the currently listed player-created dungeons have an unfortunate samey flavor. It's a problem that player-generated dungeons in Cryptic's D&D MMORPG Neverwinter struggle with as well, but at least there the missions have the benefit of fun combat and more customizable zones. I still remember some of Neverwinter's player dungeons fondly; I'm having trouble remembering specific details of those from Sword Coast Legends a mere eight hours after I last played one.
I can't deny I enjoyed the overarching story, which follows a guild of adventurers as they try to find out why everyone's out to kill them. The voice acting, while serviceable, occasionally leaves an aftertaste reminiscent of a daytime soap opera with its unpolished delivery, and the repetitive kill 'n' fetch quests venture too frequently into cliché, but I nevertheless admired the way Sword Coast Legends sprinkles a bit of humor into its proceedings in stark contrast to the dour musings of a game like Pillars of Eternity.
As it turns out, that's not a good place to be. You can pause (unless disabled in multiplayer Dungeon Crawls, as it is by default), but the strategies you find in Sword Coast Legends are so simple that it's only necessary in tight spots. Abilities are few and chosen from short skill trees (with most of the branches merely amounting to more powerful versions of previous spells), and cooldowns are many. In the field, that leads to big spurts of violence from two or three abilities, followed by sloggy waits while the hero doles out tedious autoattacks in preparation for the next cooldown to finish. Sometimes the enemy's already dead by the time that happens. It's a setup that grows boring fast, and it doesn't help that some enemies have massive health pools that get even deeper on higher difficulties. In frustration, I eventually just cranked it down to Easy mode — not because it was hard, but because it was boring and I wanted it to end sooner.
The problem here is that there's not much you can do with it besides generate the same boring kill-and-fetch quests that make up the campaign. You can customize the look and actions of certain monsters, but it's always stuff you would have seen in the campaign proper. As a result, all the currently listed player-created dungeons have an unfortunate samey flavor. It's a problem that player-generated dungeons in Cryptic's D&D MMORPG Neverwinter struggle with as well, but at least there the missions have the benefit of fun combat and more customizable zones. I still remember some of Neverwinter's player dungeons fondly; I'm having trouble remembering specific details of those from Sword Coast Legends a mere eight hours after I last played one.
Other annoyances include a default but changeable setting that makes characters constantly yell out things like "Okay!" with every movement, and occasional overlaps of on-screen interface elements that make it difficult to click on loot acceptance menus.
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