Tiresome and overly detailed. For hardcore D&D fans only.
User Rating: 5 | Dungeons & Dragons Tactics PSP
I used to be a big D&D fan when I was a kid, so when I played D&D Tactics I thought I knew what I was getting into. I was unprepared. The theme of the game follows the traditional D&D adventures that everyone who's played the game is aware of. What's tiresome is having to completely understand and play 5 characters at once. The beauty of tabletop D&D is that you really know YOUR character, and the other folks you play with know theirs. You know your own strengths and weaknesses inside and out. With this game, you must have the same level of knowledge about every character. Remembering who has what spells ready, what is the thief holding in her hand, what was I planning to do with that barbarian, etc. takes a lot of joy out of the game. Furthermore, the level of detail is amazing -- scrolls, rings, potions, armor. It's all there, but you have to control it for the entire party. It gets real tiring real fast.
The other major issue is the movement and controls. You must have each character go through two actions (typically a fight and a move) each round. With 5 characters to control, this gets painfully long. During one of the adventures, it took me nearly 20 minutes to dispatch a single skeleton! This kind of detail might charm hardcore D&D fans, but to the armchair/weekend player, it's just too much. Perhaps if the controls mimic's SOCOM Tactical Strike controls it wouldn't be so bad, or perhaps an auto-fight mode ("Hey Barbarian, just keep hacking until I tell you to stop!").
Intentions are good, but not good enough for this game. 
