Dragonshard Preview

GameSpy has put together a two-page preview of Dragonshard, after getting some firsthand time with Atari and Liquid Entertainment’s upcoming Dungeons & Dragons RTS/RPG hybrid. Check it out:

Playing in the underground dungeon areas comes as a shock the first time. That’s because the feel of the game is extremely different. Rather than the fast-paced action up above, the underground world feels like a genuine RPG dungeon crawl. As soon as my party hit the underworld, I was amazed to see them line up like a traditional adventuring party, tanks in the front, spell casters to the rear, ranged fighters to the flanks. Even better, as I began to explore the underground, I noticed that they tended to remain in those positions. As long as I didn’t rush headlong into combat, my units tended to work really well together, with my archers targeting spellcasters and my healers working to keep my frontline fighters alive. I would also receive quests in the underground that were added to an easy-to-use quest log. In the case of this mission, I would need to recover the jeweled eyes of a lizard man shrine that had been stolen by a pair of elf thieves. I also had to wipe out a tribe of minotaurs and seize their shrine, which would give me a hit point bonus to units I built in the aboveground RTS portion of the game.