Thumbs down

[Mr Creosote]

#8200

I was quite looking forward to this game when it came out. It turned into a huge disappointment. Zero variety, every dungeon follows exactly the same steps. Ridiculous battles where you simply drop all your monsters onto one big pile. Useless 3D mode gimmick. It was the final nail in Molyneux’s coffin for me.

[Tijn]

#8201

Yeah, I don’t have many fond memories of it either from back in the day, and playing it now it seems pretty repetitive.

I’m hoping it will become more interesting later on, as you unlock more stuff, but idk. Especially the fact you can just win battles without really being involved at all feels very strange to me.

[Pix]

#8204

I’ve had completely the opposite experience going back to this. I’ve been totally addicted all of this last week and finished it last night. The levels became epic marathons which took me hours by the end. For me, this is possibly Bullfrog’s best game. It is repetitive to a degree I suppose but it never bothered me. Possibly it’s different enough from anything else I’ve played for it not to wear out it’s welcome. I can see where the criticism is coming from. I seem to the recall the sequel refined the experience to an extent forcing you to use possession at times and the like. If I get chance this month, I’ll play through that as well. I’m currently trying out Deeper Dungeons for the first time, which appears to be a very bare bones expansion pack with 14 extra levels where the difficulty level has gone through the roof.

I can’t say I used a lot of the spells. Possession can be useful depending on how you want to play, healing was very handy and the chicken spell was essential on the last level. That one is incredibly powerful in the right circumstances, I should have used it more often earlier. You can storm some of the levels using the creature transfer and a possessed level 10 horny if you want. There is a creature transfer hidden away on most of the levels which can make a big difference. I suppose it’s not the most tactical of games, especially until the later levels. This would probably bother true strategy gamers (I’m definitely not one of these). More time for game refinement may have helped but it’s still quite the technical achievement. All of these minions guiding themselves around, remembering your instructions and the like is still impressive on such old hardware to me.

I should say that I’ve not actually been playing the DOS version (sacrilege I know) and have been playing the Direct3D patched version instead.

[DJ_HiP]

#8205

I’ve been struggling with this game, enjoying it still, but after reading the manual and trying to get faster at deploying monsters I still fall to the enemy in each battle.

Is there a better tactic to advancing? I haven’t found a way to get monsters to go ‘find’ a battle, I drop them near and they simply walk back to the training room.

[Pix]

#8206

There is the call to arms spell which works within a shortish range. You can potentially keep recasting that to move the monsters towards a target. Or you can possess a monster and attack yourself. This only really works when you have a levelled up creature transferred from a previous level.

That said, my usual tactic is just to drop the monsters nearby. Imps always want to capture the ground so get one to capture as near as possible and sooner or later it will get attacked at which point pile in the monsters. You can build bridges to cross any water or lava gaps.

Levelling up your monsters is key, especially on hero levels. If you’re piling everything in and still losing you need to power up more first. The heroes will always be the same strength when you meet them no matter what so you can take your time levelling up as long as you have the cash. It gets trickier on later levels against other dungeon keepers as they will also be levelling up at the same time. There are occasions where a level becomes unwinnable if you don’t make a quick start but most of the time you’re still best off holding back until you have a well trained squad. Try to find some gems on the level if possible, set a horde of imps on them so you have a constant money supply.

Some of the monsters won’t train unless you drop them in a training room. Wizards & Dragons will head straight to the library to research. When you run out of things to research dump them all in a training room. Same with Bile Demons & workshops. Workshops aren’t a whole lot of use unless you are defending and want to build traps. I didn’t bother building them at all for many of the earlier levels.

One more tip, is that the game often hides bonuses on the map. Especially around the edges or at the ends of long impenetrable rock corridors. It can be worth digging around the sides of the map to find these. They will be carried back to your library by imps when found. When I beat a level I’d have a search around for a transfer creature if I hadn’t found one already. I must have used the same level 10 mistress in at least 10 levels in a row. Some of the levels have lots of increase level powerups hidden around which are seriously useful. As a rule hold these back for a bit as it’s much harder to train creatures to higher levels.

[Pix]

#8207

One other thought occurs. You probably already know this but in terms of deploying monsters quickly, you can pick them up from monsters tab on the left directly. You don’t need to find them on the map and you can see all the ones which aren’t fighting and select them. You can also grab monsters from the battle tab if you have it open which is great for saving anything outnumbered. You can cast spells on them from here also by casting it on the icons. So if you need to heal them or chicken an enemy, the battle tab is much easier to use than trying to click on the monster itself.

[Tijn]

#8208

I’ve read a few conflicting reviews so far, seems this game is quite divisive, one of those “you either love or hate it” it seems.

It does make me want to play more and see where it goes though!

[DJ_HiP]

#8209

I’ve used the ‘computer control’ option a few times, just to learn what it recommends, and I had noticed a few odd path choices (the search the perimiter one was one of those).

I have been pushing to level up the monsters, but hadn’t always pushed the wizards to train.

I have also read that I should put the Imps into the training room to get them up to level 3 as this improves their digging/mining speed.

I do use the selection from the Monsters tab, as it’s near impossible to select an individual monster when they are all training!

I’ll just have to keep path finding and trying to stumble upon lesser rooms I think so I don’t end up finding their main monster room and ending up with a huge 20 on 20 battle.

With the Call to Arms, does this have an area of effect? as I could not find anything in the manuals, and when I’ve used it no monsters seem to take any notice of it.

[Pix]

#8211

Call to arms does have an area effect and the monsters need to be quite close. You will end up with all in brawls when attacking another dungeon no matter what as a rule. The enemy dungeon keeper will usually pile all their monsters together and drop them wherever you are attacking. As a rule, the only thing that works for me is the C&C type tactics of building up an unstoppable force before attacking.

I started on Dungeon Keeper 2 last night and it attempts to address most of the issues that have been brought up here. When you possess a creature you can now group other enemies with you and lead them in an attack. You also power up the creature you possess making this sort of first person attack a viable tactic. If you drop creatures they are stunned and vulnerable for a while to discourage the tactic. The traps are also massively more effective. The game lost a lot of it’s charm in the move to full 3D if you ask me though. Especially the level select screen – the artwork on the original and how it changes as you progress was fantastic.

[Wesbat]

#8213

First time playing and I am enjoying it, mostly.

The limit of monsters you can pick up at once bugs me a little, it makes for tricky micro-management.

Currently on map 7 (Wishvale), just cannot get past those two lightning traps. They utterly decimate my imps. Guess I can just send in imps until the traps are exhausted.

For advancement I learned these useful tips – just my observations, don’t assume I know what I’m talking about 😉

– Don’t bother with beetles or flies. Drop them on the portal to remove them from play, saving resources for better fighting creatures.

– For a “crush your opponent” strategy: a large lair and training areas to start. Once a creature is level 4 build a small library and put it on research. Don’t bother with workshops.

– Monsters fight best when rested. When most are level 4 I move them to the Lair for a bit. Some will go back to train or research, I sell these areas to force them to rest.

– The Call to Arms spell is most useful for coordinating large groups. It costs nothing when cast on your own tiles. Cast it in the Lair to grab their attention, then cast it further away toward your battle-ground.

[Dreamkid]

#8217

I never knew about this game before I saw it listed on here. DOS always makes me think of games that predate like 1996 (probably because my house had switched to Windows in the middle of the ’90’s).

Yesterday, I tried the game for the first time yesterday (played only the first level) and watched Martijn’s VOD’s. It seemed pretty good for a game of its age — I actually forgot it was a ’90’s game at times while I was watching Martijn’s playthrough. I didn’t entirely know what I was doing — I don’t really gravitate towards games like this, but it’s seemed alright so far.

Do you guys know about Ancient DOS Games on youtube? He lists recommended DOSbox settings for every game he covers, and didn’t recommend playing this game through DOSbox due to I think the framerate. He did list that one setting as dynamic, though.

[TigerQuoll]

#8218

Haven’t quite made time to play this one yet this month, but from the posts I’m reading here I’m beginning to dread it just a little bit.

Sounds pretty typical of a Molyneux game – easy to bumble around on a surface level for ages, but full of obscure mechanics that make it really hard to figure out what the game actually wants you to do.
A lot of bullfrog games of this era have really cool and creative ideas at their core, but are too ambitious for their own good and don’t quite stick the landing.

Am I far off? I’m hoping I get a bit of time in the next week to actually give it a crack, and I’ll see how close my impression is!

[TigerQuoll]

#8224

So after finally getting a chance to play this game for a bit, I’m actually (slightly) pleasantly surprised.

I did initally have a moment of feeling like I had no idea what I was expected to do, but it seems like that was just the game glitching partway through the tutorial, and all I could do was tunnel around endlessly and make no progress.

After starting a new game, the tutorial actually ran properly and I beat the first two levels.
Everything people have said here is pretty true – there’s no real tactics, and some of the stuff you can do is just a waste of time. But I dunno… it’s still oddly fun to play.
I find the sound effects are a big part of this. They’re funny and weirdly satisfying, and just seem to make the gameplay loop come alive.

I’m not sure how much lasting appeal this game will have for me, but for now I’m finding it charming and oddly satisfying.

[fastwinstondoom]

#8227

I can understand the game feeling repetetive for some people but for me it is one of the greatest games ever made. Digging out a nicely symmetrical dungeon, stocking up on gold, training up creatures and beating up rival keepers / invading heroes just never gets old. The hidden stuff in the levels is also really satisfying to find and will definitely give you a leg up on your enemies.

[Mike]

#8237

Yeah, I’m having a good time revisiting the game too. It’s really satisfying building my dungeon and slowly expanding. The combat is less satisfying for me. Specific combinations of creatures not getting along is a clever idea at first but feels really tedious after a while.

[jdavid]

#8239

Here’s another positive reaction to playing this beloved game again. I didn’t get a chance to play it on initial release, as I never gave my aging 486 dx2 66 a chance on it. But, by the time its first anniversary of release hit, I was already hooked, having finally graduated to a Pentium system.

My only qualm with Dungeon Keeper, like so many of the Molyneux/Bullfrog/Lionhead strategy games, is that I always hated the “level” based progression. I hated that I could never feel attached to any creation in a Molyneux game, because once the level goals are met, it’s time to start again from scratch. I’d much rather have had a dungeon (or realm, hospital, theme park, etc., etc., etc.) that I could keep making better and more my own over time, something like a Simcity city or a Civilization empire. The Movies, I think, is the only Molyneux sim-style game that doesn’t uproot all your previous work every time you hit a milestone.

Still, doesn’t mean Molyneux didn’t eat up about as much of my time as Wright and Meier did, and Dungeon Keeper certainly holds a large share of that. Definitely one of my favorites of all time!

[UNDELETE]

#8264

I’m one of the ones who suggested this game and I’m so pleased it was chosen! I happened to be playing this in September (using Keeper FX for usability). I absolutely love this game. It has heaps of charm – the whole thing is soaked with the best Bullfrog humour and the art style is wonderful – it still looks great today. I also love the premise: laying waste to the good guys and ruining the beautiful, peaceful land is the reverse of most games from the era.
Another way this game reverses things is that rather than exploring land you make your own terrain by tunnelling-out the land, which is much more interesting than just revealing land covered by fog of war.
I agree with Pix – for me this is Bullfrog’s best game and surpasses Theme Hospital. I go back to both Dungeon Keeper and Theme Hospital periodically, but I would say I’ve had my best experiences with Dungeon Keeper in the past year.
I understand that it gets a bit repetitive, but for me that’s after 10-15 hours, which is longer than I manage to play most games for