Monsters' Den: Book of Dread
My employer apparently studied up on how to make moonshine...anyway, 5th day in a row, down the hatch! Who's your Christmas hero?
Monsters' Den: Book of Dread is a turn-based RPG, my specialty. This is a vast improvement on the already great Monsters' Den. Now there's a shop, 2 new classes (Barbarian and Conjuror), more monsters, more items, an improved interface, and even a quest system! That is a whole lot of improvement.
For those that missed the first Monsters' Den, you didn?t miss much. The only story that game had was: "Go into the dungeon, kill a Big Bad". The story hasn't changed much. Point is: You don't need to play the original Monsters' Den, unless you want the badges associated with such.
The charm that got us with Monsters' Den is still here, just polished. It is a retro dungeon-crawler. You take a party of four, send them off into a dungeon that only is supposed to go on for 9-10 levels, but is actually infinite. It is bare-bones, but those bones have now been bleached to be made all shiny.
Oh, and there is now a Survival Mode, in addition to the two campaigns (Den of Corruption & Den of Terror), called The Fall of Tellunos. Basically, an enormous army of Monsters, Undead, Greenskins, Dwarves, and Cultists have burst out of their infinite dungeon to lay waste to a city called Tellunos. Uber up a party of four, and send them off to kill as many monsters as they can before they are eaten up. It is easily broken, but meh.
The total lack of story can be a bit irritating at times, the quest system feels a bit tacked on, parts of the gameplay feel a bit broken, some parts in general fall flat...But, screw that. This game does well as a whole, and it is still worth a play. My biggest criticism is that the game (I think) overstays its welcome once the story is over (what little of it there is, anyway). But, this isn?t necessarily something bad; it's just awkward for me. I?m sure plenty of those replay fetish gamers will definitely not mind, though.
I must make a confession. In no way do I think I can cover all of the awesome (if retro)
gameplay that Monsters' Den: Book of Dread is stuffed with in just a Ctrl+Tab review. Some of it is a bit broken, or a bit flat, but all in all it is just worth a play, ok? Maybe once we hit 2011 I can devote a full review to this game. (Yes, it deserves it.)
It isn't like I haven't done a full review before. What? You've never seen me do one before? I did a full review for this great game called Tiny Castle...that only two people read. Hmm, maybe that explains a lot. *sigh*
Oh, the picture? Meet the Ctrl+Tab adventuring party! With me as the Mage, plus the rest of the Ctrl+Tab group (once they figure out their classes), we are all destined to go on epic adventures and most likely save a...
Huh? Reaching my word limit? Well, that's just preposterous and sill-
