Dungeons & Dragons: Dark Alliance
Fantasy hack-and-slash that lacks one major feature
It's cold in Icewind Dale, so set yourself on fire.
© WIZARDS OF THE COAST
HACK- AND-SLASH CO-OP RPG
WHILE THE FORGOTTEN REALMS can be a very welcoming campaign setting—just see the sandy beaches of Baldur’s Gate III for more on that—there’s a part of it, Icewind Dale, that is inhospitable and practically repels adventurers. And yet they keep setting games there.
Dungeons and Dragons: Dark Alliance is a successor to the Baldur’s Gate: Dark Alliance games of the mid-’00s, rather than the Infinity Engine titles of a few years earlier. This means a hack-and-slash action-RPG rather than anything with too many dice-rolls behind the scenes, and a slip into a third-person viewpoint from the traditional top-down look.
Powered by Unreal 4, this is a game built with co-op in mind. That’s not to say you can’t solo it, but playing it on your own feels as though something is missing. And, sadly, the developers have fallen into the most common co-op trap: There’s no local option.