Title Untold Legends: Dark Kingdom Date 02.18.2006 Genre Action/RPG Platform PlayStation 3 Developer Sony Online Entertainment Publisher Sony Online Entertainment

When I first bought my PlayStation 3, I was expecting quite a lot from this system, especially with Sony's hype machine at work. The first game I bought, Resistance: Fall of Man was an unmitigated success in my book. I was hoping that this would continue into the second game I was to play, but sadly this wasn't to be the case.
Untold Legends: Dark Kingdom is the story of a squad of elite warriors, all members of a group called the Dragon's Shade. While off, fighting wars in the name of their king, they learn of how things have gone horribly awry in their home kingdom. Returning home, they discover that their king has turned to darkness and now tortures his citizenry to power his fell magic. You will control either a fighter, mage or scout member of this squad and guide him on a quest to stop his liege from destroying his own kingdom.

The controls are pretty much what you expect for a game of this genre, feeling somewhat similar to the Baldur’s Gate: Dark Alliance games. The left analog stick controls your characters movement while the right stick controls your camera, zooming in and out or scrolling the camera around your character. The directional pad is used to scroll through your special attacks on the fly or to access your mini-map. You have a normal attack, a wide attack that hits in a large radius to fight groups of enemies with, an “Action” button (responsible for anything from picking up a rock to throw at a foe or opening a treasure chest) and a jump button.

The R-Triggers are used for defensive maneuvers, such as a block, which you can only do a certain amount of before your guard is broken, or a defensive roll. The roll is better against bosses, while the block button will help you against the normal hordes you fight. The L1 button gives you access to your list of special moves, much like you access your powers in the X-Men Legends and Justice League Heroes games. It's a familiar system, thankfully, and it takes very little getting used to if you have played any of these games.

Each character has a number of special moves that they may learn during the course of the adventure. Many of these seem to be functionally similar at first, but the later powers diverge yet more into being more unique. If nothing else, they look pretty enough in use. However, even the warrior can be fairly liberal with his magic attacks, as the enemies drop magic refill orbs often enough that it's usually not much of a problem. These attacks are either very good at crippling your foes for subsequent bashing or they do enough damage where they will decimate your enemies quite rapidly.

The controls are very restrictive in this game not giving you much leeway. This becomes frustrating when you're going head to head with a horde of foes, should you start swinging your weapon, you cannot change what direction you face mid-combo. It becomes a major nuisance when you're fighting. On the other hand, the camera controls too wildly, moving far too fast when you're trying to adjust it during a fight. You will usually end up swinging past the optimal viewpoint you were going for or putting the camera behind another obstruction. Also, everything you pass by, especially trees will obstruct your vision. These trees will be your worst enemies.

When you are hewing away at the hordes of enemies that the game throws at you, you will be given a variety of orbs with each enemy you kill. The red and blue orbs will refill your health or magic meters, much like the orbs you are given when defeating enemies in Marvel: Ultimate Alliance. The yellow orbs you can acquire, the essence orbs, are one of the few things I actually enjoyed quite a bit with this game. You can use this essence at save points for a variety of things: refilling health and magic, craft any sort of armor you want or purchase a variety of runes. You can add these runes to your weapon to provide a variety of special effects, be it the ability to see enemies on the mini-map or to add knock-back to your attacks.

The graphics are sub-par for the PS3, but they are passable. Comparing it to Champions of Norrath, a game three years old and for the last-generation system, Champions graphics come close to these, the difference being incredibly small. The cinematic cut scenes, which consist simply of stylistic drawn still frames, come off as chintzy and cheap, not something you spend six hundred dollars for. The Mage's and Scout's capes sure are pretty though. They flow very nicely and are all shiny, two things that get my attention.

The music is very bland and almost sounds like something out of a Disney movie. It tries to sound epic, but it honestly doesn't. To say nothing of how repetitive it gets and how quickly it gets that way. The voice acting is fairly good however. While it is of the standard “we must save the world” fare, the actors sound convincing for their roles. My only gripe with this was the mage, who sounds fairly young by his voice, but yet looks quite old by his character model. It's an odd mix that never sat well with me.

Dark Kingdom is an ungodly easy game, especially as the warrior and it's not exactly an adrenaline rush of a game. The game is slow and plodding, especially due to the long lad times, and it doesn't ever pick up. While it will take some time to beat, it was a struggle to force my way through the game simply because of getting bored with the game itself. The storyline isn't the worst ever but with the unmanageable camera and the bland gameplay the game is sub-par at best.

Pros
+ Non-stop button mashing to fight the enemy horde
+ A variety of runes to add into your weapons
+ Familiar control scheme

Cons
- None too interesting cut-scenes, repetitive gameplay
- Horrendous camera angle especially in two player mode
- Load time between stages is very long
- The controls are not responsive enough

Recommendation: Definitely rent this one. If you don't get bored with it for this short time, then you're a better man than I am.

Game Score

D

Reviewed By: Daniel Acabaa