Before you even begin to think about adventuring, the first thing you need to do is make a party of characters, there are two ways to do this, you can either choose from a selection of pre-generated characters or you can make your own, which I personally would suggest. Making your own character is a fairly in depth affair, as well as allowing you to choose from a selection of different looks for your character you also must choose a class to play which include the Barbarian, Bard, Cleric, Druid, Fighter, Monk, Paladin, Ranger, Rogue, Sorcerer, and Wizard classes as well as the two new additions the Psion and Psychic Warrior.

As you might expect, the adventuring aspects have been largely castrated in favour of making the game combat focused, which suits the game�s turn-based nature quite well. Unfortunately the actual exploration is poorly handled as basic actions are needlessly drawn out by the constant need to hit �end turn� even when there�s nothing else going on. When you�re trying to keep your party roughly together and trade items between fights, especially with a full compliment of characters, the whole process becomes drawn out.

First off you need to understand that D&D; is already complex. The game consists of a range of damage modifiers, armour classes and base attack multipliers. (See, what I mean). So things will take some getting used to, and for that there are four tutorials that give you everything that you need to play the game. I might add that unless you�re a hard-die D&D; fan study these closely.

This spills over to the actual game. Navigating through the menus while in the actual game becomes a real chore, and in turn, adversely affects the pacing of the game. While most missions are relatively short, and you can save almost any time, dragging through the menus and the pacing of the action is very sluggish and can become very unappealing. Simply put, it can get really boring.

D&D; Tactics is mostly linear, although there are a few occasions where you get the chance to make a choice between a good or an evil mission, and your choice will affect your characters' alignment, which in turn affects which of the two endings you get. Things are pretty black and white, so you won't have to worry about choosing wrong; and in the few cases where you have multiple missions open at the same time and the choice isn't clear, it means you get to do both. There are even a few optional missions to net some nice experience and loot. One of these missions provided the game's biggest challenge for me and I ended up retrying it a few times.

D&D; Vault Screenshot of the Week!

This Screenshot is from Dungeons & Dragons: Tactics for the PsP



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D&D; Vault Screenshot of the Week!

This Screenshot is from Dungeons & Dragons: Tactics for the PsP



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The one complaint that most newcomers to the Dungeons and Dragons universe often levy against the game is based around the high level of detail and complexity with its rules. Off-hand proficiencies, encumbrance limits and armor class rankings frequently merge with saving throw die rolls and attack modifiers in a blur of statistics and numbers. What's more, most of these details are spread across multiple rulebooks, which can sometimes make finding the specific info you're looking for a massive process. Although it focuses upon the most recent and intricate ruleset for the game (the 3.5 rules that were created a few years ago), D&D;: Tactics does an incredible job of boiling down a large amount of information down onto one UMD. In fact, Kuju provides a glossary that covers most of the random details and obscure facts that you might not necessarily know anything about.

Not sure if your dwarf barbarian has enough strength to load up on goodies from that chest without buckling under the weight? Wondering if the armor you just snagged is better than your current get-up? Trying to decide what new feat to bestow upon the monk that just gained a level? You can either pore over text information hidden in three different places, or just wing it and find out hours later that you've irrevocably crippled your hero.

As opposed to most D&D; games in the past, you don't have a sort of free-roaming world. Instead, you'll move around to various points on a map in a totally new universe to D&D; fans (no Eberron or Forgotten Realms here, folks), with certain areas triggering an adventure. These adventures are, by far, the meat of the game � they will, more often than not, involve you beating down a ton of baddies as you move through a tactical map. If you've played Final Fantasy Tactics or Disgaea, this map style might be familiar to you. In addition, the game claims to fully adhere to the rules of Dungeons and Dragons 3.5, something that will make it more approachable to fans of the pen and paper game but, potentially, make it less approachable to those who haven't picked up a player's handbook before.

To start with, it has to be said that this is the game for the Hardcore RPG crowd. Unless your ready to knuckle down and learn how the D20 system works, you in for a tough time. This entails learning about flanking modifiers, attack rolls, initiative modifiers, movement and speed penalties, and encumbrance. Still, if you tough it out and learn about the game, there is a lot of fun to be had.

With its reductionist approach that strips a role-playing game down to the combat, a tactical-RPG makes a natural mate for the rule set-driven nature of D&D.; In this case, that happens to be version 3.5 of the pen-and-paper game. Whether you know the rules well already or not, it's easy to see their influence throughout. You'll swear there's a little guy in your PSP behind a Dungeon Master's screen, rolling dice and consulting charts at every turn. That includes watching a lot of attack swings miss early on, as your level 1 fighter desperately struggles to hit the broad side of a barn with his longsword.

On the other hand, party management is also one of the more frustrating aspects of the game. Each character has its own extensive character sheet, detailing every aspect of the character including skills, stat, abilities, and equipment. It can be a real chore digging through the menus trying to find any relevant information you may need to retrieve. Don't remember who picked up that shiny magic sword in the last adventure? Be prepared to spend a few minutes going through each character's inventory until you find it. The extensiveness of the skill set along with the weapon proficiencies is a real hindrance as well, as you navigate through menus trying to find out if this or that character has the martial proficiency to use certain weapons. It would have been a real benefit to be able to have a group loot menu, and a system to indicate if a character was proficient with a weapon or armor simply by highlighting it.

If you somehow manage to overlook interface, you'll find a very competent game that hardcore D&D; fans should enjoy. It's obvious the designers took the license seriously and tried to make one for the geeks. Graphics are well done, sound is varied, background music is suitably Enya'esque and even the PSP controls are put to good use. You can create character from scratch and take up to 6 pre-made characters on a long campaign, leveling up as you go. There's a story to be followed, but I wouldn't call it a strong plot or one that provokes much interest...it's generic in every sense.

The graphics are sub par to other RPG's I have played on the PSP. The menu system is probably the worst in this game, clunky and time consuming. When they say there is 40 or so hours of game play for this game they may have been correct. 10 hours of play and 30 hours of using the menu system.

D&D; Tactics tries hard to capture the elegance and tactical depth of the tabletop d20 rule system, but stumbles at almost every step. Unclear rules changes make the system difficult for experts; unclear rules presentations make it just as tough for newcomers. The interface makes combat feel like as slow a dance as the tabletop system's, where a few moments of combat might take a few real-life hours to resolve. Everywhere that D&D; Tactics needs to soar, in short, it slogs.