If there's one thing the computer game industry needs, it's a return of the single-player RPG. With the giant shift towards MMORPG, fans of the traditional RPG have been forced to go console or give up the ghost. A few old school role-players may recognize the name D.W. Bradley. He is the man responsible for the Might and Magic series and he directed several Wizardry titles. Not a bad track record, lending towards some high hopes for Dungeon Lords. Is it the title to breathe life back into PC single-player RPGs?

Sadly, the genre will have to stay on the incubator. Dungeon Lords is a false positive at best. We could have had a great game on our hands if only Heuristic Park had done some play testing and either stuck to a few more or a few less genre standards.

DL tried to accomplish many things. It succeeded at few. Among the stack of failed possibilities are the punishment and reward system, the animation, the level design, and the shooter-like controls, and all could have made a very interesting, if not too traditional, game. Each of these fails miserably in its own way, however, leaving players begging for their old familiars.

Bradley apparently believes that character death should be taken more harshly than normal, causing characters to lose substantial amounts of several (sometimes all) of their primary statistics. Thus, if you cannot defeat something the first try, each successive try you will face an even harder challenge. One could take this as a tolerable penalty if they were to use the quick-save and quick-load options to their advantage, but these features were apparently forgotten in Heuristic Park's mad dash to be original.

The graphics are a surprising reprieve. The game is great to look at. Character models, lighting effects, and special effects (spells and traps, mostly) look amazing. The textures leave little to ask for, and the environments are expansive to the point it's almost a downside. The environments can become problematic in dungeons and indoors, however. Much of the level design is repetitive to a fault, and with no map this makes for some confusing travel.

Character customization, like most of the game, is very hit-and-miss. Character creation leaves a horrid aftertaste; it offers no appearance customization beyond race and sex. After creation, however, the character building is very well done. It offers a class as usual, but you also pick where to spend each point of experience, thus choosing to get better with a type of weapon or in any attribute. This expenditure can happen any time your character gains experience, not just when he or she levels.

The game begins with a video of two mages battling with the use of some fireballs and a few other traditional fantasy spells. The video doesn't look very good, but it does promise a couple things: cool magic effects and some story as to why the mages are fighting. Only half of this is fulfilled. Magic in the game is pretty good looking, and includes a fairly wide range of spells, but the story in the game (what little there is) has little to do with two battling mages. Basically, Dungeon Lords involves a hero trying to go to Fargrove, but the whole town closes its gates to everyone, even those wishing to help, until they find the king's missing daughter. Of course, because a random messenger near your starting point has told you someone in the city wishes to speak to you, and you have nothing better to do, you simply must get inside the city. So, what's there to do but take the advice of a goblin that tries to mug you and sneak into the city by means of a long dungeon?

What's the verdict? A game that could have been an amazing return of the CRPG, due to a severe lack of polish and some big issues with bugs and failed ventures, becomes premature bargain bin stuffing. Dungeon Lords tries hard, but in all the wrong ways. Only RPG fans with a supreme craving for min/maxing have any hope of enjoyment here.