Advanced Dungeons & Dragons: Slayer (1994)

Preliminary: This honestly feels very Doom-like despite it being a first person dungeon crawler drawing straight from AD&D. I like how customizable the experience is. And on Easy, I liked how approachable my first dungeon was. I didn't make it to the boss, though, because the movement and graphics get disorienting quickly. Everything about this I like though: the menu/inventory, the map, the combat; it has to be my favorite of the early first person dungeon crawler attempts so far; but at best, it's just something I "like," not worthy of much more except recognition for pulling this off the best so far. Even better than the first Elder Scrolls or earlier Ultima Underworld imo, tho maybe due to the graphics/disorientation situation they're all quite equal.

Look: 7/10 I love the UI, but yeah, the Doom-esque graphics for some reason felt very jarring in this.

Sound: 7/10

Play: 7.5/10 A little boost for pulling it off well

Feel: 7.5/10 Again, a boost for standing out. And its customizability

Attachment: 7/10

Overall: 7.2/10

its tough to rank 3dO gsmes. this is my fav for the system, but its not by any means "good" it is however (with respect to thst era) okay.

Slayer looks and feels a littlr like a dungeon master initially. you roll character stats and seed a random level by typing a name for the dungeon (a fantastic premise) the game has a real lovely medieivalish MIDI soundtrack that is loopy and real chill. (This will probably remain my favorite 3do game for this reason, its a fantastic and unique score)

then the game becomes something that looks like kings field or hexen. overall the game looks alright and it looks quite good for console fps standards of this era... but, its as simple as bashing enemies and backpedalling, getting the timing down so as to not get hit. This leans it more towards a simplified FPS in terms of gameplay. There were many FPS games for 3do, and later we began to see more games that would explore concepts that would eventually become Open Worldish Dungeon Crawling, (but that's a bit before Slayer's time) Here we get what is a procedural generated slimmed down Dungeon Crawl, that retains the RPG mechanics by using stats. It's somewhat unqiue

its then a journey to the bottom of your random map, (floor ten i believe) to kill a random boss. (there are a few that can 'roll' for the dungeon) this also seems based on your map 'name'. there are at least three.

so all in all, its short, not ovrly comlicated and looks good for both the console and the genre of the era... it employs some nice concepts and has decent design, and the music is quite good. i cannot score the game higher though because plenty of better games on PC which existed then, and this games movements does lumber along a bit slowly. In many ways the gameplay is just passable, and while the randomization of the dungeons based on what name you give the dungeon (and can retrieve in same fashion if you want to tell someone to play a map, they could by typing in the name) this method of generation is very random and I had one map I played that I truly believe was bugged and i couldnt get to the exit.

i would reccomend this to anyone looking into the system. its a decent enough game. Short, not hard and is a good look at role-playing games like this from the era that aren't overwhelming with huge difficulty spikes or learning curves.