Dungeons 3 (2017)

I played this because I won it as a giveaway and I always play what I win.

This game was just so average. I though the moderator was entertaining, but the cheeky jokes were too over the top and the game play was just not great.

It wasn't a bad game. But it also wasn't good enough for me to want to play more.

~David.

I loved the original Bullfrog Dungeon Keeper game and had heard that Dungeons 3 was the closest approximation after the previous 2 didn't quite live up to their predecessor.

The opinions weren't wrong, there's a lot of different creatures and dungeon rooms to build to fill out your dungeon with all manner of nastiness. They gate the room unlocks at a decent clip so you aren't inundated right at the beginning, and you have enough time to play with some of the final rooms toward the end.

The campaign story was a little silly, and the cut scene art a little rough, but all in all I really enjoyed my time spent beating the game. I also loved the addition of the overworld RTS on top of the dungeon and trap building underground.

A solid game.

Intro

This is a modern version of Dungeon Keeper. You build a dungeon underground and have to defend against invading heroes. In the Dungeons series you also have to attack the surface. Gameplay consists of telling minions where to dig, building rooms, telling your army where to attack and picking upgrades.

The Good

It's easy to get into, offers a variety of options and has fun dialogue full of references.

The Bad

The dialogue in between missions is overly self-indulgent and you end up skipping parts because it takes forever.

The main problem is the gameplay. It's a mess. This is mostly because of the room system. You can build a room of whatever size or shape you want, but items in rooms require a certain amount of space and a lack of walls/doors reduces the efficiency of a room. The problem is that you don't really know how big a room you need, making it hard to plan ahead because you need a ton of different rooms.

Oh yeah, and that is before you factor in traps, some of which have to be activated manually. And the needs of units. And the upkeep of units. And the requirement to attack the surface. And picking upgrades while the game doesn't pause. It gets hectic, but not in a fun way. And the traps/tower defense aspect doesn't work well within this context.

On top of that, everything takes forever with little to show for it. You can't just build some fun traps to gruesomely murder enemies, you have to build this and that room first, and get this and that upgrade and this and that resource and before you know it you're an hour further along and still barely set up.

Conclusion

You might like it if you really liked Dungeon Keeper and have a ton of patience. Otherwise, you're better off playing a more conventional RTS or TD.