Dungeons & Dragons: Chronicles of Mystara Review

Thanks to the digital era of video gaming, we’ve seen a lot of game publishers re-release a ton of classic arcade games. Capcom has been the main gaming publisher releasing fun arcade games from the ’80s and ’90s. This time, they have released Dungeons & Dragons: Chronicles of Mystara. This is a collection that includes arcade classics Dungeons & Dragons: Shadow over Mystara and Dungeons & Dragons: Tower of Doom.

2D side scrollers were popular back in the 20th century, do people still care about them? Find out as we take a look at the HOTs and NOTs of Dungeons & Dragons: Chronicles of Mystara in our review.

Hot

Old-School Gameplay
Games from the ’90s were simple 2D video games that didn’t require much thought. Sure games of today are still fun to play, but the overall simplicity and accessibility is now gone. This isn’t the case with Dungeons & Dragons: Chronicles of Mystara because this is 2D gaming at its finest.

It plays like a 2D side scroller, although you are armed with lots of weapons and other items that you can use. It is very fun to play to just hack at a bunch of enemies that come your way. The controls are pretty simple too as most of the time you just need to walk forwards and press the A (X) button all of the time. Some might say this type of gameplay gets repetitive, but I never got bored of the combat in this game.

Two For The Price of One
Much like with Capcom’s other re-release offerings, you are actually getting two games for the price of one with Dungeons & Dragons: Chronicles of Mystara. One of them is 1993’s Dragons: Tower of Doom and the other is the 1996 sequel called Dungeons & Dragons: Shadow over Mystara. Both games are equally fun to play and are almost identical with one another. I would say though that Shadow over Mystara is more superior because it adds more characters and has a lot more items and skills for you to use.

A RPG 2D Side-Scroller
When it comes to 2D side-scrollers from the ’80s and ’90s, most of them were either platform games or straight-up action titles. For example in Final Fight, you choose your fighter and then you start beating up a bunch of people. It was a simple concept that worked well back in those days and nobody complained.

The great thing about Chronicles of Mystara however is that they tried to spice up the genre. They did this by adding some RPG elements to the gameplay. During the game, it allows you to choose alternate paths to take. You can either choose to go the long way, or the short way. I remember I opted to go the long hard way just to see what the huge Dragon looked like. I must say, it was worth it!

Another RPG element featured in these games is that you have items and skills that you can use too. Instead of being just a mindless hacking game, you can use magic and throwing projectiles to hurt your enemies. This is useful to use because some of the enemies in the game are weak against certain attacks. Trolls are weak against fire so throwing a grenade or fire magic spell will finish them off.

You don’t have to worry about running out of items either because you can visit the shop to stock up on supplies after a level is complete. In all, the RPG features really made this game stand out from other 2D side-scrollers.

4-Player Co-op
Probably the best feature of Dungeons & Dragons: Chronicles of Mystara is the fact that there’s 4-player co-op. Anyone and drop-in and drop-out at anytime so join in on the fun. This is like a prelude to the MMORPG genre since the internet wasn’t invented back then. Having said that, the internet exists now and you can cooperatively play with friends online now. If you don’t have extra controllers lying around, you can always find friends online to play with.