Before I start this review I just want to say I am reviewing this as a video game, not a d&d game. So if you re looking for an in depth review on how well this translates in a D&D context I am sorry, I don't have much for ya. Now to begin!

This game is actually a very good game, it is simply mauled by some bad choices that will probably annoy you over time such as

- Non skippable cutscenes and dialogue.
- Having to listen to that non skippable dialogue over and over if you lose to a boss.
- Not all skill trees are available from the beginning.
- One or two side quests in the game can glitch and become uncompleteable.
- Your games are open to public by default and if you don't notice that a player can jump in while you are getting an xp reward and block your character from getting it.
- Leveling takes a very long time so If you don't use a character for a while there is a good chance they aren't catching back up for the rest of the game.
- Companion ai will sometimes neglect some of their skills and this can be exceptionally frustrating when its the healer.
- All abilities in the game have fairly long cooldowns, normally a minute or higher

However, despite these flaws, I really found this to be a gem of a game (just save often). In my opinion this plays like a much more refined and less clunky dragon age origins. It does a lot of great things other similar games just don't do as well, such as

- Giving you a ton of abilities and skills that are all unique and interesting.
- Giving you several options on how to use your classes ( I have a dual wielding tank that works!)
- Avoiding boring fetch quests!
- Making each quest feel meaningful.
- Giving you options for how to complete quests (ponying up some coin to save time in some cases)
- Making most characters in the game world feel unique and alive.
- Making all encounters challenging enough to possibly kill you if you mess up, but not so hard they are enfuriating.
- Making gold a resource that is valuable instead of something that is in endless supply.

This truly is a great game that does a ton of stuff well and is just an all around great party based rpg. However I can certainly see how some of the negatives can have people pulling their hair out. If you have any sort of patience then I highly recommend it. You can't beat it, especially for $20.

90% of the negative reviews are people complaining this isn't D&D, so if you are looking for the most hardcore D&D experience then maybe skip this one (and play it on a board, no offense guys, but c'mon).

Another 5% are people complaining this isn't a $40 game and this hasn't been $40 bucks for a while so another moot point.

If you are just looking for a solid game, weigh my points above, and if the negatives don't sound like they will drive you insane, pick this up.

No strategy, no risk, no interest.

I wanted to like this game. I really tried, but in the end, it was a disappointment. If you want a D&D-style game, buy Pillars of Eternity -- it's superior to Sword Coast Legend in every way.

First, SCL is not really D&D, the mechanics are all wrong. First, all abilities are cooldown-based. Additionally, the cool downs are so long, that only in the very longest of battles (of which I have had less than 5), you can use your abilities only once. This means that a wizard will launch all of his most powerful spells at the beginning of the battle, and then has to sit out the rest of fight, throwing cantrips from long range. There is no strategy, and no skill in preparing particular spells.

Worse yet, your enemies don't follow the D&D mechanics like your characters do. While your characters deal damage and have HP in accordance (roughly) with D&D rules, your enemies have MASSIVE hitpoints, and do little damage. This means that after your wizard launches all his spells at the beginning of combat, your enemies are hardly damaged at all. Every battle, therefore, becomes a war of attrition. Your melee fighters line up and slowly, ever so slowly, beat down the enemies' massive hitpoints. Every battle is a sure victory provided you have enough potions or healing spells to keep your people on their feet. No strategy, no tactics, no risk, and no interest.

Third, there is so much magical loot none of it feels special. Kill a goblin? Magical loot. Find a treasure chest sitting randomly in the middle of the forest? Magical loot. Break open a barrel on the side of the road in the Luskan slums? Magical loot. It's too much.

Fourth, your party members are useful in combat only. In Pillars of Eternity, one of the best things about the game were the text-based cutaways where you solved problems using your entire party's skills or attributes. Here, only your main character's attributes matter for solving problems. Here's one mind-numblingly aggravating example: I needed to open a vine-covered trap door. My character, a wizard, has low strength and failed to pull the vines off. My party member, a fighter with massive strength, could not be used to pull the vines. Additionally, despite knowing spells like fireball and disintigration, my wizard was not given the option to use those skills to remove the vines.

Fifth, you have very few abilities. A wizard does not have access to any spell he finds. Instead, he gets certain skill trees, each one of which has no more than 4 or 5 spells. As you level up, you simply unlock a new tier of the same spell that does slightly more damage. For instance, at 5th level you can get fireball. At your next level, you get fireball 2, which does slightly more damage. It is followed by fireball 3. All the spells work this way. Consequently, you will have, at most, about 15 unique spells.

Finally, the main plot is not particularly interesting, the characters don't captivate, and the sidequests are obnoxious. SCL's biggest failure is its mechanics, but a close second is its failure to pull you into the D&D universe and keep you interested.

In sum, although I am a huge fan of D&D and CRPGs, I could not bring myself to like this game. Again, if you want a good D&D-style CRPG, buy Pillars of Eternity. There is nothing this game offers that Pillars doesn't do better.

First off, like many people, my time was spent in the headstart version.

This is an interesting game to review, since it really should be looked at from two very seperate angles.

The first is as a video game itself. It is a pretty standard isometric dungeon crawler. You can make a character, level them up and make them stronger with skill points you place in skill trees. You find better and better loot to make your character stronger to take on harder dungeons.
The DM mode is sort of an interesting mechanic as it allows you to play with and sort of "against" the people playing. There is sort of a balancing act to be done as you play, and the video demonstrations N-Space has provided of the DM mode is pretty accurate. The game also offers some very basic tools to create a campaign for players, but it really comes down to make one of 3 kinds of quests, and send them to a dungeon where the gameplay happens. There's very very little you can do as a DM in terms of acual scripting.

All in all, it's a relaitvely standard isometric dungeon crawler with a new mechanic of 4 + 1 players.


The second viewpoint of this game is that from the aspect of the pen and paper D&D player, and that is where the game earns its harshest critcism. This game bares very little in common in terms of gameplay to it's pen and paper cousin (or maybe estranged 5th cousin).
This game is fast paced with point and click with cooldowns. The characters have skill trees like most rpg characters do in video games. There's lots of magic loot to be found and tons of enemies to kill. If you've been playing the pnp version of D&D like I have, you'll notice right away that this sounds very little like the game you know and play, and you'd be right. A popular example is how Wizards work. They are your standard caster in basically any rpg, with skill trees of magic, totally lacking the ability to change out spells, and on the topic of spells, they do not work as they do in 5th edition either. Like most games, you get a spell like fireball. You put a skill point into it and you learn it. Next level, you get another skill point and unlock fireball 2. There is no up casting in this game, which is how 5th edition works. You simply learn more powerful versions of the same spell. There are no spell uses per day, and there is no resting. As stated before, it's all cooldown based.

I've seen numerous responses from the developers about how they worked with Wizards of the Coast and don't doubt that for a second. I'm sure they did, and while WotC may approve, most of the players, including myself, do not. For whatever reason, most of us were lead to believe this was going to be more or less a video game version of the pen and paper Dungeons and Dragons 5th edition. I've also read numerous times that "it's core is based on dnd 5e" and to that I would say this game is based on D&D 5e about as much as the movie "Patch Adams" was based on the life of the actual Hunter "Patch" Adams.

Sword Coast Legends is a pretty standard dungeon crawler wearing a D&D skin. From strictly a video game standpoint, it can be a fun game at times and could get a recommendation, but from my experience with the game, what I was lead to believe about it, and with my experience in playing tabletop D&D, I can not reccomend it. It is not what I wanted, and not what I expected. What really ruined this game for me was seeing the action based (not turn based) combat, cooldown system, and skill trees.

EDIT:

At the time of writing this edit, community packs 1 and 2 have been released. I am glad to see the changes they have implemented. I feel as a DM (my main focus at this point) my control over the creation of the campaign getting better, and I hope it doesn't stop here. I still would like to see more additions in terms of scripting (I like to prepare as much as I can before hand) and perhaps even the addition of dialogue trees to NPCs, which I believe is coming in the next update.

A new playable race is a welcome addition (I'm not the kind to complain about content given out for free), and I look forward to seeing what other races and perhaps classes will turn up in the future (and hopefully not too DLC crazy). If the trend continues, I definitely think this game will get its recommendations from a lot of people including myself, and it will be a hard earned one.

I gave this game a thumbs-down, but that is because this game's marketing made it a sort of bait-and-switch. The game itself isn't bad, but it's different than what you might expect. Read on to see if the game interests you because I will describe the game as it frankly is.

This game was carefully marketed to appeal to fans of classic CRPGs like Baldur's Gate and Planescape: Torment without revealing any specifics. In fact, many (including myself) were dissatisfied by the recent Pillars of Eternity and were looking for a good CRPG in this game.

Let me tell you up front: that CRPG successor is not this game. Period. Not even close.

What this game is instead, is a hack-and-slash dungeon crawler set in Forgotten Realms and with some inspiration lifted from 5th Edition rules. If I had to analogize the combat rules with actual D&D rules, I would have to say that it is closest to 4th Edition, but it seems obvious that they desiged the combat to flow quickly when played on a computer. I actually quite like the combat (although I loathe 4th on the table, I maintain that it would make a good computer game foundation with some good encounter and dungeon design). It is best described as a "more tactical" variant of hack-and-slash games like Diablo, or perhaps as a faster, streamlined version of the round-based combat in Baldur's Gate and Neverwinter Nights.

Combat flows well, and each class has a well-defined role in the fight. Fail at performing those roles, and the party falls apart and you all die. Rogues seem to be inhuman blenders, shredding everything in sight -- as long as they don't face the business end of a stiff breeze, which frequently comes their way due to their damage output. Wizards can easily leave your entire party unable to do anything, but their death comes just as quickly if not quicker. Fighters and Rangers can actually bully the casters with their chain spear attack ripped straight out of Mortal Kombat. This is the best part of the game and the one that most-resembles D&D; and the parts that don't are usually improvements, at least balance-wise. Oh yeah, and the music's pretty good too.

Unfortunately, the game is lacking in pretty much everything else. I will be honest and say that I played the single player campaign that came with the game for about 30 minutes before I got bored and started rolling random dungeon crawls. The game comes off as designed for pure combat because the dialogue tree is a sort of poor imitation of the robust dialogue systems in games like Planescape: Torment. Yet, bizarrely, the writing and quest-scripting teams seem to have missed this memo. One of the first quests in the game was literally nothing but talking to NPCs. A typical conversation with an NPC consists of the NPC complaining loudly about something, and then you get three dialogue options each of which are dumbly repeating segments of what they just said with a question mark added, like Solid Snake with ♥♥♥♥♥♥♥ Alzheimer's. Even Icewind Dale -- basically a spin-off of Baldur's Gate that focused mostly on combat, like this game -- had far, far superior character interaction.

And hey, wouldn't you know it, as soon as I did nothing but random dungeon crawls the game actually became fun. The AI seems decent, but a tad unreliable, so I decided to try some online crawls. This was the high point. Playing with a real party of other players is definitely what this game is designed for, first and foremost. And yes, I am sure it is not just the "fun with friends" effect, because these people were total strangers. I was playing a giant-killer Ranger and it felt great to be able to yank enemy casters over to me and slam dunk them with my greataxe, and keep my Rogue comrade alive with the occasional Goodberry. I'm in my element here; I love dungeon crawls and team-oriented hack-and-slash. If you like that kind of stuff, consider playing this game. I'm also a bit eager to try out DMing.

My biggest fear is that the content which seems to be "missing" from this game -- things that are present in D&D but not Sword Coast Legends -- will be sold to us a morsel at a time to nickel and dime us. Things like half-orcs, Barbarian, Monk, and Bard. Monsters like uhhh... ♥♥♥♥♥♥♥ DRAGONS? Yes. DRAGONS ARE NOT IN THE GAME! I am about 95% sure that it's going to show up as a cool new DLC for five bucks and then I'm probably going to stop playing this game. If they release it as big bundles or expansion packs, I'd be all right with that; I only paid thirty dollars for the base game after all. Here's hoping.

In short, I guess my conclusion is that you should wait before buying this game. If you like dungeon crawling, then you may very well like this game, but you should probably wait and see if they'll release free content or reasonably-bundled content later on. If you were hoping for a deep and content-rich CRPG with a gripping narrative or really anything besides combat, keep hoping.

This game is already one of my all time favorites and I'm not even finished with the story yet, much less delved into player-made dungeons or trying my hand at making my own campaigns.

Understand that many of the negative reviews you see stem from the fact that this game is not Neverwinter Nights 3, which is what a lot of Dungeons and Dragons fans wanted. This is it's own game, and I love it.

***As 1L1NC4 pointed out in a comment: The expectation of NWN3 or Baldurs Gate inspired goodness may very well be the fault of the marketing department. They did seem to go through some length to make videos / prerelease information seem like it might be just that. I wouldn't fault anyone for feeling fooled. In reference to the DM tools falling short of expectation, I personally do not feel like they did. I feel like the DM tools are fairly solid, but I can understand pen-and-paper DM's feeling shorted on the matter, since, with the limitations of GUI and such, there are far less options in-game than on paper.

The story so far has been intriguing, the gameplay is excellent (hardmode seems to be the most DnD like) and the choice of how you want to play is superb. For a fan of many of the Forgotten Realms novels like myself, the nostalgia of meeting some of your favorite characters and visiting places they visited is absolutely breathtaking.

I love this game and think I will spend many, many more hours in it. Is it for everyone? Probably not. If you're a Dungeons and Dragons fan that is looking for something new, or someone who loves a great story in a semi-turn based RPG, I'd suggest you give this one a try.

If you're at all interested in this game, !!!!!READ THIS!!!!

The "mixed" reviews for this game are because people thought they were going to play a **D&D 3.5** game. Note that specifically. This isn't Baldur's, Icewind, etc. This is D&D 4th/5th, but in digital form. For the folk that never played pen & paper, this means nothing to you. For the folk who do, that is another reason why the "mixed" reviews are here. It's all about expectations and perception. To keep it simple, here's the big difference in mechanics that you would notice (there are more, but it really does boil down to this): instead of resting every day to replenish your abilities/spells, you simply have all your abilities/spells at all times and they have cool downs to balance them out. That's it! This is the "mixed reviews" reason. Cool downs. A D&D game with cool downs on abilities/spells. This is not a bad thing! It's a super, super, super common concept in games these days that are getting "overwhelmingly positive" reviews. Think about it. The only difference? This one is labeled D&D, so the expectation is the clunky, old mechanics of 3rd edition. So please, know that small difference before you judge something with no time into the game, because you're a D&D fan and the concept of cool downs "ruined it" for you.

I've put close to 2 straight days into this game. Here's a quick run down of what is going on:

1) This is a D&D game. I've read countless "it's not D&D" comments. It's D&D plain and simple. It's a dungeon crawl game with high fantasty going on. The monster names & types, the concepts and many mechanics, and the overall storying telling experience *is* indeed very D&D. So yes, it's a D&D game. Just understand it's a 4th/5th edition D&D game and that doesn't mean ANYTHING to you, if you don't play the pen & paper, so again, all that means is this is a straight out of a book D&D game but with cool downs on spells, instead of a limited number and having to rest after each battle.

2) If you liked Neverwinter Nights 1, you will like this game. This is basically the sequal to Neverwinter Nights, instead of NWN2 which took on a whole new way to play with a different kind of game. This game has the same style of story telling as NWN, a lot of detail was put into the environment. A lot of detail went into the characters and how they interact and joke about. This game is not a happy trek through the forest. This game is actually very dark if you play into the story and reveal what's going on. This game is very dark. Diablo 1 dark. But playing through this game in story mode is literally like playing Neverwinter Nights 1. So again, if you enjoyed NWN, this game will work out great for you.

3) The most annoying thing about this game is "Loading...". You would think it wouldn't take long to transition, but just like all the previous D&D games in your past, you will suffer waiting for the loading screens to pass every time you travel. Just be prepared. You're already used to this.

4) Cool down system is much better than the old system. The old system of 3rd edition was broken. You know it. You loved it because it was broken. You all played a level 4 fighter, level 16 Cleric multi-class that wore heavy plate, stone skin, and dropped call lighting, lay on hands & harm every where you went and walked through the game solo like a demi-god. If you want that, go back to 3rd edition games and just replay them. This is not that game. 4th edition introduced the concept of skills that were used all the time, twice per encounter and once per day. If you played it, this was annoying. I didn't like it either. But this was a way to introduce cool downs to 4th. 5th cleaned up a bit. In the digital version, cool downs work because it's in seconds. Just like every other game you play. Your super spell can't be cast back to back, it has a cool down. You're already accustomed to this. The best part? You can get gear through the game that reduces cool downs by upwards of 70%. So you can be as broken as you want, just not starting out. But those crazy awesome spells you have that have 40s cool down? They're now 12s! That mega spell that has 240s cool down? Now only 72s. The game is much more balanced, and you have lots of skills/spells, so you will not have a moment of "nothing to do."

5) Party based strategy is king. This is not a "I solo the game" type where one super broken min/max character just takes the game. This is a game where you need a party and you need diversity. You also need more than one set of gear for each. The game is built around you planning and meta-gaming. You can even reset your character's abilities to rebuild later in the game if you want, because you want to meta-game a different direction. And you can always change who's in your party.

6) Items are great! You start the game with named items and you get really cool unique items right away when you play. No slumming it with junk "short swords" for hours on end just waiting to find a "+1" sword. You play an hour and immediately have some named weapon that does elemental damage and glows and stuff. This game is great if you like finding items. This is totally different from D&D games of the past, where you had to wait forever to get "good stuff." This game gives you good stuff right away, and awesome stuff later, etc. It scales with your level.

7) Routine but good story! It's not ground breaking or throwing a curve ball. It feels like a D&D play game story in a book. That's fine! That's what D&D was and still is. The story is pretty good. Interesting enough to want to know what's happening.

8) Comes with Demon's Rage expansion for free. More content.

9) Dungeon crawl lets you just play random dungeons with your characters to level them up. Then play other stuff with that character. This is a great way to play a build in action before starting the story and thinking you wanted something different. Awesome!

Good game. I recommend it if you actually played D&D and like D&D. If you're stuck on the idea of a D&D game only being Baldur's Gate, and you never even touched a d12 in your life, then you may not like this game. Or you might! Point is, try it, it's worth the $10~20 it is now.

Do you see the name 'Sword Coast'? Good.
Now, I want you to not think about 'D&D' while looking at the name 'Sword Coast'.

Hard, right? Maybe even impossible?
Don't worry. It was hard for me too, and I still have a hard time getting over the connection between those two names.

But the thing is:
If you have buddies and if you would enjoy having a jolly good RPG cooperative time, overlooking this connection will improve your experience significantly. I repeat: focusing on the fact that this isn't a D&D experience will jump greatly on how much you will enjoy this game.

Imagine Icewind Dale but centred on typical/average solid RPG mechanics rather than D&D.
Imagine Dragon Age but with cooperative gameplay.

'Sword Coast Legends' are these two things exactly and more. It is a straightforward, solid 4-man primarily dungeon-crawling RPG experience with minor dungeon master elements and mechanics. All things considered 'D&D' here are translated and streamlined into a more casual and straightforward; I repeat: translated and streamlined. 'Sword Coast Legends' is NOT a 'D&D' game but is still, in fact, good and rich.

Yes, 'Sword Coast Legends' is streamlined but solid and good, and I highly recommend it with friends who would be willing to overlook the lack of 'D&D' or who are of those who are just generally interested in jolly good RPG cooperative.

The gameplay is well-thought and straightforward; nothing complicated here to stimulate those craving for a hardcore experience. The graphics are beautiful. The audio is breathtaking. The story... Is exactly like how Icewind Dale did it (hahahaha); the story just throws at you random plots for you to have more reasons to confront danger and trouble for your RPG-ing needs.

This game is just that, but it's good at what it does. I will admit to that.

Originally, having read many of the negative reviews and hearing the hearsay and whatnot, I stayed far away from this game, thinking it was toxic to the new generation in its presentation of D&D; this is true as its marketing was misleading from what I heard (I tend to ignore marketing so I don't know to be exact the brunt of it). However, I decided, one day with friends, to give this game a try and erase my mind, looking at it in a blank slate.

Frankly, even as a fan of Icewind Dale, Neverwinter Nights, the recent Pillars of Eternity and all things beautiful, this game has a certain charm and is good as a game of its own turf.

There was at one point I giggled greatly, which I hadn't in quite a while, as this game replicates moments of Icewind Dale, Pillars of Eternity, Dungeon Siege and perhaps other dungeon crawlers that tickled my giblets while keeping it at an extreme level of simplicity.

Immediately after hours of having played this game (and, mind you, I have been playing this game on differing chances and not on this account), I bought this game for my account and, as even after purchase, I am looking forward for the many adventures presented to me by 'Sword Coast Legends'.

Yes, I recommend this game to anyone who would like to be just carefree and enjoy a RPG.
No, this isn't D&D.
No, this isn't a complex experience that will constantly keep you immersed.
No, it's not perfect nor lives up to expectation.
But I had a good time, my friends had a good time and I think you (among others) will too if you're willing to look away and give this game the chance of being apart from a powerful legacy (which being apart is what I think it wholely deserves) - not bringing it down by its setting's D&D background and so on.
Because it's still a good game and it still presents a good fun and, sometimes, challenging experience.

Recommended.

Initally, I was disappointed in Sword Coast Legends. The release seemed incomplete and rushed out the door. However, months later, I find my opinion changing.

Being a fan of D&D for many years and having ran a Neverwinter Nights server, I looked forward to the reimagining of old modules and my old gameworld. I was shocked to find the functionality of the DM Toolset wasn't half as developed as the Neverwinter Nights Toolset 'out of the box'.

Looking past these flaws however, and working with 'what I have', I dug deeper and was pleasantly surprised.

This is essentially Neverwinter Nights 3, and with a few more months of development, I can see this game being considered a worthy successor to the previous games. I have created and ran my own module and enjoyed several hours of roleplaying with various players across the globe.

It works. It maybe clunky in places, but it works. You can run and host fully developed adventures and modules just like a regular pen and paper session, however, those without a brain should not apply. It requires some thought, some planning. Drag and dropping random creatures into a random dungeon, with random encounters, swiftly becomes boring. Developed quests, plotlines and events, brings the game to life.

Compared to other releases branded by WOTC, such as D&D Online, or Neverwinter (MMO), I can honestly say, this is the most authentic D&D computer based experience I have found at this moment in time.

Are you a die-hard D&D fan? Do you want to roleplay, or create and run your own module? Then you will love this game.

Looking for a new roleplaying game to enjoy? Then a certain game with Pillars in it's title would probably serve you better.

Do I recommend this game? Yes I do, but only if you are interested in roleplaying and D&D as an experience in general.

Enjoy.

I really wanted to like this. I really tried. Sadly, it's a disappointing game that doesn't measure up to current cRPG's (Divinity, Pillars, etc) or the Dungeons & Dragons license it uses.

FYI I've played 40+ hours in the head starts. I waited until well into final release to give it a chance to improve on the issues I had with the game, but I'm sorry to say that it just fell flat.

What frustrates me more than anything is that for everything the game gets right, there are multiple negatives that drag it down. For example: the dungeon master mode can be a lot of fun, but with limited tools and options it starts to feel way too restrictive to provide anything unique or personal that a randomized dungeon can't offer.

Ok, *deep breath*, here we go:

• The environments at times can look beautiful, but characters, text, inventory look muddy, blurry and low-res. The colors are often bland, and the environment models are used repetitively.
  
• Quests are largely dumbed down, recycled RPG cliches and presented without connection to the larger story (find a missing girl, collect cave mushrooms for research, etc)
  
• Puzzles (and most quests) are straightforward and linear in how you approach them, and combat is unsatisfying and relies on cool-downs rather than turns/rounds. I feel like it's a perfect example of the game trying to walk the line between casual RPG and hardcore D&D simulation, but in doing so it never really comes together in a way that satisfies either.
  
• AI is awful. Companions get caught against invisible walls while moving, use long cool-down heal spells to heal 2hp during a fight instead of saving it, etc. You can turn AI tactics off, but you'll spend more time switching between characters to check cool-downs than actually doing anything significant. There is no ability queue.
  
• Co-op works. But it disables pausing, making it impossible to control character tactics unless you have a group of 4. But even then, long cool-downs on most abilities with no time to pause and strategize make it near impossible to coordinate any type of teamwork.

These are the major complaints, I have plenty of minor annoyances that I won't make you read through. This game feels like a step backward from some of the amazing cRPG's released in the last 2 years. It feels more like a simplified and dumbed down Neverwinter Nights 2, but that comparison still may be giving the game a little too much credit.

To sum it all up: Sword Coast Legends doesn't do anything that other games haven't already done better. I struggled to enjoy it, and ended up starting a new party in Icewind Dale: Enhanced Edition instead.

The first thing about Sword Coast Legends that impressed me was the haunting score, epic tracks that gave a real sense of adventure that you can expect from a fantasy world. No surprise, OST was made by Inon Zur.

But that, along with authentic atmosphere and somewhat interesting plot, is pretty much the only good things about SCL.

So, SCL was advertised as a classic RPG in the vein of DnD. However, what I actually got is a Diablo-ish title with real time w/ pause combat system and a lot of mainstream ARPGs' cliché. This is a game that caters to that kind of audience that prefers fast-paced action games with role-playing elements. I'm not saying that's bad thing, but if you put "Sword Coast" in your title, and claiming "complex RPG" and "tactical combat" in your description, you better deliver at least one signature part of the CRPG genre.

I'm currently swinging through the game at Hard mode, yet the game rarely gives me any challenge at all. First, enemies scale to your level, that means leveling is worthless since everything you face against levels up with you. With the combat system, there's no "strategic" element like positioning in Pillars of Eternity for example, you only need to choose which abilities you'll use and try to stay alive as long as possible. These require little to no tactic at all because nearly all battles in this game come down to popamole style where you eliminate each enemy in the same vein with no creative ways to dispatch them all. Sword Coast Legends also doesn't punish player from dying, because you can control a party member to stabilize a teammate in 5 seconds with no cost at all.

Control is awful, party members sometimes ignore my command and do whatever action that automatically set for them. For example, my wizard companion really likes to target an enemy from medium range, I tried to move him away but nope, his previous action is being executed, so he has to cast spell on that enemy then ran away, which risked him into getting in closed-combat. This also applies to special attacks, where my characters refuse to follow my command and attack enemies casually instead. Also, as sensitive as party members AI can be at times, sometimes they will ignore enemies and do nothing while teammates are struggling against another enemy until I manually control them, or sometimes 3 members move from point A to point B, but member #4 stands still at point A because somehow he ignore my team command.

Skill trees and stats... where am I supposed to start here, stats are pretty much the same things you expect from a standard RPG, but I wonder will they affect my characters drastically while the enemies scaling appears in this game. With skills, most of them boils down to tiers, higher tiers mean better skills in number, like this fire spell at level 1 deals 10 dmg and 20 dmg at level 2 for example. The game shows at least 4 or 5 trees for each classes, but most of the skills are pretty much uninspiring, not too different than those magical spells you always see in fantasy RPGs. With melee skills, I wonder whether they actually work, because when I click those icons, they start a cooldown, but I see no visual impact whatsoever.

Anything else? The mundane sidequests that made me feel like playing a MMO, from mundane to ridiculous ♥♥♥♥♥ like collecting mushroom, finding missing people or bringing a sword back to a guy. Pathfinding is sometimes buggy, attack animations are horrid, Dungeon Master mode is painfully simple, HUD is unresponsive especially in dialogues, dialogues only follow certain paths and rarely change the outcome, and why the hell the screen has to fade into black and then show the conversations? Talking about wasting time...

Sword Coast Legends feels like a game that didn't catch up at all, a title that if had been released 2 or 3 years ago might have been a decent hit that could be remembered as a part of the CRPG renaissance. But right now, it just feels like a game born in an inapproriate era where there are already titles that do everything better than it can. A game that played it too safe, and this legend should be forgotten for better or worse.