I’ve recently been playing a game on Xbox One called Dungeons 3.

Dungeons 3 is the third installment of the Dungeon franchise by Realmforge studios that came out in 2017. This game is a dungeon building game with added aspects of real time strategy.

You play as the Absolute evil who wishes to destroy all that is good and bright in the world. This latest title brings with it a new land to conquer and decimate with some new characters and enemies to boot. 

This is the first Dungeons game I have played, which is surprising because I have a lot of love for Dungeon Keeper One and Two that I still play to this day. Upon starting up this game I fell in love with the graphics. Everything is very crisp and clean, nothing to fancy. It looks similar to League of Legends and it ran smoothly on Xbox there was no drop in frame rate and no freezing or crashing.  

The story itself felt like I understood what was going on from the get go although I haven’t played any of the other games, the wacky narrator did a great job making the story funny and easy to follow, who voice i recognized in an instant as the same sarcastic narrator from Stanley parable and does not disappoint with the same sarcastic humor in this game. The story is pretty simple: destroy all that is good in an area and when you have, you move on to a new area, but the game does this in a smooth way it not just a case of well this area is done let move on. 

The game uses story in a way that flows well. For example, although you may have destroyed everything in the village you are currently playing, an army shows up that you have to flee from which leads you into the next area. The levels all have an objective that progresses the story too which kept me intrigued. Some games only give you the story after you finish a level but with there being little snippets of the story as you complete tasks I felt like I was working towards something.

The dungeon building is pretty standard: build a dungeon lair making sure it has everything your creatures need. However, the fact that they haven’t messed with this mechanic is what makes it great, you get to choose how you want you want dungeon to look how big rooms are and where they are situated in the lair my only disappointment is you don’t have the ability to rotate your dungeon 360 degrees, instead, i seem to be on a spring. You can rotate slightly to the left or right but then it goes back to is original position! I can understand that it helps with orientation. You know where everything is but I personally like the ability to rotate my dungeon fully.

Now the RTS part of this game was not something I would do personally but it surprisingly worked. It added some depth to the game making sure you have enough creatures to not only defend your lair from attacks but have enough for you to venture on to the surface and attack points on your map that pose a threat. In Dungeon Keeper you only had to defend and all enemies were underground and only posed a threat when you dug deep enough to find them or you stumbled upon a portal but to actually have to venture out to clear the surface of enemies was completely new to me. That’s not all, they also have creatures such as spiders and dragons that you uncover as you build your dungeon that will attack your heart; you really have to think about how to use the creatures you have!

In all honesty playing with a controller was something of a new experience as I’ve always played these types of games on PC but it was easy to get used to, they have mapped the buttons well for consoles. My preference will always be PC but I have nothing bad to say about the controls on console after about 5 minutes of playing i knew where everything was.

Overall this game is a joy to play and I intend to complete it and also to go and play the previous titles in the franchise. The game runs smoothly and doesn’t feel repetitive. I would recommend this game to anyone ,whether they have experience with micro managing games or not, for both console and PC.

8/10