Untold Legends: Dark Kingdom

The Untold Legends series has moved from the PSP to its bigger brother, the PS3, with Untold Legends: Dark Kingdom. So if you want to experience a fantasy multi-player hack n’ slash on your new PS3, then this is for you. Actually it’s the only one for you.

Set in the land of Dureth, Untold Legends: Dark Kingdom’s story is pure malice. Rebellion stalks the land so the King sends his elite warriors, the Dragon’s Shade, to put down the leaders and restore peace. As the Dragon’s Shade move about the Kingdom they find that a great darkness stalks the land and strange creatures, disguised in the armour of the Kingdom, are slaughtering helpless villagers. What’s more, it’s being carried out under the orders of the King himself. The Dragon Shard warriors take matters into their own hands and pledge to overthrow the King and restore peace to the land.

There are three characters to choose from for your adventure: Warrior, Scout and Mage. Unfortunately the gaming experience seems to be similar no matter which character you choose to play as. As usual, you gain experience from defeating enemies to gain levels, spells and skills - and you get loot. You also gain experience from doing the short puzzles that pop up from time to time on your journey.

If you’re expecting stunning graphics from Untold Legends: Dark Kingdom on your new PS3, you’ll be disappointed. There’s nothing here that isn’t already available on PS2. In fact it’s worse than some of the latest RPGs on the PS2. Loading times seemed to be somewhat long but we weren’t able to fully tell from the short time we had with the game; hopefully this will be remedied with the full release. One thing we did notice was that the sight distance is extremely short. There’ll be no gazing into the distance for a stunning view of places yet to visit in this game. Actually, the sight distance was so short that we regularly stumbled over objects in our path and monsters appeared seemingly out of nowhere, often catching us unprepared for combat.

Unfortunately Untold Legends: Dark Kingdom doesn’t seem to hold a lot of promise for the first RPG on the PS3, but we’ll reserve judgment until we get to play the full version ourselves. One thing we did notice though was that the camera seemed to have trouble being in the right place at the right time, often settling behind a wall during combat. Once again, we can only hope that this is fixed in the full game.

All-in-all this is an RPG that will appeal only to those that enjoy hack n’ slashers, and to those that are anxious to play their new PS3 no matter what. That The Elder Scrolls: Oblivion helped to sell hundreds of Xbox360s on its release in New Zealand is beyond doubt, but Untold Legends: Dark Kingdom isn’t going to be enticing many RPGers at all to fork over their $1,000+ for a new PS3.