Doom & Destiny Review (Video)

At its core, Doom & Destiny, is an oldschool RPG mixed with a few modern-day conventions and supported by what I felt was an overall excellent presentation.  

Doom & Destiny is our very first video review to use our new Gamer Category Review System. In short, we’ve created several categories that we feel capture the unique play-style preferences we all have as gamers. We then use these categories to tell you what you may or may not like about a particular game.

In general, I felt Doom & Destiny catered very heavily to 3 of our categories, gave an honorable mention to 1 and fell short in 2 others.

What type of gamers will like Doom & Destiny?

Bookworms  – Bookworms are the type of gamers who love a great story. If that’s you, I highly recommend you give Doom & Destiny a go. Ficus and crew put a lot of effort into writing and delivering what I felt was an excellent satire of just about every RPG cliche ever made. 

Doom & Destiny is an obvious play on the Dungeons & Dragons franchise except that it’s absolutely not meant to be taken seriously. It gives us a refreshing break from the overdone friends-come-together-to-save-world scenario. Where most game stories fail at adding humor only to come off as corny or contrived, I believe Doom & Destiny succeeds with their blatantly sarcastic approach.

The banter between the characters is excellent. Some of the jokes are crude and sometimes the game tries too hard to be funny, but overall the sarcastic tone is enjoyable. While poking fun, the story also pays homage to the old school in ways that I don’t want to spoil in this review (Just be sure not to pass up the opportunity you get early in the game to check out the Bright Warrior Museum). 

On the negative side, be aware that there are several spelling and grammar errors in the text. There's never a time where this ruins the plot because you can infer what's meant by the context, but for a game that relies this heavily on the story, it is definitely noticeable.

Explorers  – Explorers ultimately love freedom and want to experience the world and plot at their discretion. Doom & Destiny caters very well to explorers—mainly because it employs the famous world map that so many of us RPG fans love. Further, it doesn’t take long before the world map becomes available to you. If you venture out far enough you can find good loot, distant towns selling more advanced skills and much more powerful foes to help you develop your characters.

Visualists  – Next we have the Visualist category. As their name suggests, visualists love great visuals. Doom & Destiny is proof that graphics do not need to be photo-realistic to be beautiful. The graphics here are definitely old school, but they are well drawn. The use of color and light is outstanding as well. Something you don't typically see in western RPGs

Audiophile [Honorable Mention]  – As I’m sure you’ve guessed, Audiophiles are all about sound. Players looking for a dope soundtrack will find Doom & Destiny to have a mix of both excellent and passable tracks. This is no Shenmue or Chrono Cross in the sound department, but it's worth noting that a few songs may potentially bring joy to our audiophiles out there.

What type of gamers may be disappointed by Doom & Destiny?

Builders  – Builders love to customize and develop characters and other elements of their games. Bottom-line-up-front:  Doom & Destiny's character customization options are very limited. 

The game only allows you to put limited stat points per every level gained into the typical STR, DEX and INT (Charisma here) characteristics. The one plus worth mentioning is the game’s use of the GRIT characteristic. GRIT raises defense and critical hit % while also raising the amount of EXP you receive from each fight.

Outside of normal stat boosting, the game gives you access to skills for each character's class via shops. Money is plentiful, so there are no worries about not being able to acquire better skills. The challenge comes with how slow the game doles out the Power Points needed to activate these skills for your characters to use in battle.

Overall, customization in Doom & Destiny lacks depth.

Action Junkies  – It should go without saying that any game described as a tradition-style RPG is not really made for action junkies. At its core, D&D is still a classic, random encounter-driven turn-based combat affair. The faster pace of the turn-based combat in this game won't be enough to win over most action junkies. This game is clearly made for folks that want to sit back and enjoy a good story while they develop their characters.

Takeaways

+ Save Anywhere
+ Speedy Auto Battle System (Great for fighting lesser opponents later in the game)
+ Sidequests do not require backtracking to reap rewards
+ Free updates that add content, dungeons etc
+ Ending suggests a sequel or potentially more free content in the future
+15hours to complete everything

– Game lag seems to occur at random and fairly often. It effects what you see and hear
– Corrupted save files (4 save slots to counteract)

Verdict

I hope I’ve given you enough information to determine whether or not Doom & Destiny is right for you. I truly believe Bookworms and Explorers who are also RPG fans can't go wrong with this game. I personally loved it and have it at the top of my list for quality Xbox Indie Games. If you fall into our other categories, or if you are generally not a fan of RPGs, you can definitely afford to pass. If you’ve already played it, please leave us some commentary about your experience with the game. I