Players who are familiar with CRPG should know that the Forgotten Realms is a worldview setting in Dungeons & Dragons, and this setting has not been applied to a standalone game for a while, and the last famous work to use the Forgotten Kingdoms setting was 2011's Dungeons & Dragons: Dagger Valley. And in 2015, there was finally another work, which once again brought the familiar Neverwinter City and Baldur's Gate to veteran RPG players, that is, this "Legend of Sword Bay".
The fact that the Forgotten Realm, which I haven't seen for a long time, is finally back in a computer game is undoubtedly a joy for players who love CRPGs. It's a pity that "Legend of Sword Bay" did not follow the orthodox fifth edition of D&D rules. Instead, it's been changed and simplified a lot, and if you're expecting to play a game with authentic and rigorous D&D rules, you'll be disappointed when you play Legend of Sword Bay.
The president of N-Space, the production team of "Legend of Sword Bay", is Dan Tudge, who once participated in the position of director of Dragon Age, so this work has a certain degree of similarity with Dragon Age. For example, the camp of teammates and partners, the design of the large map with a certain chance of encountering battles, as well as the dark and fantasy art style, will be able to smoothly integrate players who love medieval magic.
On the whole, "The Legend of Sword Bay" is like a bird's-eye view version of the Dragon Century, but the style is not as strong as the Dragon Century, lacking eye-catching pictures and violent aesthetics. When you first create characters, you can still make players feel the ambition of this game, with a variety of races and class combinations, and then choose warriors, paladins, thieves, mages, and archers from humans, dwarves, elves and other races. Each race will also have almost no subspecies, and even the background of the main character, which will affect the details of the dialogue in the storyline to a greater or lesser extent.
Before you can play Legend of Sword Bay, you have to put aside all the requirements for the rules of Dungeons & Dragons and embrace it from a fresh perspective. To put it simply, "Legend of Sword Bay" has moved towards a more accelerated and simple gameplay in order to smoothly cater to the tastes of today's players, and on the whole, the part of interaction and dialogue with NPCs is very shallow and light, and the focus is completely on the combat part, after all, combat can quickly attract ordinary players.
In terms of magic and skills, it has also become a skill tree design, and the attributes and equipment are also very clear at a glance, which means that the degree of "Legend of Sword Bay" is more like an online game. Of course, it also has advantages to be more like an online game, and for players like office workers who have less time and need to quickly get started and integrate into the game, it is quite suitable for the work "Legend of Sword Bay".
After all, previous Dungeons & Dragons rule games such as Baldur's Gate and Exotic Requiem have a high threshold for getting started, with huge and complex designs and inhumane operations, and it will take hours to solve the puzzle that makes people want to break their heads. But when it comes to "Legend of Sword Bay", if players choose the simple mode to start playing, they will hardly encounter any bottlenecks, the task guidance prompts are very clear, and the interface design is similar to that of online games.
At the beginning of the plot, the protagonist's adventure in the dream world is used to present intimate novice teaching, even if you don't have any experience and cognition of TRPG, you can quickly get started with the game. Although Legend of Sword Bay lacks depth, it still has some more in-depth content than the average RPG, such as the fact that you must cultivate eighteen martial arts masters in a four-person squad in order to successfully navigate the game's unfathomable environments.
Walking in dungeons often requires detecting traps, and thieves who are good at picking locks are also indispensable, and the various attributes of the protagonist will also affect the persuasiveness of negotiating conversations with NPCs. Many of the side quests are also not unilinear and have a clear choice between good and evil.
"Legend of Sword Bay" is like a combination of "Baldur's Gate" and "Diablo", but in terms of depth, story surname, dialogue writing, and replayability, it is not as smooth and gorgeous as Diablo. Equipment props loot is not attractive, resulting in this work stuck in a more embarrassing, to be good or bad mediocre realm.
And the advantage is that it still has a considerable degree of refinement, such as the paper doll cross-dressing system, the whole dubbing and the composer Inon Zur, who is good at the majestic symphony. The biggest drawback is that it is not well optimized, the conversion map is slow to read, and there is only one save slot. For an RPG with multiple story lines, a single save slot design is too petty. However, with these insufficient details, "Legend of Sword Bay" is still worth playing. But it's a pity that even Steam removed this work, and it was completely cold in the end.