Dungeons & Dragons: Chronicles of Mystara

The Beat ‘em up genre is something any arcade goer is familiar with. Who hasn’t played The Simpsons, or Final Fight? Then there’s Dungeons & Dragons, a board game that’s extremely niche, with passionate practitioners who love getting together to praise the ghost of Gary Gygax. Dungeons & Dragons: Chronicles Of Mystara is a Beat-’em-up that was released to arcades and the Sega Saturn in 1996. It is rated highly within its genre, even now, against alternatives like Scott Pilgrim vs. The World, and is set to get a release on XBLA. Mixing a familiar genre with a niche fantasy world, does this game do credit to either?

It becomes easy to see how a game like this, in an arcade, would goad players into rapidly inserting coins.

From the outset, there are some advantages you won’t find in other Beat ‘em ups. You have a choice of six playable characters. A standard fantasy cast ranging from the Dwarf, to the Thief, to the Paladin, and attacks vary from melee to range weapons, as well as magical attacks and stat boosters.

The characters are not entirely unique, though. There are melee and magic specialist classes, but then most characters can still use ranged weapons anyway. In other words you can focus on magic, melee, or a mix of the two, but these options can leave the muggle melee characters at a disadvantage, except for the fact that they’re the only ones that can block. It becomes easy to see how a game like this, in an arcade, would goad players into rapidly inserting coins. Thankfully, this version comes with unlimited continues, and believe me when I say that on your first play-through you will feel no shame in using them.

The character designs, on the other hand, are genuinely pleasing with characteristically bold and exciting character art from Capcom, the game’s developer. One of Rose’s outfits in Super Street Fighter IV is even based on the Thief character. The amount of variance in enemies is about average for a Beat ‘em up, and though the bosses look impressive, they tend to share attacks. All the flying bosses use the same wind attack to keep you at a distance, and at least two of the huge brawler bosses use the same teleport ability.

Still, the bosses that do have unique attacks as well as appearances are entertaining to battle, and the last boss is both challenging and terrifying in appearance, as any great fantasy villain ought to be. The problem with her is that you will have gotten used to spamming magical attacks which will be incapable of reaching her. So yeah, have fun with that.

The difficulty settings don’t alter based on how many people play, so you can get a lot of satisfaction from blazing through enemies with a team of buddies.

One thing that makes this game enjoyable is the replayability. There are multiple paths to take with different levels and bosses, and a good number of items you can collect, with each play-through registering new acquisitions on a cumulative list. One issue is that level lengths are inconsistent, and at times confusing. It also shares a traditional problem with Beat ‘em ups in that gameplay can get repetitive regardless of pleasing aesthetics, and this game doesn’t have enough variance to solve that. Like other games in the genre this can be solved by playing with friends. The difficulty settings don’t alter based on how many people play, so you can get a lot of satisfaction from blazing through enemies with a team of buddies.

One thing the game doesn’t do is make the world of Dungeons & Dragons appealing. I don’t expect a Beat ‘em up from the ’90s to have an amazing story, but what the game tries to give you through the occasional story captions just creates a bland and shallow tale which could easily belong to any other fantasy series. There’s a lot you have to take for granted, as well, like an army fighting with swords and spears but also inexplicably having canon mounted air ships. Having gone into the game with no knowledge of the world of D&D, I came out of it with what felt like even less. You spend no significant amount of time in any one place or with any memorable characters, leaving much of the world forgettable. The genre of the game doesn’t exactly lend itself to the traditional game of D&D either, so any fans who buy the game for the name alone will probably be disappointed.

Overall, I would say that Dungeons & Dragons: Chronicles Of Mystara deserves its reputation as a classic Beat ‘em up. It’s aged fairly well and is still fun to play, even stacking up positively against more modern alternatives. The original glitches have been fixed, and the quality of the game is good for a title of its time. If you love the Beat ‘em up genre then you will find that the artistic character design, variance in gameplay, and the chance for entertaining replays make this a refreshing choice.