Dungeons Of Edera - First Impressions - Diablo & Dark Souls Had A Baby

Howdy Gamers

I told myself I was going to try and avoid picking up any new games this summer as I still have quite a backlog of games I picked up this past year which I haven't played yet.

A few days ago I logged onto steam for the first time in a while and saw this rather intriguing title "Dungeons Of Edera"

The games description uses terms like "rouge-lite" "3rd person Diablo" and "Diablo meets Dark Souls" reading the description and watching the trailer I was pretty much sold right away.

The current price is £9.11 which is a saving of 20%,this price lasts until July 7th.

The developer and publisher is Monster Tooth Studios which seems to be a fairly new Indie development team.

So what exactly do we have here?

Lets start with character creation

You will notice on the bottom left we have options of which kind of combat style we want to start out with. For this character I am going with the wand wielding spellcaster.

The decisions me make here don't really limit us ,we can use any weapon and armour type regardless of class.

As we gain exp we can pick new spells from any skill tree to build pretty much any kind of character we want.

So the decision you make at character creation only really effects your play style for the first level.

When we make our first character we only have one race option, the Arbidum. Upon completing the first chapter of the game we unlock the other races,the Sufract which seem to be better suited to being warriors and the Wakara which are more suited to being magic users.

Everything else in the character creation is cosmetic, we have option's of what clothing we want to start with and how we look etc.

The first time we play we run through a quick tutorial which teaches us about combat. Its a fairly standard tale of bandits raiding the village ,killing our character's loved ones etc. The story is voice acted well and uses comic book style slides to help drive the narrative.

The tutorial is well done but for the sake of keeping the video length down I left it out of this video.

The games main hub is this town where we have vendor npcs, quest givers , crafting tables etc.

These shots show our house which is pretty much just used to store items

The death penalty in this game is harsher than most games. If you die in a dungeon you lose all your non equipped items and half of your gold.

To avoid losing valuable items we can place them in this stash box which can hold up to 800 items.

Lets have a look around our little town...

Just down the path a little from our house we can recruit companion's. For now I can only afford a basic cannon fodder recruit.

Ok we got us a companion lets go and see what the town leader wants us to do.

This is the main campaign quest giver. After completing this first quest side missions will become available on the town notice board.

We have the choice of 3 difficulty options. In easy mode we will only loot common gear. There is no real death penalty when playing on this difficulty setting.

Medium and Hard difficulties reward better exp, gold and loot but we will lose all unequipped items and half our gold on death.

Each dungeon is procedurally generated. On this first mission we need to collect 15 berries. The zone is populated with Goblins ,Orcs and at least one Ogre.

The first time I tried this mission I failed and lost the character I had made. I guess if you die before you complete this mission you need to make another character. This lead me to think this game has permadeath but if you complete this first mission you just revive back in the town when you die

As we leave the starting point we encounter a goblin...

Lets light him up with our Fireball attack!

As the Goblin dies an axe wielding Orc rushes towards us. I have no mana left to cast so we beat him down with a club.

This Ogre is a sort of mini boss...

I let my companion take the damage while I stand back and nuke with fireballs. The companion falls pretty fast but he gave me enough time to drain the Ogres health.

As the Ogre charges towards me he only has a small amount of health left.

A fireball to the chest and he's almost down...

He swings his giant club taking a huge amount of my health of but he opens himself up for a final attack.

A quick smash with the club and he's down...

We get a nice Chainmail Of The Lich for killing the Ogre. It adds some cold and fire damage to our weapon and improves our armour rating.

The chainmail gives our weapon a little particle effect sparkle and flames when we swing it.

Loot chests can be found while exploring...

The chests open with a satisfying explosion of coin and loot. This one gives us a shield which I choose not to equip as it would require me to unequip my wand and I would lose my fire ball spell.

These Plate Gauntlet's Of The Knight are a welcome addition tho...

Shield using Orcs are a little trickier to fight,we cant hit them with our fireballs.

We have to block his attacks or roll out of the way and attack from behind.

When he is open we go in for a flurry of fiery swings.

As he falls he drops Chainmail Of The Phoenix

With the Orc dead we are free to gather some berries.

The Chainmail Of The Phoenix gives some bonus exp so I decide to use that.

Finally we have enough berries to complete the quest.

We don't need to return to the quest giver to receive our reward, it is just given automatically.

At this point we can return to the town for a new quest or continue to explore this rather large environment for more exp and loot.

I chose to return to town. There is supposed to be a way to summon a town portal but I couldn't figure it out. Maybe its a spell that needs to be purchased.

What I found was if we choose the option to save and quit when we log back in we will appear in our house. Its not the most ideal way to return to town but it worked for now.

Now that we have completed the first mission the notice board is active.

We can now do side missions and bounty quests.

I choose the Feeling Parched Quest which takes me to a dungeon called Ashington Hold

Right at the start of the dungeon there is a chest with some very nice items.

We have an epic quality sword...

Or a Staff of the Snake which drastically improves our magic damage.

The Draining Sword Of Sorcery seems nice...

I decide to go with the Staff of the snake for its increased magic damage.

With this blue crystal adorned staff in hand I feel like a bad ass wizard, I cant wait to throw some fire balls.

Before we head into the dungeon we have 1 talent point to spend.There are 9 talent trees to pick from. Common abilities like increased mana etc , one handed melee abilities, fire magic ,two handed ,ranged , water magic ,dual wield , shamanism and blood magic.

This is probably the most interesting aspect of this game. The combat is fairly standard hack and slash action rpg combat but this huge talent system gives us a lot options to build whatever character we want and keeps things interesting.

For now I am focusing on fire magic , I choose Holy Fire so I have a healing ability.

Ok time to explore this dungeon. The goal here is to find 12 books.

Although the graphics here are kind of old skool they still look pretty good for an indie title.

Swinging this staff makes me feel like Gandalf... :)

The fireballs have pretty crazy range , spamming a bunch of them at your enemies in another room is pretty satisfying.

Another chest with some sexy loots.

This Silver Ring Of The Mage is pretty sweet for my casting build.

I got kind of careless with this shielded knight and died while cornered in this hallway.

We revive back in town. All the items I didn't equip are gone but I manage to hold on to my Staff of The Snake and Silver Ring of The Mage so it aint all bad. I guess this is why the game gives you so much loot early on, chances are your gonna die and lose alot of it.

I decide to call it a day for now, I have enough footage to make a decent first impression's post. Time to retire to the comforting candle lit glow of our house.

Overall I am really enjoying this title. Its like the developers took the best aspects of other games like Diablo ,Gothic and Dark Souls and combined them into a fun pick up and play hack and slash dungeon crawler that has enough depth in its skill system to keep me intrigued enough to want to keep playing.

Although the graphics are pretty simple they still look pretty good. The sound effects of battle are spell effects are really well done.

As you see from the post loot comes along pretty often much like in Diablo , this helps keep things exciting and lets you build your character the way you want early in the game.

I will make some other videos exploring this title as I learn more so far it gets 2 thumbs up from me and at the current sale price I would recommend picking it up if this seems like your kind of thing.