Forgotten Realms:
Demon Stone

Gaming legends Atari and Wizards of the Coast join forces for a Dungeons & Dragons-themed fighting experience

	Forgotten Realms: Demon Stone
	Atari
	Xbox, PC, PlayStation 2 (reviewed)
	MSRP: $49.95

Review by Jennifer Buckendorff

n official Dungeons & Dragons video game, Forgotten Realms: Demon Stone has all the bells and whistles of a fully licensed title. Characters such as Drizzt Do'Urden, the silver-haired drow, will be welcome and familiar to long-time dice-throwing fans.

In Demon Stone, you play three characters, toggling among them throughout the many battles. The first character you meet, a warrior named Rannek, is tortured by his memories of the massacre of the town of Nesme. During his travels, he frees an impish rogue named Zhai, part wood elf and part dark elf. Her stealth power (and impressive one-cut moves while hidden) quickly add to their combined attack arsenal. Rounding out the trio is the wizard Illius, once part of a clan of knights. As his sorcery powers began to shine, Illius became an outcast like Rannek and Zhai.

Michael Clark Duncan plays Ygorl, an evil humanoid locked in the Demon Stone. Also trapped in the Stone is the sibilant Cireka, general of the Githyanki. The kindly mage (and narrator) Khelben "Blackstaff" Arunsun—voiced by Patrick Stewart—created the Demon Stone to contain these two would-be dictators.

Enemy classes include orcs, trolls, spiders and archers. Many can easily be dispatched by Rannek, but some require Illius' long-range fireballs or Zhai's quick, acrobatic attacks. The game has 10 levels, ranging from the mossy grounds of the wood elves' camp to gleaming underground mines.

After each completed level, players can purchase more powerful moves, better defense and sturdier weapons or use the handy "auto-buy" function. You'll be able to buy all available powerups by the time you've finished the last level—the weapons aren't the customizable type you'll find in RPGs.

Repetition, thy name is Demon

Demon Stone comes to us from Stormfront Studios, the folks who created Lord of the Rings: The Two Towers. As anyone who played The Two Towers remembers, much of the game design required painful, carpal-tunnel-inducing repetition. The same holds true for Demon Stone.

As with The Two Towers, players must engage in bossfights that require a very specific set of actions—probably, in the designers' mind, a way to compensate for the very brief levels. In one dragon bossfight, you have to execute a series of attacks using each character in a certain order. If this sounds like a fun puzzle to you, you'll like this game. If it seems like a "gotcha," you won't enjoy being bounced back to the start of the level to do it all again.

And speaking of mid-level death, you'll see the same cutscenes again and again. (Mid-map saves are not possible.) With so much repetition, you'll get very familiar with the intricacies of the story and every single line of dialogue—whether you want to or not.

But the story, written by R.A. Salvatore, is one of the main draws of Demon Stone. With this in mind, I recommend watching the unlockable journal entries and other scenes after each completed level—it helps fill in the blanks. Although the game makers took the cheap route, using Ken-Burns-style pan-and-scan for these unlockables, the plot itself is interesting, and these little nuggets add to your understanding of each character's motivation.

A highlight, for many, will be playing as Drizzt Do'Urden, armed with his two shining blades. He's only a temporary fourth character, though, not added to the fellowship for the entire game. For the next Forgotten Realms release, how about an all-Drizzt fighting game? — Jen

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