Dungeons & Dragons: Shadow over Mystara Longplay (Arcade) [QHD]

Developed and published by Capcom in 1996

A superb follow-up to Tower of Doom, Shadows Over Mystara is a surprisngly in-depth fusion of side-scrolling beat 'em up and action RPG set within the D&D universe. I still can't imagine people standing/sitting at an arcade cabinet for 90 minutes, but it's a thoroughly compelling experience, particularly when played with friends!

Players must choose a character class and fight their way through legions of monsters, on an epic journey across the land. There's so much to see in this game that it's impossible to cover everything in a single video, so I might revisit this and do another play-through with a different character at some point.

As for this play-through, I opted to go with the Dwarf. He has great melee skills, one of the highest HP pools of all the heroes, plus his vertical attack is extremely effective against dragons; the only down-side is his complete lack of magic ability.

As you'd expect from Capcom and its CPS2 hardware, the presentation, visuals and animation are all stunning. It's a beautiful game to look at, and one with extremely satifying beat 'em up gameplay - highly recommended.

I did encounter a cursed sword in the lair of the red dragon, which can be converted into powerful weapon, although only at the expense of your warrior's life. There are ways to prevent the life-drain, but it proved too time consuming to do so, so I decided to give up in the end.

#dungeonsanddragons
#arcade
#retrogaming