Dungeons and Dragons: Tower of Doom

I've had pretty good luck with my recent free games on my backlog; while nothing has been amazing, the games have mostly been pretty good. That comes to an end with the first of two Dungeons and Dragons branded arcade games, Tower of Doom. I mean 'arcade games' literally because Tower of Doom and its sequel Shadow Over Mystara (released on PSN as the combo-pack Chronicles of Mystara) were both meant to be played in arcades, only getting console ports years later. As far as arcade games go, Tower of Doom seems fine enough- not far off from the X-Men and Simpsons branded beat-em-ups that I remember wasting a lot of quarters on when I was much younger and arcades still existed. Not only do you get to choose a character class and go to town hacking and slashing your way through the game's few levels, but Tower of Doom also includes a loot-drop system and rpg-style leveling up as you go to differentiate itself from the arcade crowd and live up to its Dungeons and Dragons name. It's not enough unfortunately to keep the game from being a slog to play through in 2014. Characters only really have one attack, and since I had unlimited continues and didn't have to pop in any quarters ever, the game boiled down to slashing everything in sight with my sword the exact same way for two hours and dieing a bunch of times with no stakes to speak of. If I was playing the game on an arcade machine, it probably would have cost me $40 or so. No wonder arcades died out!