There is something to enjoy in Dragonshard, but the lazy single player makes it to stay far from the best RTS games,
There is a lot of stuff we can talk about this game, and I'll start with the universe. Here the player is set in the DnD's Eberron campaign, where three factions fight one against other. They are the Order of the Flame (various good races), Lizardfolk (lizards, obvious) and the Umbragen (the underworld people). Now there is this problem: although there're three factions, the player can choose only between two single player campaigns, and they're very short. This lowers a bit Dragonshard's gameplay value.
But the thin campaign is only one of the shortcomings. Although the game features some cool RPG elements, which allows the player to fight with heroes and grab some artifacts, most of the collected items will disappear over the campaign. So, ironically, we have a D&D game that isn't so much RPG, but we also have a DnD title with a great RTS experience. I really would like to have the opposite thing.
Dragonshard is considerably different from Warcraft III, as you have a fixed position to build your structures and you don't have to train peasants to harvest gold. Instead of this, your army will adventure in the map and collect the two resources in the game: gold pieces and dragonshards, which are periodically dropped via torrents from the sky. You know well what gold is used for (train units and upgrades), and the dragonshards are used along gold for certain upgrades. It's possible to find dragonshards in the map, but gold is more likely in the Underworld map, where you can go with some troops to also fight against monsters, find items and attack your enemy. Yes, in most Dragonshard maps, you have entrances to the Underworld that can be used to travel along the map and surprise your opponent. As you can see, I found this very fun!
Your base is just like a fortress, with upgradeable walls and towers. There're 16 pre-determined places where you can build your structures, divided in blocks of four places. In each empty space you can build a different structure, like Taverns to train rogues, Dwarven Armories to train dwarves etc. If you put two or more structures of the same type in a single block, you'll have access to higher level units of that type structure. For example, a block fully with Taverns allows the player to upgrade rogues up to level four. If you want access to level five rogues, you'll need another fully adjacent block of Taverns. This is easier to understand if you play the game.
Units in Dragonshard are very different one from another. Clerics can heal, rogues can disable traps (found in the Underworld), sorceresses cast spells and so on. Almost all units are interesting and fairly balanced, but Flame Archons from the Order of Flame, for example, are a bit stronger than other units. You can defeat your opponent just using a pack of high level archons, even considering they can't go through the Underworld, since they're flying units. New patches seems to correct balance issues in Dragonshard, you may want to consider applying them before start to play this game.
The graphics engine is just awesome. It allows a lot of units on the screen without any noticeable slowdown (if you have a slightly better hardware than the recommended). The landscape is a bit similar to Warcraft III, but the units aren't cartoony, as they look more realistic. Sound and music are OK, nothing spectacular but it's good. The in-battle sounds are very well done.
In Dragonshard you'll have some lengthy battles in skirmish games if you can't finish off your opponent early on. This occurs because large armies battle against even larger armies and it may leads to an endless struggle. Additionally, while fighting, players will often recreate their forces really fast, considering you have unlimited resources in Dragonshard. This can be either good or bad; it depends on your taste.
Dragonshard can try stand against even ranging giants like Warcraft III and Warhammer 40k: Dawn of War. It's a must-have for DnD fans and/or RTS players, and could be a lot better if Liquid Entertainment develops an expansion for to extend the single player mode.