Dungeon Lords is a terribly mixed bag where the bad points mostly undermine the good.
Dungeon Lords is an incredibly mixed bag. For one, the game starts out hard, and ends up stupidly easy, and even easier if you figure out a few of the little tricks to the game. In fact, to a great extent, most of the game falls down to the little tricks, the things that you were not really supposed to do, but almost have to do.
A few examples of the broken game-play:
-Fire drakes (the dragons of the game) are incredibly difficult to kill without high armor, fire protection, a highly damaging weapon. Or, you could just stand off a bit and spend 20 min with a bow and arrow. If you get the dragon stuck on a terrain fixture, you can strafe back and forth to avoid his fireballs and shoot them to death with the smallest bow in the game (and the biggest bow does only a few more points of damage).
-In many parts of the game, it is easier or faster to get around an area by simply finding one of the sections of "unclimbable mountains" and walking up the side at an angle. In fact, in one quest where there are 5-7 dragons guarding an area, the easiest way to kill them all is to walk on the mountain top and shoot them (they wont respond if you don't get too close)
-If you are willing to "gamble" your hard earned money, you can fight in an arena and kill a minotaur. This minotaur is somewhat easy early on, and after killing it about 30 times you are so strong it is a pushover, with good exp bonus every time you kill.
-If you need more hard earned money, train your Honor. It is basiclly your charisma and the shopkeepers will sell you at better prices. Since you get Honor for every quest, eventually you can sell for more then you buy. -And finally, when you are done with one of the last quests, you get a reward of a ok set of weapons, or a massively overpowered spell. If you sell the spell to the shop, you can buy INFINITE copies of the spell (with your infinite money) and then cast the spell in every battle for the rest of the game.
-With few exceptions, you can kill every boss and sub-boss with a bow and arrow without taking damage. You can be hit by a spell, but they will never hit you in melee combat because each boss area has a section where you can stand and never get hit, such as at the top of a ladder (they can't climb) or across a gap.
-Oh and the Gamespot review was mistaken, it is very simple to be a mage in the game. In fact, if you like, you can put away your weapon and almost never use it. All you have to do is use the above tricks and buy 100 copies of every spell with your infinite money. Between all the spells available and 50-100 copies of each spell, being a mage is a snap.
The game is interesting, a challenge, and fun to play (once you turn the random encounters down a bit.). But only for the first half of the game. Once you get strong enough to actually kill the monsters you are fighting, the game becomes a mindless process of getting through the next fight so you can get on with the game. While it is fun to find that next powerful magical item, often you don't have the skill to use it, or it is so strong that the monsters that were providing some danger become child's play. Half of the best classes require skills to be raised so high that it is a pain to reach, and then you get access to skills that are not worth the effort to gain the class, and half the skills in the game are either useless, or only needed at low levels to function.
Replay Value is very low. You might try it a second time, but doubtfully a third.
Overall, I enjoyed playing the game.... once. It is fun to encounter an army of foes that is supposed to be one of the major battles of the final chapter and kill them all in 5 castings of a spell. It is a great laugh to have the evil mastermind say "You have done well to come this far, but let us see how you handle THIS!" and you kill the monsters he throws in less then 10 seconds. But any game that is so broken that would put you in the final battle with equipment that makes it last less then 30 seconds is not well built, and needs quite a bit of work before being released as the 5th version.