AC thVRsday
In his weekly column, Android Central Senior Content Producer Nick Sutrich delves into all things VR, from new hardware to new games, upcoming technologies, and so much more.
November is always full of tentpole releases for any gaming system. From heavy-hitters like the recently released Deadpool VR to the return of classics like Thief VR, there’s no shortage of games to play on your Meta Quest this holiday season. But one stands out from the rest for me because of its polish and near-perfect gameplay execution: Demeo x Dungeons & Dragons: Battlemarked.
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Demeo x D&D: the basics
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In Demeo x D&D, players can join up to three others to scale massive turn-based D&D campaigns that take place in familiar locations like Neverwinter, Icewind Dale, and more. Each battle takes place on a “board” composed of movement squares, but each board is lavishly decorated to look like a convincing location rather than a simple board game.
During a battle, players can choose to carry out two actions per turn. Each player has a hand of cards that contains attacks or items to use, or an action point can be spent moving on the board. If you’ve played D&D, you’ll be immediately familiar with some of the mechanics, although the card-based abilities shake up gameplay in a meaningful way from standard D&D.
Like D&D, you may randomly come across an encounter or trap that requires you to roll a die to either pass or fail the test. Each of the eight playable classes can specialize in a number of different traits, and each of these traits plays a role in combat, traps, and even dialogue.
The game features two main campaigns at launch, each of which spans dozens of hours and locations to complete. Players can save and stop at any time, resuming their saved campaign with or without other players. Developer Resolution Games recommends always starting with four characters when playing a campaign, and these characters can be controlled by you or other human players.
Combat isn’t the only thing players can do here, either. During each campaign, players will visit locations like taverns that allow them to chat with NPCs, investigate locations and objects, accept side quests, and more.
Three “one-shot” campaigns are also included in the launch game, adding even more variety and replayability to the game. The game can be played in VR or on a traditional TV/monitor system setup, giving you freedom to choose how you prefer to play this epic strategy title.
What’s different from regular Demeo?
The base battle gameplay is similar to Demeo in that each character on the board takes turns moving and attacking, with players utilizing abilities from a deck of cards in their hand. But the basic structure of the rest of these games is quite different.
In Demeo, players choose from a half-dozen campaigns to play through. Each campaign is made up of three “floors.” The first floor is usually a medium-sized area, the second floor is typically a much larger area with more challenging groups of enemies, and the third floor is a boss battle. Players stop at “Cleepto’s Bazaar” between each floor to shop and trade cards with the merchant NPC.
In Demeo x D&D, players always begin at a map of the campaign’s world and choose areas to visit from there. Each area is bespoke and has no set size. Some sidequests may be made up of a single forested area with a handful of enemies, while other sidequests may be multi-floor dungeons with dozens of enemies. You’ll also come across plenty of areas where fighting is not an option, allowing you to move freely around to investigate areas or talk to NPCs.
Demeo x D&D has a much more traditional RPG structure in this respect. You can follow the main campaign or get sidetracked as often as you’d like, exploring each of the game’s diorama-sized areas to your heart’s content. Cleepto’s Bazaar still exists in Demeo X D&D, but now it’s a dedicated part of the world that you can visit any time you head back to the world map.
The game saves very often, making it easy to pick up and play. One of the best additions to the original Demeo was a later update that added save slots, allowing you to stop and save, then pick up the action at a later time. Demeo x D&D supercharges this mechanic by dropping a save slot on each player’s system, allowing them to continue the campaign you were playing together on their own or with completely different people.
It’s a brilliant mechanic that gives you the freedom to play when you want instead of having to perform a miracle and get all four players’ adult schedules lined up. Public multiplayer lobbies are available just as they were in the original Demeo, and I’m hoping the crowd is just as friendly.
And unlike Demeo, the characters in Demeo x D&D are customizable. You can paint colors on them in a basic way, and each character has a skill tree that you’ll build out as you progress through the campaigns. As you might hope, those skills transfer between campaigns and can make things much easier as you go. One-shot campaigns use new characters each time, which is typical of D&D.
How about a local Demeo x D&D night?
One of the very coolest features of Demeo x D&D is the ability to play the game together with other people in the same room. Using the built-in co-location feature, Meta Quest players can place the board on a real table as if it were a real board game. Everyone sees the same board in the same exact location, so this works as you’d expect (or even just hope to expect).
I recommend players use only a Meta Quest 3 or Quest 3S for this, as the color passthrough is a significant upgrade over the nasty, low-res, black-and-white passthrough of the Quest 2. This will make it feel like a “proper” D&D night with friends, albeit with no one having to take the helm of dungeon master.
And that’s another area where Demeo x D&D shines. It features several of the stat-based random encounters of D&D, including environmental hazards and enemies alike, plus lots of dialog choices that players can all vote on. It’s an incredible way to get that D&D feel without having to put in all the dungeon master work (and that crap is a lot of work).
All of these new additions and the fact that there are two full campaigns, plus three “one-shot” campaigns, add significant variety to an already impressive game. I also love that this still uses the tried-and-true Demeo style of combat and movement, which helps it feel different from traditional D&D, all while still maintaining enough of that property’s soul to feel like the branding belongs here.
The polish on the visuals, dialogue, voice acting, and gameplay all combine to make this my favorite VR game of the year. Of course, if you’re not a VR gamer or have friends who might be interested in playing the game (but don’t have a VR headset), don’t worry, as Resolution Games ensured cross-platform play works perfectly. I played with some friends using the non-VR Steam client, and things were as smooth as I had hoped. It’s a must-have title on the Meta Quest, for sure, and a must-buy game for D&D and strategy gamers, as a whole.
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