jdavisjdavis

Sitting here, unable to sleep, feeling miserable with a head cold, I stumbled across this made by Tubi movie. So let me say, I thoroughly enjoyed it. If I had more energy to write a proper review I could try to do it justice, but if nothing else I'll put my vote out there.

Starts off, first third feels like an art film. Camera work is good. Main actress good. Those YouTube videos of old buildings, abandoned places... take that creepy backdrop and then apply some original ideas for a story, and you start to get a feel for this well done movie.

Just a small cast but everyone held there own. The story keeps you pulled in tight, and there are things to keep considering... why, what, who, how. Good stuff.

Near the end...The initial credit scene, before the text centric credits, brought back that eerie vibe you got at the start. It is truly unrelated, but it somehow reminded me of The Walking Dead's opener. Maybe I was imagining it, but I really dug it regardless.

Watched this with my teen kid who is a fan of high fantasy. We both really enjoyed it, me having read them 20 years ago and my kid who only knows 3.5 and 5e Forgotten Realms / generic DnD, essentially.

Stories and characters are of course 10/10.

Voice acting, 10/10... real actors providing their voices were great.

Raistlin: 10/10, OK I might be biased, but he was exactly as I recalled him, smirks and all. The interaction with the G**** D*** truly rounded out who this guy truly is.

Animation: 6.5/10 Granted, the mixing of 3d and 2d was a little weird, and perhaps it is not a 1930s era super animation... nothing much is anymore... it was completely fine . The characters and the story really dragged me back into it, every other scene was a "Oh yeah, I remember that!" and it just kept going.

Anyway, got to run, but if you are a fan of fantasy this is a MUST SEE in my book. And then read the books!

To sum it up... 10 stars on the monsters and the ability to build out various characters in D&D 5e to test out and play in an amazingly varied and deep campaign.

2 stars on the in your face social commentary; please, just let me enjoy my time away from the news and modern troubles.

Let's get into the nitty gritty.

What is great: Mostly very entertaining. Lots and lots of D&D that you can see with your own eyes. Variety of monsters. So many character building options with cool spells, fighting abilities, and effects that closely match D&D 5e. I just started playing 5e in real life, and this is helping me learn the tabletop game faster, despite a few small homebrew style differences.

1. Do you like cool, really cool, looking monsters? They get this right 95% of the time. Love it. Some incredible, incredible reveals... play the game for this if nothing else.

2. Character designs, specifically outfits are pretty great designs also.

3. Character visuals, specifically they didn't go for the everybody-uses-steroids thing, thank you very much. People seemed like real people.

4. The story even got me interested, and that's saying something for a game. The dialogue is excellent - very professionally written, better than some big Hollywood movies I dare say.

5. Fey monsters and "people" are varied and interesting, done better than any D&D game I've ever heard of.

6. Elves, Dwarves, Drow, half-elves mostly felt pretty darn right, except for my gripes below.

7. Can't wait to play a Dragonborn, that'll be my second play through.

What I didn't like: 1. Mages feel weak, damage-wise. It's hard to hit enemies without a grid to line up spells perfectly, example: Burning Hands. Counter example: But Wall of Fire works well enough if you take your time and rotate the camera a lot.

2. Not based on human history or human realities enough to feel realistic. More 2023-social-change-in-your-face-Hollywood style than D&D game. The stronger default fighters are female, but I will say that it's at least a nice change of pace from always making the females the mages. Your male side-characters try to romantically hit on your main male character, not a fan. Lots of distracting and weird Rated R romance potential all over that I didn't need in this game, don't let the kids play this.

3. Deviations from classic D&D. Goblins have funny colorful hairstyles and half the goblins and other baddies are again female fighters/guards. Half-devil Tieflings are the good guys. Half the human guards are women. The human racial and non-human racial representation is more like downtown big city USA than a medieval world where different races would be special. The male-female divide is much more 2020s USA than anything medieval ever had. I was about to say the children felt wrong, but without giving too much away there are some typical scoundrel kids that pan out to be classic D&D.

4. Too much space sci-fi feel instead of medieval feel in the beginning and randomly here and there. But it definitely got better once you got past the beginning (I haven't beaten the game yet but getting sort of close).

5. Too much gore too, actually. That's probably typical of the bad guys you deal with in the beginning, but... pretty yucky.

6. Accents are too pronounced. I love real accents in real life, but I love fantasy worlds where accents aren't perfectly matched to a certain stereotypical social status class in a town in England. At least stick to non-modern dialect/phrases... come to think of it they did OK on the dialect/phrases for the most part.