Sword Coast Legends is the first official 'big', single-player focused CRPG for the franchise since 2007's Neverwinter Nights 2 and its well-received expansions, Mask of the Betrayer and Storm of Zehir. Of subsequent games, Daggerdale (2011) was a short, quickie action title whilst Neverwinter (2013) was an MMORPG. Sword Coast Legends is being marketed as a spiritual successor to the Baldur's Gate, Icewind Dale and Neverwinter Nights series and, if successful, may open the floodgates for more D&D CRPGs, so there is a quite a lot riding on its success.
It also looks like the game has taken some cues from recent crowdfunding successes, such as last year's Divinity: Original Sin and Wasteland 2, and Pillars of Eternity which comes out this week. On the plus side, the graphics look reasonable, the interface seems clean and logical (a bit of a relief after embracing Wasteland 2's cheerfully click-mad interface for over 50 hours) and the game has an old-school feel. On the minus side, the dialogue is pretty risible and the voice acting is not stellar at this point. Hopefully those can be addressed before release.
As well as a single-player campaign of uncertain length, the game will also feature a multiplayer mode allowing a player to create new campaigns and work as the Dungeon Master, similar to features in the Neverwinter Nights games.
Sword Coast Legends is being targeted for a late 2015 release at a budget price point, and so far is a PC exclusive.
It all looks very dumbed down if you ask me. Huge disappointment. I don' much clues taken from PoE, but I see a lot taken from titles like Torchlight (bright colors, cartionish art direction) or WoW (UI, cooldowns). There's not much in terms of D&D mechanics. No true D&D party (only four members), classes, races, feats, spells, no hit points and the tooted DM feature looks more like a marketing gimmick than anything else. So much of a wasted potential.
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