The next segment of my Games of 2011 list begins with a PSP game: Dungeons & Dragons Tactics. This is one of the few 2011 games that I haven’t yet finished, and will likely continue playing well into 2012. I really like tactical battle RPGs, and this game does it fairly well. Since it’s turn-based, battles can sometimes be very time-consuming, but I grew up playing The Gold Box Games, and those were the slowest-paced strategy RPGs ever. D&D Tactics is fun, if not as full-featured as Temple of Elemental Evil, but it’s a portable game, and so I can forgive. D&D Tactics is also a good bit less buggy than ToEE. I’m not yet finished with the game, but I give it a B.

Fallout:New Vegas didn’t fare as well. I quit the game before I’d gotten very far. After I learned the game’s main plot in New Vegas, I just lost interest. And I was sure that the robot who was following me from the beginning of the game was going to end up being the main bad guy at the game’s conclusion. Meh. The game gets a C.

I’ve never been as huge a fan of the Mass Effect series as everyone else seems to be. The first one was good, but not amazing. Mass Effect 2 was pretty much the same. Good, but not brilliant. I thought the ending was very well done – I liked that part a lot. In the end, I’ll give Mass Effect 2 a B.

I’m a huge fan of games that have tactical combat. I’ve been playing these types of games since Ultima III, Ogre, and Pool of Radiance. But other than Dragon Age: Origins, I haven’t seen a game with good strategic combat in years.

Dungeons & Dragons: Tactics was released four years ago, in 2007. But having only recently picked up a PSP, I’m just coming around to it. The reviews weren’t great – the game has a metacritic score of 58% – but having now played the game for a bit, I’ve found that I enjoy it. The game is similar in many ways to the PC game Temple of Elemental Evil. Both are based on the Dungeons & Dragons 3.5 ruleset, and both allow you to control a group of characters in turn-based combat.

When creating my first party, I immediately went to my favorite two synergies. Firstly, a dual-classed sorcerer/monk. This would allow me to create a sorcerer who could cast shield and mage armor, and then dual class him into a monk, which would allow for a monk with an insanely high armor class. But as it turns out, there is no multiclassing in D&D Tactics. So I went for my other favorite: a fighter with a spiked chain and the whirlwind attack feat. The spiked chain is the only reach weapon in the game that can attack adjacent enemies. If you’re totally surrounded and make a whirlwind attack, you can theoretically attack 24 enemies in one turn. That has probably never happened in the history of the game – more realistic is attacking 4-5 enemies – but it’s a cool advantage to have. But as it turns out, neither the spiked chain nor the whirlwind attack feat exist in this game either. The ruleset in this PSP game is far more divergent from actual D&D 3.5 rules than was Temple of Elemental Evil. Nevertheless, I’m having fun with it.

After starting with a paladin-led party and getting stuck in the game’s fourth scenario, I restarted the game with a new party, taking care to have more toe-to-toe warriors and more characters with the heal skill. My new party consists of a high-dexterity dual-wielding fighter, a polearm-wielding orc barbarian, a monk, a cleric, a gnome sorcerer, and a dwarven psionic warrior with an insanely high armor class.

Creating these custom characters and micromanaging their inventories might be annoying for some people, but I enjoy it. It hearkens back to the old infinity engine games: Baldur’s Gate and Icewind Dale. Good stuff.

Moving the party around environments between fights is sometimes annoying – I can completely understand the UI complaints of the game reviewers who bashed the game’s interface. Yes, it could have been better. But all-in-all, this is the kind of game I enjoy playing, and I foresee myself playing it to completion.