Dungeons 3 - Complete Collection

Dungeons 3 is genuinely two games stitched together, and understanding that upfront is the key to enjoying it. Underground, you are a base-builder in the mould of classic dungeon management sims: your imp-like Snots excavate rock, gold veins fund construction, and you lay out Gobbler Farms to feed your army, Hideouts and Vortexes to rest them, Graveyards and Prisons to convert captured heroes into undead reinforcements. Resources split across five types, gold being the most immediate and Evilness acting as a research currency you earn by capturing Isles of Evil on the surface. The tech tree branches across three creature factions: Horde (trolls, goblins, Nagas, Orcs), Demons (Imps, Arachnids, Succubi), and Undead (zombies, Liches, Vampires, Skeletal Archers). Crucially, each faction also operates specific room types, which forces diversified rosters rather than mono-faction spam. That single design decision creates most of the meaningful mid-game decisions. Pre-plan your creature mix before spending early gold, because your room layout downstream depends on it entirely. Above ground, the game flips to a conventional RTS. Units are selected in groups, issued move and attack orders, and the overworld objective is usually some variant of "take a set number of enemy structures before waves overrun your dungeon heart below." The split demands divided attention, which is the real skill ceiling here. You need to be trimming trap corridors and paying weekly creature wages at the same time as you are flanking a hero base on the surface. The Clash of Gods DLC pushes this further by adding overworld outposts, three new traps, and three new spells, turning that expansion's eight maps into the most tactically dense content in the whole collection. If the base campaign's twenty missions feel comfortable by the halfway point, jump straight into Hellish difficulty or the DLC stack, where enemy pressure ramps up considerably. For newcomers, the game is actually approachable. Each campaign mission unlocks rooms and creature types one layer at a time, so you are never dumped into a full tech tree on mission one. The difficulty curve is uneven and will surprise you with the odd spike, but the gentle onboarding is real. Co-op is available for the full campaign, letting one player run dungeon logistics while the other commands the overworld assault. That division of labour makes the experience significantly easier but also turns it into a legitimately fun co-op session with a friend. Competitive skirmish is also present, though finding live matches has historically been difficult. The presenter holding the whole thing together is the Narrator, voiced by Kevan Brighting of The Stanley Parable. His fourth-wall-breaking commentary and the self-aware writing around protagonist Thalya are genuine highlights. The Famous Last Words DLC takes this to its logical conclusion by making the Narrator himself the final boss, which is a genuinely funny payoff. That said, the humour leans hard on pop culture gags and meta jokes, and for players who want those moments to stay out of the way and let the strategy breathe, the constant barrage can wear thin. Combat audio is also on the thinner side, a minor but noticeable gap given the otherwise polished cartoony art direction. The Complete Collection bundles the base game with all seven expansions: Once Upon a Time, Evil of the Caribbean, Lord of the Kings, Clash of Gods, An Unexpected DLC, Famous Last Words, and a skirmish map pack. Across all of it, you are looking at well over forty campaign missions. The underworld sections are slightly shallower than a dedicated dungeon sim like War for the Overworld, and the overworld RTS is less tactically demanding than a standalone RTS, but the combination of both running simultaneously is something neither of those comparisons offers. If you have not yet played Dungeons 3, this collection is the obvious entry point. If you already own the base game, just audit the DLC you are missing. Diego, Scout Team