Interesting review.
First (and I have to ask), did you actually play the game? My group has been running DoL since shortly after it came out and we've been having a blast.
Have you checked out the free content online? I don't know that you'd care for the NCB Files any more than you did the characters in the main book, but it's like 70-some pages of more NPCs. And the rules expansion offers a few more edges and power level breakdowns for street level play on up.
The powers thing... I'm not sure what you're getting at as far as "no rhyme or reason" to how they're made. The how's and why's are listed in the power creation portion. I just know they do actually play well. I've had no problems thus far with the Freedom City characters that we converted from M&M.
The sonic boom thing. That was brought up on their forums once. They said it was meant to mimic things in DoL, but not
all comics. A simple +0 modifier would get rid of the boom. Actually, that's something they've said a lot at the forums- the powers had the setting in mind, but can easily replicate anything in comics with little details like the sonic boom being covered with modifiers.
Combat, in my experience, has been all I could hope for. I've ran street brawls in a mall, subway battles, battles with fighter jets, and a slew of various powered NPCs. It's always been grand and truly felt like a comic battle. My group is used to Savage Worlds, so there were no real surprises as far as the effects of exploding dice and the possibility of the "One shot, one kill". But, with bennies and some of the uses they've added, I've yet to have any of those one shot situations.
I've used the adventure generator a few times and had fun results and one of my players now swears by the background generator. His dirt poor beginnings, idolizing his father growing up but his father was killed by his step-mom. He's been married and divorced (issues from the above) and currently works as a corrections officer at a women's prison. I don't have the character sheet with me, so I can't remember what all happened in the middle portion of his life. But, the whole thing came from the background generator, which was pretty cool, we thought.
The setting... I can't really comment on that. The games I've ran have been conversions from M&M, so I really haven't looked at the setting very closely after the first read other than to check the NPCs periodically for ideas.
My experience with the game has been nothing but positive thus far. My group, while loving their characters, had begun to grow bored of the M&M system, hence the reason I bought DoL. So far, it's scratching the itch.
I would just suggest playing the game. I noticed, as was mentioned, no warnings of any kind are given as far as how certain powers might affect a campaign. So, if you go in and make some crazy characters with no plan other than to see what happens, it could well break. I had already kept an eye on that when our characters were made in M&M, so I didn't have to worry about it here. But yeah, a mentalist can wipe the floor with someone in a non-mentalist campaign. Kind of like Professor X being the ultimate psychic killer when dealing with non-psychics.
Huh, guess instead of writing all that, I could have just done my own review, huh?
