Dragon's Crown - Playstation 3 Reviews

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Final Fight, Knights of the Round, The Punisher, The Simpsons, Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles, X-Men, Golden Axe, Double Dragon, and of course, Dungeons & Dragons: Shadow over Mystara . . . any of these titles bring back memories-preferably fond ones? The beat'em up, as it's so aptly referred to, is a genre that had its heyday in the '90s, when arcades were still a thing, TGIF was the best damn night in television, and Star Wars: Episode I had yet to ruin everything. It was a genre, along with fighters, that dominated my childhood, and while the past few years have been kind to fighting fans, fans of beat'em ups have had to sift through digital offerings for some of that mind-numbing, side-scrolling action.

Vanillaware, a purveyor of 2D games, such as GrimGrimoire, Odin Sphere, and Muramasa: The Demon Blade, has taken it upon themselves to fill the retail release void with Dragon's Crown (hereafter DC), a stately entry in the beat'em up genre, that also features a heaping of role-playing game elements, making the aforementioned Dungeons & Dragons: Shadow over Mystara its biggest influence.

DC opens at Dragon's Haven Inn, a tavern you'll frequent during your adventures. It's here where you'll choose a character, set your party, and report your progress. The characters available are all visually, and mechanically, distinct: an ironclad Fighter, who's a sword and shield favoring behemoth; the Sorceress, a witch who prefers to support the party, not so much her back; a Wizard, very much interested in melting faces; the Dwarf, a duel-wielding, goblin-chucking ball beard; the Elf, who's fey, swift, and a rumored Hunger Games fan; and finally, the Amazon, a warrior that consists exclusively of brawn, butt, and boobs. She's also adept at sundering skulls with her ax.

A few color schemes are available for each character, and you can change their name as you see fit. Japanese voices are also available if that's your thing, but only for your character. The remaining voicework is strictly in English.

After you've settled on your character, a tutorial awaits (which can be skipped for the subsequent playthroughs), and it does an adequate job of walking you through the basics. You'll also meet Rannie, a rogue; he'll accompany you throughout the game, and you can direct him to unlock chests or doors, while you focus on combat.

Leaving the tavern, you'll have a town to explore, though its faculties, such as the Temple, Magic Item shop, and Stable, aren't all available at the start. Locations open as you progress the story, and additional tasks are doled out at the Adventure's Guild, where you can learn skills (class specific and common) and accept quests.

The main story focuses on the eponymous Dragon's Crown, which allows its wearer to control dragons (of course). It all comes across a bit boilerplate, and it never strives for anything more. A narrator with an earnest delivery breathes some life into the tried and true material, though the narration is limited to the main quest only, so if you find yourself focusing on side-quests, you'll hear a particular phrase uttered repeatedly during your comings and goings in town, until you move onto the next story segment.

Fortunately, your comings and goings are consistently in gorgeous environments, populated with detailed secondary characters, and great interpretations of classical monsters, all with a multitude of influences sweeping throughout. DC references everything from The Nude Maja to Tinker Bell; Renaissance portraiture to Frank Frazetta's paintings; Jason and the Argonauts to Monty Python and the Holy Grail; and more. George Kamitani, Director, takes what should be an incongruous mixture of styles and creates something cohesive. It's pretty impressive stuff.

They're nine stages to conquer, and each has a branching path that becomes accessible after reaching a certain point in the story. Along with the two paths, you'll uncover secret passages and various quest specific situations as well. The locations vary from moss enveloped sanctuaries to desolated catacombs.

It's great the stages are engaging and fun to play through, because you'll revisit them, a lot, either for quests, or because the main story requires it. And, you won't have to do it alone. DC allows for four player simultaneous play, both local and online, although online play is initially locked. You'll have to unlock the stables to access the network, which is going to take around five hours.

Unfortunately, if you're playing on Vita, ad hoc mode isn't considered "local" play, and you'll have to unlock the stables to access any sort of multiplayer. Not a big deal if you don't have any friends; a big deal if you do.

Though, perhaps you have friends, but they're lame and don't like beat'em ups. Thankfully, you still don't have to go it alone. You can set the three player slots to AI controlled companions, and they're competent, for the most part. It may become a bit maddening to see them stroll into traps, or not effectively use items in their possession, but I've seen my friends do this too, so I'll cut my artificial ones some slack.

To keep the AI companionship fresh, you'll find piles of bones in the dungeons, which you can bury at the temple, or pay a fee, and resurrect instead. The resurrected characters will then wait for you at the tavern, all with varying gear. Even better, players you encounter online may be resurrected as well, meaning you can play offline with your friend's toon. It's also cool to know that someone may have resurrected you, and are questing with your character while you're at work thinking of playing Dragon's Crown.

It'll take around 15 hours to complete the game on normal, and after doing so, you'll unlock hard mode, which increases the level cap to 65; after you complete hard mode, you'll unlock the final difficulty level, and raise the cap to 99.

What's the point of grinding a character to level 99, when you can start the adventure anew with different class? Loot. What else? When it is all said and done, DC's draw is loot. Chests are scattered about the levels, and contain treasure which vary from E, the worst, to S, the best. Completing stages and defeating bosses not only yields experience points, but more loot as well.

Multiple bags can be purchased, meaning you can create different loadouts, which you'll need, since having gear with the proper attributes is important as difficulty increases; plus, gear breaks down with usage, and if you don't have back-up bags available, your S-Rank ax may be in no condition for another round, meaning you'll have to return to town, annoy your friends, and miss out on an amusing cooking game.

If you're on the fence which version to buy, I wish I could say there's a clear winner, but there isn't. Graphically, they're virtually identical, with the Vita version susceptible to noticeable slowdown when the action heats up with four players. The OLED screen makes a pretty game even prettier, but it's also small, so losing track of your character is going to happen.

But, the Vita version benefits greatly from the touchscreen. There's additional treasure hidden in the game, identified by glints; if you're playing the Vita version, you just tap the glint, and the treasure pops out. Runes eventually become available, and their magical properties can only be tapped by, that's right, tapping them. Also, if a player dies, and they're out of life points, you can spend gold to reanimate them, but you have to tap their portrait to do so.

How does the PlayStation 3 version compensate without touch controls? A cursor, which you manipulate with the right thumbstick. It is cumbersome to use, even when there isn't any action unfolding. But, having to fiddle with the right thumbstick, mid-battle, to bring your partner back to life? Urgh. Casting rune magic by moving it over three separate runes, spaced apart, while skeletons are hammering you? Double urgh.

In that sense, the game feels designed for Vita, or at least a controller with a touchpad (come on DualShock 4).

Of course, you can't play local co-op on a Vita, and if you have a roommate that's into these games, I'd deal with the cursor, and play it on PlayStation 3. Also, slowdown isn't an issue on PlayStation 3, and if you're sensitive to frame drops, the Vita version may be too much to bear.

If money isn't a concern, you'll be happy to know the games support cross-saving, though you'll be unhappy to know the games don't support cross-play.

Dragon's Crown is a rarity: a 2D side-scrolling beat'em up, with an unabashed artstyle, that's long. It isn't concerned that it'll take dozens of hours to complete with a single character if you wish to tackle all the difficulties; it doesn't care that you may be offended by the art; and it certainly isn't going to apologize if you don't see the appeal of grinding levels until it's simply time to go to bed. And it's all the better for it.

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I spent countless hours playing Golden Axe on my Sega Genesis when I was a kid in the 90s. I played it pretty much every day after school, and it got to the point where I could blow through the whole thing in under twenty minutes, achieve the A+++ ranking upon completion, and only lose one or two blocks of health during the entire campaign. So why did I keep playing it, long after I had mastered it? The game was outrageously fun, that's why.

Dragon's Crown recaptures that type of fun for me perfectly. It's like Golden Axe, but with infinitely better graphics, sound, and most importantly: depth. Separating itself from the much older Golden Axe, your characters level in this game, they develop skills just like in any modern RPG, they acquire loot, and the techniques with which you combat the enemies continue to evolve as you become more experienced with how to play. Like Golden Axe, this game might seem like a mindless, button mashing brawler, but that's not truefor those who wish to develop their technique, this is a game that has oodles of depth and begs to be mastered by the devoted player. And, needless to say, nobody will be blowing through this game in twenty minutes it's a lengthy, fascinating campaign.

Also noteworthy is the variety available in the character class selection, which will add tons of replay value for people like me who love to play these types of games. I'm currently using the Amazon, who is awesome, but I look forward to developing an enormously powerful wizard, and experimenting with the other classes as well. Like Golden Axe, this game is FUN it's just that simple. I don't know if younger players who have been raised on different genres will enjoy it, but for anybody who was a fan of brawlers and beat `em ups, Dragon's Crown is a dream come true.

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Let me get to the point, this game is a pure classic. Great for the summer as a nice couch co-op run for up to 4 players. If you reminiscence about those old-school side-scrollers like Golden Axe, TMNT, Streets of Rage, Double Dragon etc then this is the game you're looking for. Sure there are great side-scrollers on Xbox Live Arcade and Playstation Network (Castle Crashers, Scott Pilgrim vs the World, Phantom Breaker) but this game gives you a closer feel towards a modern Golden Axe.

There are a few things potential buyers should understand before getting this game. First off which might be the biggest gripe for people and their friends who buy this and expect to go home and play together is that you need to unlock online multiplayer. Its unlocked by the 9th level I think and it'll take a good 5 hours+, so expect to play alone that first night. Local co-op or couch co-op doesn't suffer from this, so they can join right away in the beginning tutorial level. The tutorial level is only for Player 1 so those who are using different classes might not know their entire basic moveset. Also if you decide to start fresh as a new character you need to complete the basic 9 levels again before unlocking online mode. The good thing is that your loot or bag is shared among all your characters.

Once unlocked you can basically join random games or random players join you, or you play with a friend. Problem with random players is that there's no voice chat, with friends you can send private chats and play. Meaning they might not be paying attention and holding a key that's detrimental to the level while doing nothing or they could be purposely doing it.

For a game that leads people to believe its more multiplayer than single player it's kinda eccentric. It's actually really tedious when doing a 4 player couch co-op run because each individual player has to accept their own quests, visit shops, utilize their skill points and ready their equips. For example, player 1 takes full control of the screen to handle his/her business then player 2 has to take control and so forth. It gets very tedious because after every level, each player wants to go add their skill points and change their gear which takes time so basically every player needs to take a turn doing things. They should have made a better interface where the screen is shared amongst all players. Also the loot is more oriented towards the first player.

During the gameplay when you're traversing through each level and each player is doing his/her own thing, it gets extremely hard to see where and what you're doing. You tend to get lost in the battle especially if a Wizard casts a flame spell that engulfs the whole screen. It's a minor problem to me but it does affect a few players out there who can't stand having their screen blocked, and trust me wizards/sorceresses have quite the flashy moves that take up the whole screen. By the time you see yourself after the spell is over you could be dead haha.

Speaking of death in the game, you start out with 2 lives and you can pay money to increase it, if you or your pals die within the game you can continue easily by pressing X and paying a small fee, I think 650? So luckily there are no game overs unless you're broke.

That's probably all the major downsides to this game that I can think of. Besides those small problems its great game. It's by Vanillaware and they make some great looking games, Muramasa the Demon Blade on the VITA is stunningly gorgeous. Each character plays differently, except for the wizard and sorceress, they both have the same weapon attacks but different spells.

The amazon is just a crazy berserker with low defense that's usually jumping everywhere smashing things. Warrior is your basic all around guy that has a shield and can defend. Dwarf is the little tank guy that has great def when he goes into immovable mode, holds hammers and can throw enemies. Elf is really fun, arrows are limited though so sometimes you can't always rely on using your bow too much. Wizard and sorceress are really fun with their wide array of magic spells, however their basic magic attacks are the same, just depends on what type of stave they are holding and what element it is. Both have different spells whereas the Wizard is more offensive and the Sorceress is suppose to be a support type. That doesn't mean she doesn't have any offensive magic, the sorceress can summon a giant boulder, a blizzard, or a thundercloud, then she has some fun spells like petrify and curse which turn enemies into frogs.

In the beginning each level is about 10 min more or less and after you beat it, a quest opens up which makes you basically repeat the level. Gets monotonous at first but you'll realize you actually need it to level up your character. At the end of every level is a boss fight and there are some amazing boss fights. There's not enough epic boss fights these days but this game delivers.

Other than what I've mentioned I don't wanna spoil any information so we'll leave this review as is. Overall its a great action-rpg side-scroller, definitely recommend. I just wanted to point out several things all potential buyers should know before they get this game. I didn't expect to have to go through over 5 hours trying to unlock online co-op.

One last note, this game makes me think of a 2D Gauntlet Legends side-scroller lol.

Honest reviews on Dragon's Crown - Playstation 3

Vanillaware is not a niche developer.

Dragon's Crown is not a niche game.

It is the culmination of what gaming would have been years ago without in the intervention of 3D graphics. Dragon's Crown, aptly named, is the resplendent prince of our gaming heritage. It's as if the Byzantine Empire had continued on in some alternate dimension and you could go there anytime you wanted just by turning on your TV. It's astounding design and execution nails a treatise on the oaken doors of the AAA gaming industry who have become the slaves of novelty and the mindless servants of their own avarice.

George Kamitani and his cohort have been reaching back not just to gaming classics, but into their own true creative artistry. Famously free of focus testing and without care for what is 'trending' in the industry these courageous people have been single-mindedly creating only the games they wanted to make since the 90s. Put another way, they were indie long before you could make console games without a major publishers involvement. Vanillaware is the weapon we can wield against the bloated, overwrought, incestuous and putrefying monsters called EA, Activision and Ubisoft as they attempt to distort and liquefy gamers into the stupid money machines they hope for us to become.

That said, this game is George Kamitani's single vision. Does that mean that his design may be off-putting to some? Certainly. You can't count me amongst those folks, but I can see their points. On the other hand if we demonized great film directors like Scorsese, Kubrick or John Schlesinger for the portions of their works we found offensive, we all understand we would be holding back the medium of film. Indeed, the fact that these elements made it into the final design of the game is proof of it's purity against the creeping creative death that seems to infect titles made these days.

Every dollar spent on Dragon's Crown is a vote for a future where the EAs and Microsofts must respect and more fully celebrate creativity. And every time you talk about or play Dragon's Crown with your friends is a moment where you are engaging more completely in the grand history of our hobby.

(see what I did there.. 'grand history'? :) Like Grand Knight's History?? ... release it anytime now guys plzthx!)

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Dragon's Crown is a throw-back to the glorious days of side scroller beat-em-ups. The over-exaggerated style in all aspects (terrible to some, awesome to many others) flows well together with the insane combat and over the top magic effects for a bright and flashy game with simple yet deep and varied combat that makes one nostaligic for the quarter eating machines from days long past. The story is simple and is little more than a framing device, the soundtrack is fitting to the theme of the game, and the controls are very simple.

If you want a fun local co-op game right out of the box, go grab this now as it is one of the finest examples of the genere I have ever played. The online co-op, however, while running smoothly and very fun, isn't unlocked until you have completed all nine of the base missions of the game either solo, with a physical partner, or using AI controlled partners that you find throughout the world. The AI is kind of wonky with the partners, sometimes they will set-up traps and use their attacks brilliantly, other times they will stand in an easily avoided pillar of fire for 15 seconds until they die.

While you play you can control a cursor with the right analog stick to manipulate the enviorment slightly (tell a rouge to unlock a chest or door, find treasure by clicking on a shining bit of light in the background, examine runes, etc.) and it is a neat feature, but it is basically useless during combat on the PS3 and is probably the only way that the PS Vita version really shines over the PS3 version with its simple touchscreen interface.

The classes approach to combat is all highly varied. The Wizard punishes with high damage elemental attacks and near game breaking (at max level) spell that slows time down to a crawl for all enemies on the screen. The Sorceress summons skeletons, turns enemies to toads, and can produce food for the party allowing them to stay healed up. The Dwarf is a slow fighter with pretty weak defense but is ridiculously strong and can pick up even massive enemies and fling them at other enemies for pretty constant long distance high damage effect, get good at it and you can chain throw multiple enemies leaving the enemy ranks in tatters. The fighter is a tank in nearly all regards, able to offer up a circle of defense to all his partner, and having a load of fast (although very short ranged) attacks. The Amazon is high-risk, high-reward melee, her attacks flow well together and can do a lot of damage, but her defense is terrible and one really needs to read the battlefield with her to be effective, but once you get her down she will decimate scores of enemies. Lastly, the elf is the most well-rounded, a good combination of close range attacks and abilities mixed with solid damage with a bow from afar with different types of shot-styles available.

The game only has 9 levels, but you will discover new stuff nearly every time you visit those same levels and work your way to the boss at the end. Not just new treasure, but new paths you either missed or couldn't access before, side quests to help build your character up, and new enemies.

Dragon's Crown is a fantastic addition to a genre that hasn't had much high profil love in many years (Castle Crashers being the only co-op beat-em-up I can think of being made before it in recent years) and very well serves as one of the best examples that the oft-neglected genre has. I pinged it a point for being on the short side in terms of level variety, forcing you to essentially complete the main game before you can go online to play, if playing local co-op only the first player's story status will count and be saved. There are enough little complaints to keep this from being a perfect game, but if you want to slaughter some monsters with friends in a highly exaggerated fantasy brawler, you will get a lot of fun and love from this title.