Review: Dead Dragons (Nintendo Switch)
Dead Dragons aren’t dead. This isn’t really a spoiler because you find out the dragons aren’t dead in about the first two minutes. Besides, the whole point of the game is what you do about the dragons still running amok. OK, the dragons have been keeping a low profile, so “amok” may be a bit strong; but you are still going to have to do something about it.
This is another title from KEMCO, so you probably already know what it’s going to look like—retro ‘90s pixelated 2D map wandering. The design and visuals of the game world are not bad, but they could be much better.
Likewise, the soundscape is OK, but nothing special. The music and sound effects fit the scene, but that’s about all.
There is a story to follow, and it is moderately interesting. The dialogue is experienced as a text box next to an image of the speaker’s head. It gets the job done. If you don’t like having to wait for the text to “type” into view in the box, there is a setting to make all of the immediate dialog appear in one moment. You will still need to use the A button to flip to the next boxful of text. By the way, when you die and have to replay a portion of the game, there doesn’t seem to be a way to skip the dialogue, so lots of mashing the A button. The larger problem with dialogue is that it’s a bit predictable and not very engaging.
So far, the game is OK with some minor issues. The gameplay is where I have some more significant concerns. Wandering around is easy, but the real action is in the combat sequence. When you encounter a monster or another adversary, the game shows you and your opponent in a special location that’s the same for all the encounters on that level. It’s a kind of static looking arena for combat and is really neither here nor there to me.
Things do get a bit odd here, though. The enemy units are spread out before you, left to right. If you have another member of your party with you, however, you get lined up in a single file facing the enemy. It looks odd, but there is some method to this madness. If you have a party member with a ranged attack, you can keep your most durable character up front to take the hits and protect the less hit-point-endowed members of your team. The down-side is that the person behind you, if they have a melee weapon, becomes almost completely useless, especially early in the game.
The gameplay does not really have a progressive tutorial. As things get started, there are some text boxes describing some of the gameplay/combat options, but not much else. There are supposed to be aspects of your character you can “nourish”, but I was unable to find a way to access a menu to do this. I have seen points for leveling up, which gets you more hit points, but the interface is not very good at volunteering information.
Another aspect of the gameplay is the dungeon grind. As hinted above, you will die, and probably a lot. The intro level is what you might expect; you get to know the foundation of the story, you are introduced to some of the game mechanics, and you get to fight a few beasties to get used to the combat system. Once you get into the story in earnest, the monsters don’t just get more difficult by a little bit. Oh no. They get about ten times harder than the warm-up round. This means gaining significant stats to survive requires either doing a bit too much level grinding for my taste or buying DLC that speeds up your experience gains.
When these things come together, we have a game that looks like it is stuck thirty years in the past with a story presentation that lumbers along.
The mechanics for the skilled parts is a bit odd, at best, and sometimes rather annoying. The skills development and lack of an easily accessed menu left me a bit flat on this one. If you like this game style, it will work, but there are plenty of better titles out there from KEMCO.
