Review #644: Dragon - Marked for Death

 Japanese devs have this knack for weird English titles....

 I like Inti Creates a lot, it seems like they never got out of the 16-bit era preferring to develop 2-D side-scrolling action games. You might know them as the Megaman 8-bit revival(9 and 11) guys, as the Megaman Zero guys, the Gunvolt guys or, even... the Mighty No. 9 guys. If it's 2-D, they know what they are doing, Mighty No. 9 aside, but for Dragon Marked for Death they tried something different: A 2-D action-platform game that looks just like another Megaman Zero entry... but with RPG mechanics. It was a decent experiment, but....

 The game has you playing as the last survivor of the Dragonblood village, after the Celestial King orders its purge. Aided by a Dragon who lends your character, any of four different classes, his powers to enact their revenge. After the opening tutorial, which gives you a simple overview of your playable character, you are thrust into town, in which you can buy supplies or crappy weapons before going into the Tavern and partaking on a Quest. The base game has about 29 different Quests, if you got the physical edition, which contains the season pass, it adds 9 more quests and through patches they added one more, so there is quite a bit of content in here. The four different characters are very different from each other, and who you pick will probably play a major role in how much you like the game.

 In my case, well, I screwed up. Since this was an RPG, I wanted to play as something I had an easier time identifying with, so the Empress and the Witch were out of the question, that left me with the Shinobi or the Warrior. Well, the Shinobi was a lithe, anime-haired lanky thing, so he wasn't even an option, which left me with The Warrior. He sucks. I mean, he's got the ability to heal and an almost impervious barrier, which is pretty nice, but his playstyle sucks. I thought that by pumping points into AGI I'd get more attacks, since the stat description said so, plus, the suggested Warrior build is to pump everything into AGI. He never got more than a single ax slash, although you could create pseudo-combos by doing a jump-slash just before you touch the ground to cancel it into a normal slash. Regardless, this is how the ENTIRE game played for me: Charge my attack, wait for opening, attack, charge slash again, wait for opening, attack again. Using the barrier every now and then to block incoming damage. Needless to say, it was incredibly boring. I gave the Empress a try afterwards, and she was WAY more fun to play with, she had a three hit combo as well as the ability to use her Dragon Arm as either a giant-sword or as a flamethrower. She was fun to play with. But by the time I tried her out I had already invested way too much time into the Warrior, and I was already about done with this tedious, tedious game.


 In the game's defense, it's meant to be played in multiplayer, then the Warrior's playstyle gains sense: Use his barrier to defend and heal allies, while using the charged slash to recover Dragon Power to use the barrier again, meanwhile, your allies do all the damage as not to make boss fights drag-on(Heh!) for so long. That said, there's no couch co-op on a single cart, which is absolutely ridiculous for a game that's only fun in multiplayer(Or with the right character class). And it's true, sometimes characters have to take different routes, but I'm sure that they could've worked something out with a splitscreen or something.

 There's a bunch of other problems beyond just my poor choice of character class. Let's start with mission progression. The only way to unlock more quests and actually get the true, final quest is by getting all flags. Y'see, when you enter the tavern you can display a list with every available mission, and next to each mission title is a slot for a flag. You have to get every flag. Sounds simple, but only 8 quests out of them(almost 30) have an available flag, and you aren't told which ones. Cute. But HOW do you get these flags? By completing optional, hidden sidequests which could be ANYTHING. For instance, the first flag is on the first level and it's pretty much impossible to miss, since you need to talk to an NPC, walk to the right, kill some goblins and talk to her again. Easy. But there's another one in which you have to find a secret boss, which I did, defeat him, which I did, and read the table behind him... which I didn't even know you could until I read online how to get these goddamn flags. Completely idiotic, there should be at least hints on where and how to get these flags. Like, at least have the flag slot ONLY on levels that actually have flags in them.

 Level progression aside, the RPG elements are also kinda half-baked. Let's start with the gameplay itself: While there are RPG staples such as numbers, stats and the whole 9 yards... it also plays like a 2-D Sidescrolling action-platform game, like Megaman X but without the guns... so why the **** is there a miss chance? I landed my attack, that's it--or should be it, if I dodged an annoying enemy pattern and my sprite made contact with the enemy sprite then it should register like a hit, no ifs or buts about it. But nope, there's a chance your attack might miss and only deal 1 damage. To be fair it also works on you, and enemies might 'miss' their attacks even though they hit you. This mechanic has NO place on a game like this. Luckily I spent a lot of points in my AGI, but dammit if it wasn't annoying when my slow charged slashed missed. It's also annoying how grindy the game can be. Leveling up is simple enough, but when I got to the final boss I simply wasn't properly equipped for it. There are two different weapon shops in town, but they only sell garbage, if you want proper weapons you have to redo missions hoping that a good weapon drops. I essentially hit a road block, so I had to go back and grind previous missions(At least you can 'increase' the level of quests so that they have chance of better loot and more experience points) until I got a weapon that could do more than just nick the boss' health bar.

 Another misstep is that the game borrows a bit too much from Monster Hunter, for instance, before going out for a quest, you have to prepare in town, this means equipping items in your very limited inventory space. But you don't even know what you're up against, so you might not even know that the upcoming boss can confuse you until you fight him. Stuff you find during a quest, like weapons, can't be equipped until you reach town, and even then you can't just go into the pause menu, you have to get inside a store, the inn or the tavern, otherwise the game won't let you change your equipment. A minor inconvenience, yes, but why? And just like Monster Hunter, you only get 4 lives between all players before losing the Quest. Experience points don't count until you finish(either die or win) the Quest, and only then can you upgrade your stats, if you leveled up.

 Since I'd rather not end on such a low note, the game looks absolutely gorgeous, this is THE best spritework Inti Creates has EVER done, and that's saying a lot considering they made Megaman Zero. As far as graphics go they brought their A game, featuring huge, colorful sprites that look nothing short of amazing, and they almost look like Megaman Zero on crack, as far as style goes. The game is an absolute pleasure to look at.

 ...it's just a shame the game isn't that much fun to play. I'm willing to accept that the game might be a tad more fun with a different character class, or in Multiplayer. But you still have to account for the fact that I'm probably not the only one that will select the Warrior for Single Player, so I'm not the only one that will have such a miserable time play charge-avoid-hit-and-escape all the time. It was also a terrible idea not to figure out a way to have multiplayer with a single system, if your game is gonna be so reliant on multiplayer then you should make it a priority to make sure the game can be played in that way in as many forms possible. And I'm sure that multiplayer would probably fix some of my bigger issues, for instance, if I wasn't the only source of damage then, probably, I wouldn't mind missing my attacks every now and then. Not that it would fix how dumb the Flag system is though. Or how grindy it can get if you want to have decent equipment and not get one-shotted by bosses.

 If anything, I can praise Inti Creates for trying something a bit different from what they usually make. I'm sure their heart was in the right place, but they should've made the game more palatable for single player, just like Monster Hunter does with two different campaigns, one strictly for single player and another one tailored for multiplayer BUT the ability to play it solo anyways, if you so wish it. Also, it's the Switch, couch co-op for a game so reliant on Multiplayer SHOULD have been one of their top priorities.
 4.5 out of 10