Review #171: Dragon's Crown

 Only took me... what, like.. a year?

 I... I really wanted to like this one. Made by Vanillaware, developers of Murasama(A game which I adored) I had nothing but high hopes for this game, even though it kinda took a while to come out. Dragon's Crown tries to mix the Beat'em up genre with some RPG elements, but the end result is... odd. Capcom did it first, and got it right, with their Dungeon and Dragons beat'em up games, but Dragon's Crown didn't get it just quite right.

 The game puts the story at the forefront, for some reason, concerning the titular Dragon's Crown and various political powers after it. You are tasked to find this crown, but it isn't as simple as it sounds, eventually getting roped into finding 9 different talismans and slaying an ancient evil. The good? I like how there's a narrator telling you what characters said, makes it seem like you are playing a tabletop game. The bad? There's TOO much story, and it isn't particularly interesting. This game prides itself in its four player couch co-op, it prides itself on being a Beat'em up, so why the hell are they making me go from point A to point B, on the town, just to advance the story? Why is the Narrator repeating the same line, telling me what to do, every time I leave a building? Seriously, the Narrator quickly wears out his welcome, I don't need to be reminded that I'm still missing X amount of Talismans every time I return to town, or enter a building to repair my weapons. He NEVER shuts ups.

 The game plays, mostly, like a traditional beat'em up game. I appreciate how they managed to cram many actions into a very few amount of buttons. Square is used to attack, and inputting different directions on the analog stick produces different attacks, however, holding square also allows you to block, and holding it while walking lets you run! It sounds like a lot, but it works fairly well. What doesn't is that picking up weapons or bones sometimes doesn't feel responsive, I think that you actually have to wait for the prompt to appear on screen, but I'm not sure, either way, it's not very responsive. Before each stage, you can also bring potions, which are used with the directional pad. Lastly, when you get hit, there's a slight chance that your weapon might drop, which is interesting, but for some reason, you can't pick it up for a few seconds, which I don't really mind, but it doesn't make sense as to why you can't pick it up! There's no rhyme or reason, the developers just chose that you can't. All in all, it works fairly well, combat is fast and frantic, even though when playing with four other players, it's easy to lose track of where you are. One of the patches added a colored circle around your characters, but it's so thin that it barely helps.

 As good as the combat mechanics are, the developers also opted to add a Rogue following the party, which you control with the right analog stick. Pointing at chests or doors and then pressing the right analog stick(R3) makes him pick their locks. My question is... Why? The Rogue adds NOTHING to the game, sending him to pick locks doesn't count as a 'puzzle', it's just something to make you think like you are doing something else, but it doesn't work, heck, it brings the game to a halt. You can also press R3 over glimmering lights to produce gold, which is... something that you'll do a couple of times before realizing that it's a waste of time. R3 is also how you activate runes, by pressing runes in the background and then coupling it with some of yours. It's a decent idea, and there's many different rune combinations for various effects, but as a whole I really disliked the whole right analog stick mechanic.

 The game has six different classes, and they all have different skills. It may be due to the fact that the Knight, the class I played, was a bit boring, but I felt most skills were pretty... dull. Sure, investing in the 'mash square to win' skill was fun, but at the end of every boss fight my hand would be in pain. My partner played with the Dwarf, and the Dwarf-exclusive skills were fairly dull as well, but at least it could grab enemies and boulders and then throw them! If you don't have friends available, you can also play online, or by finding bones and resurrecting them(for a fee) play with CPU allies. The CPUs are fairly dumb, as expected, but at least you get some diversions. The thing about the CPU allies is that they don't level up, so you have to resurrect as many as you can to keep your allies updated. The game also has a very weird difficulty curve, every now and then the boss level will just jump a couple of levels ahead of you, so you will have to sidequest a bunch in order to stand a chance. Frankly, it feels like fat, it forces you to replay levels over and over again so that you can increase your level and stand a chance.

 Ah, yes, Sidequests, you can only accept five at a time, and they all consist of playing and replaying levels. Most of the time, Sidequests are unlocked AFTER finishing a level, so they are there for replaying purposes. Later in the game you'll unlock alternate"Route B" on all 9 stages, which take you to an alternate boss, but as soon as you unlock this feature, you lose the ability to pick a stage... for free. So now you are left with two choices: Go to the gate and warp to a random level, or pay money at the stables to pick a stage. What. The. Hell? No, really, why? Why make you pay even more? You need money to: Resurrect Bones(And you need to if you are playing by yourself, as CPUs don't level up), maintain your equipment(It breaks!), used as continues(If you or your allies lose their lives during a stage), to appraise loot(Every item you find has to be appraised, and Equipment can only be FOUND not bought, and even then, you can't see the stats besides "it's a level X weapon" so it could potentially suck) and to buy items... and they also want to charge you for picking a stage? If you could at least accept all quests at all times, at least then getting warped to a random location wouldn't be SO bad, since you could have a available quest to clear. And after finishing a level, you can chose to continue adventuring... except that you get warped into a random level. Why? Just.... why?

 The graphics are beautiful. Kinda. Y'see, as I have stated many times throughout this blog, I hate fanservice. 80% of this game's art direction is fanservice. Your rewards for doing sidequests(Besides money and experience points)? Art pieces, mostly of naked or semi naked women. Women that you find in dungeons? If they are not almost naked they are on pandering positions. Two of the three playable females in the game are exploited as much as they could. Yeah, the game is pretty tasteless. However, the animation and how the sprites look is really, really good, probably some of Vanillaware's finest. The music has some outstanding pieces, but the rest of the soundtrack was pretty forgettable. And as much as I liked the Narrator, at first, eventually his voice just started annoying me to no end, if only he would shut up.

 Dragon's Crown, when it's at its finest, is really, really good. The rest of the time, it will leave you perplexed at some of the questionable design choices it employs. As a whole, I can't say I liked too much, and I love, LOVE beat'em ups. It's just that they could've done things so much better, but I guess they thought the fanservice would make up for them. It didn't.
 5.5 out of 10.