Game #878: Dragon's Lair 3D - Return to the Lair

 No animated eye-candy in this one.

 So, I've something I gotta admit... I never played the original Dragon's Lair, something I'm quite ashamed of, but I just haven't had the chance. And yet, I decided to take the plunge with Dragon's Lair 3D: Return to the Lair. It looked decent, and it was my chance to experience a slice of the Dragon's Lair franchise.

 Unlike the original game, this is a very linear adventure game in which you take direct control of Dirk the Daring. You can jump, slice with your sword, use a crossbow or even use magic items, such as a hovering wings or a magical armor that protects Dirk from heat. That sounds very different, and it is. Even the plot has changed, into a weird amalgamation of the first two games, taking bits and pieces from the plots of both games. The only animated footage you get is the intro, which I found quite disappointing as I had hoped it'd used cutscenes from the original game.

 Something that hasn't changed, however, is that Dirk must deal with a ton of one-hit kills, to the point of annoyance. There are plenty of murderous traps that there simply is no way for you to know they are there until you fell for them at least once. There's a particular nasty one near the end of the game, in which just try to open this mundane looking door ends with Dirk dying. It's not funny because the game recycles the same death animation over and over again. It really turns a somewhat average platforming game into a dull trial-and-error-athon..

 The game has some... interesting design choices. For instance, you must sheathe your weapons if you want to cling to any surface, so if you want to do some platforming you'd best sheathe your weapons. It's not too bad, but my biggest gripe with the controls concerns jumping, for you see, you can't jump immediately after jumping, despite Dirk already breaking into a run. There's a platform almost-puzzle section in which you must jump from platform to platform, avoiding fireballs that can kill you if they touch you, and for the longest time I thought my Joystick was giving out on me. It wasn't, I realized that you couldn't jump immediately after landing. The section was still annoying because Dirk running jumps went too far, but once I understood how things worked I finally managed to clear this section.

 I liked the graphics. Dirk and his enemies feature a very simple look, with an equally simple cell-shading applied to the models, but this simplicity makes characters look like their 2-D counterparts. Well, this applies to Dirk and a few key enemies, since I don't know if some of the common enemies actually appeared in the original.

 Dragon's Lair 3D: Return to the Lair is almost good. I'm not gonna lie, there are some very decent and exciting sections in the game, so when everything manages to gel together, it can be decent fun. That said, most of the time is spent falling victim to numerous traps you simply didn't know where coming, and some boss fights can be downright frustrating, requiring strategies that make it feel as if you are cheesing the game and not playing properly.

 4.0