Game #961: Dragon's Lair Trilogy

  A never ending QTE.

 Dragon's Lair is a game that has always held some of my interest, because it was considered a classic and the animation looked really good. Plus, princess Daphne is still one of the sexiest animated women ever created, and you can quote me on that. But I never had the means to get an actual, physical, port of the game... until I heard about the Wii port, Dragon's Lair Trilogy. Well, I finally played it as well as the other Don Bluth games, Dragon's Lair 2 and Space Ace, and.... they were disappointing in some ways, but met my expectations in others.

 The thing about these three games.... is that they aren't really games. They are one long QTE section, as you must press the right button at the right time in order to progress, otherwise your character will face a gruesome death and you'll be forced to play the segment again. Playing these games at the arcades must have been such a chore! Plus, the reaction times these games require is borderline insane at times, so only memorization could get you through them. In this port you can set lives up to Infinite, why you'd want anything else is beyond me. You can also change the QTE inputs to appear on the bottom of the screen, on the correct edge or to hide them completely.

 Dragon's Lair 1 let's you play in either Home or Arcade version, the Home version has a few extra scenes and every room is played in order. In the Arcade version, upon dying, you'll restart in a different, random room. Most rooms have a mirrored version just to pad out the length. The game lets you change the difficulty, but even the easiest mode sometimes required split-second reactions.

 Dragon's Lair 2 let's you play either the original release or the Director's Cut, which features a new ending. There's no extra padding, but the difficulty has gone way up, with some very hectic scenes. As a side note, I adored how insane this one gets as Dirk travels through time, it's one amazing acid trip.

 Space Ace features a new hero, Ace, who must also save a sexy girl from an evil villain. All three plots follow the same structure to be honest, but it features a twist.... The game features a lot of alternate scenes because you don't need to 'Energize' and transform from young Dexter into the muscular Ace. It's about as hard as the second one, and the adventure can get quite crazy, which I liked.

 So... I'll be honest, I didn't like these 'games'. I hate QTEs, and games made out entirely of QTEs are boring. Sometimes the time window for your input doesn't even feel fair. Thankfully, all three games include a Watch Mode in which you can watch all three games in their entirety. And that's a fantastic addition, because this 80's animation is top-notch. Every game lasts about 10 minutes, and they are a fun watch. That said, you can't customize Watch Mode, so no Director's Cut for 2 and Dexter will energize every single time in Space Ace, but, y'know, I'll take what I can get.

 If I were to judge this collection as games... I'd score them a 3. Boring 'gameplay', unfair timing, very repetitive...  But as a package, a package that includes Watch Mode as well as a few extra for each game? I'm not gonna lie, I enjoyed watching all three shorts. Well, I played the first one in it's entirety, tried the second one and then decided it'd be more fun for me to just watch them. So yeah, I feel like I got my money's worth out of the 'game' even if most of the time I spent it watching.

 7.0