Dragon Fantasy: Book 2 (PSN) Review

Earlier this year, Dragon Fantasy: Book 1 was released on the PSN, and paid homage to classic RPGs from the NES era of gaming.  Book 2 draws its inspiration from the next generation, mostly Chrono Trigger, with some more from Earthbound and even Pokemon.  The Chrono Trigger inspiration is easily seen when you look at the game.  As opposed to the previous game's first person perspective, the game now shows all of your characters on the map and in battle, and all of the enemies appear as you move around.  If you don't like random encounters, you'll appreciate the way this game does it.

The battles will take place where you start the fight, which is both good and bad.  Good because it just feels more fluid, and you can sometimes maneuver an encounter so the enemies are bunched up.  Bad because sometimes the enemies really spread out, occasionally ridiculously so.  Also, wandering enemies can and will join the fight.  Early on, this makes some battle much more difficult than they have to be.  In a nod to Earthbound, if you are significantly stronger than the enemies, starting an encounter will have the main character "SMASH" them, winning the fight instantly.  This does get you full Exp, Gold and Items, so it is basically just saving you time and the enemies' embarrassment.  Enemies will not respawn until you leave the dungeon, which is helpful when making your way through it (or back to the save point), but less so when you want to grind or missed catching a particular bounty (more on this later).  For good measure, there's even two ship battles, where you must grab rock monsters to launch at the enemy ship.  They are pretty fun, but it would be nice if there were more than two, or a way to repeat them later in the game.

The skills and spells you get will give you some variety in hitting all of your foes.  You get some single target ones, a few ones that target a line and a lot that hit a radius (both small and larger).  Seeing some of these skills and hit boxes will really remind you that this game was inspired by Chrono Trigger.  Skills and spells will, of course, take MP, but after a few levels you won't run out quickly.  The effects are much better than the previous game, and all characters and enemies have animation to go along with their movements and attacks now.  I'd say that all of these things make the look and fights of the game better, even if enemies adding themselves to the fights gets annoying.

Is killing enemies the only option?  Not quite.  You can also capture them, and they will serve as party members (now you see why I said there was a little Pokemon thrown into the mix).  This is almost necessary for the parts of the game where a character will be without the rest of the main party, so make sure to carry a few capture nets for good measure.  Monsters you capture will have a different name that usually goes along with their class/type or what they are in reference to (the thief's name is Robert Heif, for example).  They also will likely have a unique skill or two, and then learn the same pool as other monsters you capture.  Monsters have low MP, but the skills they use are cheap.  Adding them to your party is useful to fill its ranks, but they just don't perform as well as the named characters.  It is fun to catch them all, though.

Last time, the story was told in 3 separate chapters that could be started in any order and all fit into an overall narrative.  Dragon Fantasy: Book 2 picks up where the third chapter left off, as our heroes are taking a boat trip.  After about 2-3 hours, you will be given a similar choice, all of which tie together.  It's a nice way of giving some freedom to the players while still maintaining a strong, overarching story.  I think it's pulled off very well, and many times I kept playing because I wanted to see what was going to happen next.  While it overall feels slightly more serious than the last game, there is still plenty of humor.  There is lots of silly dialogue, enemy names/attacks and tons of references to gaming/RPG culture.  You may know from my other reviews that I'm a fan of things like that, so I like that aspect of the game.  For me, the story and the parodies/jokes are solid and enjoyable.

There are a few diversions from the main story if you are so inclined.  Besides catching monsters, there are several side quests called "bounties".  Completing these will give you some money and usually an item.  Bounties come in three flavors: capturing a certain monster, killing a certain monster and examining a certain location for an item.  They aren't very hard or out of the way, so there's no reason not to do them.  Completing the story and about half of the bounties took me 13 and a half hours, so it is longer than the first game, which is a plus.  Cleaning up the trophies and the remaining bounties took me another 5 hours.  Thankfully, I was able to make my way through the story without the need to grind, so the balance of the game is good, too.

There are a few downsides to the game as well, as it is lacking some polish.  For a week, one of the bounties was unable to be completed.  There are ways to make NPCs slide along a line, sometimes even off the map.  At first, auto-saving on the PS3 would make movement really lag.  The Vita had it slightly better, where the auto-save would have the game sit on a black screen for a few extra seconds, but had no lag while you could move.  However, Woodsy's final spell, Metios (maybe my favorite reference in the game, right down to the MP cost), would turn the game into a slideshow on the poor Vita.  The silver lining to this is the developers are still working to polish the game, and talking directly to the community for feedback.  Problems are fixed fairly quickly, which was a great thing.

If you are a trophy hunter, or just disappointed that the previous game didn't have a platinum, you will be happy to know that Dragon Fantasy: Book 2 does feature a platinum for your efforts.  You will get a few trophies for story progression, and a few for doing side quests and capturing monsters.  Be aware that capturing 50 different monsters can be almost impossible later in the game if you haven't been grabbing them when you can during the story (because of the SMASH described above).  There's also a trophy in the beginning that's easy to miss, where you have to fight a Rock Man (who's Mega powerful) so it can be captured a little later.  The only grinding trophy is to get a single character to lvl 99 (no, using a captured Nugget doesn't count).  Fighting solo will get this much faster, and you can use that character to finish the final boss solo and claim that gold trophy for your collection, too.  Not too bad a list, as they are all obtainable.

Fans of 16-bit era RPGs should check out Dragon Fantasy: Book 2.  While you will get more out of it if you have played Book 1, it's definitely not necessary to have played that to enjoy this game.  It is a lighthearted take on RPGs that we know and loved, with a decent story to boot.  While at launch the game was lacking some polish, this will be less of a problem as time goes on.  The music is pretty catchy and the graphics and animations are pretty good.  Save for a few instances, the game played well on both PS3 and Vita, and you can use the internet to transfer your save file from one to the other.  There's even some multiplayer coming to the game soon, which I will update the review with when I get a chance to check it out.  Dragon Fantasy: Book 2 is fun and I look forward to Book 3.

PAX Impressions: "Mighty Monday": Part 4

The final part, #4, will focus on the indie titles that I saw and played at the Indie Mega Booth (or something along those lines).

Dragon Fantasy: Book 2
I enjoyed Book 1 of Dragon Fantasy, so it stands to reason that I would be looking forward to Book 2.  The style is more like Chrono Trigger (the first game was like Dragon Warrior) and the enemies were on the field as you fought (no random encounters).  I mostly watched a bit and talked the lead creator about the game.  Adam Rippon was pretty cool throughout my encounter with him.  A real down to earth guy, he was also pretty candid about the game and other things.  He also seemed interested in bringing a version of Dragon Fantasy to other systems, which would be cool to see.

Since the show was about a week and a half before the game came out, I was able to get a review copy, so a review of Dragon Fantasy: Book 2 will be here soon if you are interested in hearing more about the game.

Foul Play
I had not heard of this game until I wandered across the booth at PAX, and it looked like a side scrolling beat-em-up in the vein of Castle Crashers.  Since I like those kinds of games, I figured I would give the game a spin.

I'm glad I did.  The game is set up as a character performing a play about his life as a demon hunter.  High hitting combos and evading enemy blows would win them over and get you more points.  The presentation was really nice and I liked the concept.  The game also played pretty well, and was definitely build for co-op since the main character has a side kick helping him perform the play.  The enemies were also actors, and wouldn't die so much as lay down and crawl away when the lights were off of them.

My partner (another random dude) and I performed well enough that after the boss of the stage, we got an "encore" where enemies from the stage would rush us and we could fight them off again for more points.  It was really fun and I look forward to trying the full version.  As it stands, I did receive a review copy so in the near future I can tell you all how the full game panned out.

Galack-Z
The game has been described as taking the best of 80's anime and cramming it into a space flight/ shooter game like the original Asteroids.  After seeing it in action, that is a very good way to describe it.  The main character was named A-Tak (har har) and his look and spacecraft did remind me (and just about everyone else) of Macross/ Robotech.

The game isn't a standard shoot-em-up (shmup), either.  You can slyly go around unsuspecting foes and catch them off guard.  This is important because the bigger enemies can kill you quickly.  The ship controls in a floaty manner reminiscent of Asteroids (as mentioned before), so you have to be careful not to run into your surroundings.  Probably the best part are the missiles.  You can target several enemies in your cone, and fire a barrage of missiles (complete with missile trails) to destroy them.  Yup, Macross.

The game is slated to come out next year, but looked surprisingly far along.  The developer talked with me a bit about the game as said they started with making the core concepts solid and plan to build all of the other stuff on top of that.  Given what I saw of the game, they have a solid core intact, so we will see what all gets piled on the top.  The game looks fun, but hard, and I look forward to trying it next year!

Dragon Fantasy: Book I (PSN) Review

Dragon Fantasy: Book I was recently released on PSN to scratch your old-school RPG itch.  I really like and appreciate the retro look, as you will likely know if you read some of my other reviews.  The world map really reminds me of Final Fantasy (yes, the first one), but the battles feel more like Dragon Warrior.  My favorite part of the overall look of the game is that you can switch it between an 8-bit and more of a 16-bit look.  I really like options like that, and it's fun to switch between them.  The monsters don't look much different, but the map and people do.  As a nice bonus, the simplistic, retro music also changes!

While I did like a lot of the visual and music/sound, there is one part that bugged me.  When you are poisoned, the menu and text bubbles all become green.  It's normally a nice blue (like Final Fantasy II/IV) or black (if you turn off "enhanced mode"), so this change is jarring to me.  It also makes it harder to decipher what you are selecting, since the highlighted text also changes to a shade of green.  I appreciate that there is a change when you are poisoned, but I'd like something a little more subtle.  If you have multiple people in the party, it's not readily apparent who is poisoned until the game tells you they lose health.  To make this kind of thing worse, when you are low on health, it changes to red.  It's the visual version of the super annoying beeping when you are low on health in the Pokemon and Legend of Zelda games.  I would like it better if you could turn it off or somehow lessen the effect.  Also, the screen flashes red when you step on damaging terrain, which makes me wince a bit when I do it.

As an old-school RPG, you can probably guess how the game plays.  There are random encounters and you select your moves from a menu every turn.  Since I like turn-based RPGs, I can't complain.  Although, I feel like I miss a lot in combat.  You can see your accuracy in the status screen, but it sure doesn't feel like the 80%+ that the game says I have.  You can easily miss multiple times in a row, which has actually gotten me killed in the game.  A note here: a few days after launch, there was a patch that recalculated the accuracy, effectively raising it just enough to make it fine, but I wanted to mention the pre-patch accuracy impressions too.

Getting defeated in Dragon Fantasy isn't too bad.  It's very much like Pokemon.  You lose half of your money and go back to town.  I will admit it is annoying to lose money, since I barely had enough until the very end of the chapters, when I didn't need it.  I quickly slipped back into old habits and would spend time grinding whenever I hit a new town.  Even then, it took a chunk of time to raise the money to afford all the upgraded equipment.  Usually I would buy a few and make do.  In some towns you can store money in a bank, but only in increments of 1000.  Yes, lower increments would have been nicer, but I also understand that they need some penalty for getting killed.

As a fan of parodies, I appreciate the humor in the game.  Most enemies have names that are funny or references to things like Stealy Dan (he's a thief, get it?), Audrey, and Obligatory Orc.  They have funny attacks too, like when the Son of Rock Monster yells "You're not the boss of me!"  Probably my favorite part is the text when you defeat the monsters.  "Stealy Dan broke up" and when a werewolf becomes "a cold, scared, naked guy" are two funny examples.  These little bits show lots of care for the little parts of the game, since even the pallet swaps of different monster have different attack names and text when they are defeated.  There's even a few direct references to old RPGs thrown in for good measure.  Heck, even the title is a cross between Dragon Warrior and Final Fantasy.  The humor won't be for everyone, but I really like it.

The game is an RPG, so you will get a lot of playtime out of Dragon Fantasy Book I.  There are 3 different main stories to play and 1 additional "intermission" story.  The first chapter is Ogden by himself, and hence the hardest chapter, and clocks in at around 8 hours.  The second chapter is the easiest, since Anders can recruit a party, and is about 2-3 hours.  The third chapter, about the thief Jerald, is about 3-4 hours.  The bonus Intermission M is about 1-2 hours total.  Fans of Minecraft should like the intermission, since you can finally have a creeper help you instead of just ruining your hard work.  Total playtime is about 15 hours, which is pretty good for $10.

The story is pretty good, too.  I'm a fan of multiple perspectives, so I really like that the three stories intertwine and tell pieces of a larger whole.  The Intermission is likely just a joke chapter and not part of the main story, though.  If you are after trophies, they are pretty easy to get.  Most of them are obtained by playing through the various chapters, with only a few being missable.  Getting those will likely be the only reason you replay the game.

While playing, I did encounter a few bugs.  Mostly, they were game freezes and crashes.  Originally, after playing for thirty minutes or so, the game would freeze.  This was quickly patched out, but that patch causes a freeze toward the end of Chapter 3.  You can reinstall the game and not install the patch to get past that.  Also, there is a freeze after the credits for the Intermission chapter, but it does not affect getting the trophy.  You will definitely want to update the game when you play, but be aware of these issues.  Given how quickly the first patch was released, it is obvious that Muteki Corporation are working hard to fix the issues, and I appreciate that they clearly care about their product.

As much as I like the game, I do have a few minor gripes.  True to old school RPGs, you can only walk.  A dash button would've been nice for those long stretches of walking.  According to one of the developers, Adam Rippon (on GameFAQs of all places), the next patch will be adding a run button, so hopefully I can cross that gripe off the list.  Other gripes include no world map, no inventory or spell sorting and the high encounter rate.  The encounter rate is nice when you want to grind, but annoying when trying to make your way through a dungeon.  These didn't keep me from enjoying the game, though.

I was pleasantly surprised when playing Dragon Fantasy Book I.  I love the retro look and gameplay, as it really takes me back to when I was a kid.  If you played RPGs in the late 80s and early 90s, I'd recommend trying Dragon Fantasy.  I'm not sure how much younger gamers would get out of it, but my 6 year old is trying to play it after seeing me play it.  It's fun and has me looking forward to Book II, which I'm hoping will make its way to the PS3!

Bonus Tip:  In Chapter 3, after recruiting Ramona, steal from the guard south of the Thieves Guild by "talking" to him from behind.  You will get 100 gold but have to fight him.  When you win, you get 100xp and another 25 gold.  If you go into a nearby building, it will reset him so you can do it again.  This was the most efficient way to get money (and xp) in Jerald's story.  You will get the high end equipment in no time!