When you begin the tale – which is meant to be replayed and re-experienced, mind you –
you’re greeted with one of the most clever character-select screens you’ll probably ever see. Seated at a circular table in a bustling medieval tavern are our six characters, clearly familiar with one another and feasting on some good food and ale as they figure out their next move. They’re all chasing the same goal, hence the cooperative nature of the game that allows up to four adventurers to play at one time.
Once you select your hero, you’re met with a wonderfully voice-acted intro, and you can then move out into the town itself, one ripped out of the likes of Zelda II and Faxanadu, but with staggeringly gorgeous graphics replacing the 8-bit look those games took advantage of. You can speak with the townsfolk, though most won’t have much to say at the outset, and you can even mess with them, punching a basket of apples out of a merchant’s hands or some jugs of water out of a townsperson’s grasp. Naturally, there’s much to see in the town, not only in terms of locales to visit – shops, guilds and the like – but in terms of gorgeous vistas in the background and other aesthetical sights to behold.
When you decide to undertake a quest, you can head out to the world map, another drop-dead beautiful piece of scenery to navigate. Stages can be revisited (in fact, they should be revisited often, but more on that later), though there is a sort of linear progression through the narrative, accompanied, of course, by optional quests. However, if you’re starting the game with a new character you’re unfamiliar with, you’ll be treated to an extremely thorough tutorial that will familiarize you with the moveset and skills of the class in question. These can be skipped, but you’d be wise not to:
Dragon’s Crown is no leisurely walk through the park.
Dragon’s Crown plays much like the many videos that have been released suggest: with a heavy emphasis on action, and a field of depth, too, requiring tactics beyond merely button-mashing, jumping, and the like. In fact,
Dragon’s Crown is pretty tough, especially if you’re trying to hone a high score or simply get through a stage quickly to net some fresh loot. Without using a hodgepodge of techniques and weapons, the AI will make quick work of you. Making matters more complicated is the fact that
enemies scale with you – much like the Lunar RPGs from the ‘90s – so no amount of grinding will make the game inherently easier for you to deal with. Bad guys will have more health as you get stronger, and will grow in number the more powerful you get, too. With each level ending with a powerful (and beautifully-drawn) boss, this very fact will give you pause the further you get into the game.
While I experimented with virtually every class – the Fighter uses brute force and the Sorceress relies on spells and the ability to replenish her own lost MP -- I spent a majority of my time on both PS3 and Vita with the Elf, a character with moderate melee strength and exceptional skill with a bow. The thing about the Elf, however, is that you have to be careful with how you use her bow, as her quill only holds a finite amount of arrows. With no guarantees that you’ll find ammo replenishment on your journey, the best way to use her is with quick kicks, juggling your foes mercilessly before following-up with aerial arrow strikes to lay the killing blow. If you run out of arrows, you’ll be out of luck to launch missiles from afar, so balance is truly the key with the Elf. With only melee strikes to guide her and supplement her specialty, you’ll quickly leave yourself at a severe disadvantage.
Mounts can also be found on various stages. Not every creature is a mount, of course, but if, say, a gigantic bird attacks you and you fell it, you will have an opportunity to get on its back and use it as a brand-new temporary weapon. Some of these mounts have special skills like breathing fire; others are more simplistic. I found the whole mount system interesting not only in terms of giving you exceptionally powerful ways to attack your enemies, but as damage sponges that will keep you safe from attack… that is, of course, until the mount takes enough damage and dies, leaving you on your own once more.
Character movement is mapped to the left analog stick on both Vita and PS3, and since the directional pad is itself used to navigate your quick-select inventory, there’s unfortunately no way to change this. However, even for old-schoolers like me that immediately reach for the d-pad in games like this, the analog stick works great, and falling back on the d-pad for item selection simply makes a great deal of sense.
The right analog stick, on the other hand (get it?), is used to control an independent cursor (much like in the upcoming PS3-exclusive Puppeteer) that allows you to identify points of interest in the environment.
What use is such a skill? It’s simple: every character in the game has a strange, hooded companion following them around with a gigantic sack full of treasure and loot. This is Dragon’s Crown’s humorous way of explaining how characters searching for endless riches can possibly hold everything they find, and these non-playable additions to your party can be directed towards specific areas to find even more loot while you’re fending off foes.
But what of the statistical minutiae of Dragon’s Crown?
What, exactly, makes this game an RPG? Crown totes plenty of RPG features, starting first and foremost with tried-and-true character stats. In addition to health and magic points, heroes have stats tied to Strength, Constitution, Dexterity, Intelligence, Magical Resistance, and Luck. As you become more powerful, find better items, equipment, and gear and get deeper into the game, these numbers will obviously increase.
Furthering the RPG feel (while also giving you plenty of reasons to replay old stages) is Crown’s scoring and appraisal systems. Your performance on various stages will net you a score, which is then translated through an algorithm to give you what are, in essence, experience points. Your score is basically modified to equate to experience based on your performance on that stage.
The better you play, the higher your score and the more experience you earn.
Likewise, any loot you found on the stage will be given rankings, but
the loot will remain totally ambiguous until you pay to have it appraised. So, if you get some loot with a common ranking, you may not want to pay to get it appraised. Then again, if you get a rare piece of equipment, it’s absolutely worth using some of your hard-earned currency to figure out exactly what it is. It may not always pan out when you do, but part of the reason Dragon’s Crown purports itself to be so replayable is, in fact, the need for more loot and the risk of getting that loot appraised.
Re: [PSV-PS3] Dragon's Crown
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