Gaming Trend

Gaming Trend Review

by Chuck Greer

I was very excited when I heard I had Dragoneer’s Aria coming for me to review. I did a little research and this game looked very promising. Once I got it, I loaded her up and started the opening cut scene and thought “Wow, This is going to be a good game!”. As soon as the game finally gets started good my thoughts were “Boy, what am I doing wrong?” Although the game had some promise, design decisions hurt this epic story based RPG.

Graphics in Dragoneer’s Aria I think are pretty well done. Some might think the graphics could be better, my limited experience with PS1 and PSP RPGs might be skewing my opinion here but I actually like the graphics. The cut scenes are very well done, with no noticeable stuttering. The in game perspective is in the 3rd person chase view and you can rotate the camera via the L-R buttons which can be a bit frustrating at times, readjusting the camera for the proper view. The various visuals for “levels” or areas are somewhat bland, but the towns look great and give a feeling of an epic area. One thing I didn’t like was when in an area and a enemy was around you it always has the same graphic for the enemy until you enter the battle. There is an available mini map for you to use on screen that does sometimes looks a tiny bit pixilated but this isn’t a PS3 at 1080p; this is a handheld gaming system. I have no problems, save one, with sounds and I’ll get to that in a bit. The music is very well done, the music fits the game very well, as do the ambient sounds. The voice acting isn’t too bad even though one character has a very distinguishable Russian accent. What does annoy me that the designers decided for your characters to make a comment both before and after each battle. While this could possibly be ok, each character I think has about two lines each. Needless to say this gets annoying VERY quickly. Controls are pretty common fare for this type of game, and are fairly simple to grasp. Your analog stick moves your character while as mentioned above your L-R buttons move the camera around, select opens up the mini map, up and down keys switch between characters, left and right switch between targets. Nothing new here but why reinvent the wheel? Same can be said for the menu window, although its gets a bit difficult to navigate through the menus at times.

Your game starts up as a young, soon to be appointed Dragoneer (Valen) heading for your ceremony. You come to find out in the past the One Holy Dragon was slain by the evil black dragon. When it was slain it split up into 6 soul dragons. They are the protectors of the world along with their protectors, the Dragoneers. Once you get to your ceremony, a black dragon disrupts the proceedings. You pick up your first comrade (Euphe), and the race is on to check on the other dragons. This is where the game goes downhill quickly. Where do I begin? First thing I noticed is the blandness of the levels. To say the layout of the levels is simplistic and linear is polite. Here is where I think the nicely done mini map is actually a hindrance to game play. If there is only one was to go with maybe two side alleys, why do you need a mini map? It would have felt like you had to explore a bit if you didn’t have it. In the developers defense you can turn it off, but who wouldn’t open it if available?

Then we come to the actual fighting. But first, let me try to describe the mana energy system. You have hit points, mana and energy. Mana and energy have their own subcategories. My first gripe is that all characters share their mana and energy pools. That is almost a game killer itself, but more on that later. Each character has three main mana/energy categories, Field, Battle and Dragon. Field is what is used on the map between battles, (like sprint) is used during battles. Every character has skill spots called “Lusce” where they can equip spells. And lastly are dragon, which derive from Dragon Orbs you can get during the game (you start off with one, and does Euphe) I could almost excuse this system if it wasn’t for the shared mana pool. The only way to regenerate your mana pool is to either have a potion available or use normal attacks. This means if one character uses all the mana, you are stuck using normal attacks until you can get it built back up.

This might almost be tolerable if it wasn’t for my next and most serious gripe, the monster difficulty and battles. I started the first area and thought “this game is almost to easy” and quickly got to the next area. I got to the first mob and promptly got my arse handed to me. I went from killing mobs in three hits to getting killed in one. I found myself going back to the starting area and fighting the mobs several times to level up enough to even be able to hit the next areas mobs. Unfortunately the mobs level up with you so you find yourself doing this over and over again. This also, would be almost forgivable if the battles weren’t so damn long. First you get the obligatory comment from your character, then the mob graphic pops up, and then you choose your attack, then you look at either your character or the enemy for a second or two, then the graphic of their attack or yours plays, and on and on. Battles can easily last ten minutes plus and figure 8-10 an area and you get my drift. If anything ever changed or was different, it might possibly be forgivable.

 Leveling seems simplistic as all new levels gain you is the ability to use higher level skills/spells and items, along with more hitpoints. And if you die (which you will, often) then you go back to either the start or end of each area, where the save points are. Yes save points. And God forbid you either miss one or get hit by the same bug I did. At least I hope it was a bug. I was standing in a save spot when a mob attacked me, making the mob AND THE SAVE SPOT disappears! I was afraid I would need a new PSP after throwing my current on in frustration. Nothing like 2 hours of VERY tedious monster battles down the drain to ruin your gameplay experience.And there is a crafting system, but due to not having readily available recipes seems like a tacked on feature.

I am going to be totally honest with you. If there is any replay value here the bad game play mechanics force you to go elsewhere. This game had a lot of promise. The story is truly grand and most of the gripes could be forgiven separately. But with all of them combined I cannot recommend this game to anyone other than very hardcore RPG fans.

Gaming Trend Score

67

1. Graphics: 70
2. Audio: 80
3. Controls: 90
4. Gameplay: 55
5. Value/Replay: 50
6. OVERALL:67