Most Helpful Customer Reviews
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10 of 11 people found the following review helpful:
3.0 out of 5 stars
Fun but definately not perfect game, October 20, 2007
Fun:4.0 out of 5 stars
Playing Dragon Blade gives me the impression the developers were trying to make a God of War for the Wii with a limited budget and time frame. The different weapon attacks are mapped to the different Wii remote motions. Swing the Wii remote right to swing your blade right, left for left, etc. The problem is after trying to swing the blade in the directions I want and failing, I often gave up and reverted to the "Wii waggle" for my attacks. This is especially true when fighting multiple enemies at once. When fighting one or two enemies, I actually do try to use the directional aspect of control. There is about a 70% success rate of the on-screen action replicating my Wii Remote motion. Users can mark an enemy as a target, but this doesn't always help since your character doesn't really lock on to the enemy you mark. Sometime when fighting multiple enemies my character will fly off unexpectedly into a mob or into an enemy that is swinging an ax. This is because the "Wii waggle" will trigger combos sometimes at the most inconvenient moment.
The graphics are ok. The main character is rather plain looking, while the enemies are much more detailed. I am guessing the developers were trying to make the main character a normal individual being called to an extraordinary adventure. Environments are not really impressive or awe-inspiring. The environment has invisible walls that pop up here and there.
One frustrating thing about the graphics and camera is often a barrier will come up creating a small room where the main character has to fight the enemies. The barrier color sometimes make it difficult to see the enemies clearly, especially when the camera shifts and locks in a unhelpful position. The only way to move the camera to a better position at those times is to move your character, because player control of the camera is almost nonexistent. A few times I was cursing the camera because objects would totally block the action occurring on screen. Nothing beats staring at a large pillar filling the screen with no idea happening on the other side of it.
The game is fun. It is satisfying to mow through a mob of enemies, especially since the game has no problems throwing 10 - 12 enemies at the player at once. I can't blame the game for it's mindless Wii remote waving, especially since I sometimes went through some God of War levels mindless bashing one button. I wish the developers had spent more time on the camera and programming the controls so they were more in tune with the direction the user intended. It is a fun game, but it definitely not a perfect game.
Controls (5/10)
Graphics (5/10)
Difficulty (6/10)
Fun (7/10)
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2 of 2 people found the following review helpful:
4.0 out of 5 stars
Surprisingly good low-budget hackfest, May 26, 2008
Fun:4.0 out of 5 stars
Controls (7/10)
Honestly, the controls are just about as good as any other *wag the wiimote* game. If you hold it incorrectly, you may sometimes do the wrong type of slash, or if you try to do them too quickly. I had few problems with the controls, but they certainly weren't excellent (dodging works pretty well though).
Graphics (7/10)
I gave the graphics 7/10 ONLY because of the dragons themselves. Excellently animated beasts that will scare the pants off of you; each one is a joy to behold. The rest of the graphics are, frankly, really boring. The normal monsters come in only about 5-7 varieties, and the normal environments are lackluster mazes at best. But, much like Shadow of the Colossus, the game is all about the dragons.
Difficulty (9/10)
This game reminds me of what it felt like to play an NES game, minus the frustration. Some sections are extremely hard to surmount (I had trouble with the third King), but luckily the save feature breaks up the challenge into bite-sized chunks. You can usually beat any troublesome stage in 3-4 tries.
Fun (7/10)
This is a low-budget game, and I came into it with low-budget expectations. Luckily, it surpassed them! The story is lame, the graphics are shoddy, the sound effects seem like they've been pulled from a "10,000 sound effects" CD, but it ends up being more fun than Soul Calibur Legends, and the game rewards you well for beating difficult stages with new powers--it's pretty well designed to give you satisfaction as the gamer.
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2 of 2 people found the following review helpful:
2.0 out of 5 stars
I wish the game would actually do what I want it to do....., January 2, 2008
Fun:4.0 out of 5 stars
I was expecting this game to be pretty sweet, and to be fair, the whole thing with using the claws and head of a dragon, etc, is pretty cool. Unfortunately, there are several problems with this game:
1. The chance of your character actually swinging his sword/blade/claw/weapon in the same direction you swing the Wii-mote is 50-50 at best. One boss fight took me several hours just because when I tried to swing my sword up, the game decided to swing horizontally.
2. The whole "locking on" to enemies idea works...sometimes. Most of the time, I can't lock onto the enemy I want to in a group of baddies (ex.--I try to lock onto an archer, but instead I end up targeting a nearby wolf).
3. Guarding against attacks doesn't work very well. I run into a group of angry wolves, and when I try to guard, they damage me anyway. Also, your attacks are very easily interrupted, which can make dealing with large groups of baddies tricky. And the designers of this game seem very fond of hordes of baddies. One other thing of note: you have no ranged attack, so killing archers is paramount, but it's not exactly easy with ten axe-wielding minotaurs chasing you around.
4. The fire power meter, which powers your special dragon attacks, drains really quickly. This is problematic when you try to hammer a boss with a dragon form, but have half of your attacks miss at close range.
Having said all of the above, Dragon Blade is alright for some mindless slashing through the legions of evil. The boss fights are enjoyable and challenging, but constantly killing groups of enemies over and over gets repetitive. There's an attempt at some sort of plot, but it doesn't really make any sense. The real fun is in using your powerful dragon forms to destroy groups of minions, provided that you actually punch forward when you want to punch forward and don't slash sideways instead. I feel this game could be greatly improved if the developers had focused on perfecting the way the game translates the motion of the Wii-mote. I'd buy it again, but only if I could find it used for less than twenty dollars. Save your money and get Twilight Princess, Metroid Prime 3, or Mario Galaxy instead.
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