There’s nothing interesting about any Dead Dragons battle that isn’t with a boss. Still, I coasted through every random encounter with the auto-play function. It’s pretty fun to see the main character’s super special dragon powers manifest in a way that isn’t just another variation on a power attack-instead, Will brings forth some giant claws made of shadows that decimate any enemies present. Only the summoner and his or her summoned monsters can attack for a while after Ruin Mode ends, everyone in the party is healed and the fight continues. By far the most interesting part of the combat system is Ruin Mode, in which one character summons some magical helpers to fight for a few turns. Each square can be filled with a “battle cell,” which imbues whoever stands in the cell with certain bonuses. It’s one of the least realistic representations of combat I’ve seen in a JRPG since I played Final Fantasy Legends III on my old Game Boy Pocket. In contrast, all your enemies line up horizontally across from you. By “formation,” naturally, I mean a straight line which rotates through each character in sequence. Each member of the party occupies a different square in a formation. The combat in Dead Dragons reaffirms this somewhat, though it’s at least somewhat novel. Throw in a handful of generic NPCs whose only dialogue is “…” and one housewife in particular who giggles about how it’s a woman’s duty to make herself look pretty even if she’s only going around the corner, and it becomes painfully apparent just how paint-by-numbers KEMCO’s approach to game development has become. It’s one of the company’s biggest failings, and begs the question: why does KEMCO want to make RPGs in the first place? The most important part of making a successful RPG is crafting a compelling story, and Dead Dragons is anything but compelling. With a little bit of nuance and outside-the-box thinking, Dead Dragons game could have an enjoyable plot, but KEMCO doesn’t have time to write something original when they’re on a 12-game-per-year schedule. There are also the usual NPCs occupying the “mysterious ninja girl,” “loud and kind-hearted swordsman,” and “mousy, bespectacled cleric” roles. The entire story is really just based on your character not wanting to take one for the team, which put a damper on my desire to play as him at all. After being violently ejected by the mayor of his town (who amusingly says that he doesn’t want you to leave right before he tells you that nobody in the town ever trusted you, so get lost kid), Will spouts a bunch of nonsense about how he “can’t just accept that” and how precious his life is. This will eventually kill him and birth a new dragon, so that dragons can eventually make a comeback and restore balance to the world. Naturally, since everyone else thinks dragons were wiped out a century ago, they are immediately shown to be alive, and quickly curse Will with a deadly Dragonscar that gives him magic powers while it saps his lifeforce. You play as Will, a young guardian whose father always insisted that dragons were still alive in the world. KEMCO’s technique is starting to show signs of wear and tear, and Dead Dragons might be the beginning of the end for their current business model.Īs with all KEMCO stories, Dead Dragons is wholly unremarkable in its plot. What I found was sadly unsurprising: another mediocre JRPG story rushed out to support a poorly-defined combat system. Naturally, being a big fan of dragons in general, I had to check it out. Ubiquitous developer KEMCO has released their monthly RPG, this time titled Dead Dragons. Welcome back, my friends, to the RPG assembly line that never ends.
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