In the past, games made of popular
cartoon series usually were a decent affair, but nothing to really get all hot
and bothered about. Lately, the trend has turned upward and the games were
getting better and more fun to play. Legend of the Dragon brings gamers back to
reality as we are treated with a very rushed game that shows that sometimes big
companies hurry a game just to have it out there, instead of making the game
actually function and remain fun.
In case you have never heard of the
show here is a brief synopsis of it. The game takes place in China, where
light/dark and Yin/Yang are maintained by a guardian called the Golden Dragon.
The guardian of this temple must be chosen from a brother and sister, twins born
in the Year of the Dragon, but only one of them can be chosen. Jealous that her
brother was chosen, the girl turns to the forces of evil to destroy the 12 lost
temples of the Chinese Zodiac in order to gain enough power to defeat her
brother. It is up to you to gain enough power to defeat your sibling.
The problem with this game is that
the fighting engine is extremely stripped down. There is only one punch and kick
button, the rest are grabs, block, and strafe. You must string together various
button combinations to create powerful moves in order to defeat your enemies.
There is an energy meter called Ki gauge, and if you have enough energy in there
you can transform into the character’s guardian form and do more devastating
attacks. The problem is that the attacks are identical for every player, one is
a beam-like attack, another launches fireballs that are easy to dodge, and the
last is a six-button combination that you must press, but if your opponent
presses them first they will redirect the attack at you. This is all that there
is to this fighting game. The most frustrating thing is the poor movement
control.
There are several game modes that
can keep players occupied, if they deal with the horrendous controls. First off
there is the quest mode, which is the main story of the game. This is where you
can move Ang or Ling around the map in a “board game” environment. You must then
go to various templates and there are various challenges that you must overcome,
such as defeat your opponent using only certain attacks, a time limit, and
various other things. If the fighting engine was better this would have been
fun; instead it ends up being very frustrating for players.
After the quest mode you have quick
fight, survival, time attack, practice, team battle, tag battle and versus. In
quick fight you can pick who you want to fight with and against and you go at
it. In survival mode you select a character and challenge as many characters as
you can before you health runs out. Time attack gives you 10 minutes to
challenge and defeat as many characters as possible. Practice mode allows you to
get familiar with how the game works.
Team battle is similar to a king of
the hill; both you and your opponent select a team of characters to fight with.
The first two will fight and whoever is left will fight the next character in
the other team, until they are knocked out. The way you win is to eliminate all
the characters on the other team first. Tag battle is where you form a team of
two characters and fight against another team of two; you will be able to tag in
and out of battle. Finally, versus mode will allow you a character to go at it
with another player.
The graphics for this game are
pretty lackluster. Since Legend of the Dragon is based on a show with the same
name, players would (and should) expect that the game to look like the show,
instead all that players will get is disappointment. Everything in this game is
decorated with bland cel-shaded visuals, and what makes this even worse is that
the character animations are very weak and pathetic looking. The background
lacks serious detail and are just plain ugly to look at on your PSP screen.
Since this game is based off a
popular television series one would think that the developers would use all of
the resources from the show to let players be immersed in the game’s world.
Instead the developers have really alienated gamers in two ways. First off the
game does not feature the voice actors from the show or even imitations of them.
Instead all players get are grunts and extremely short audio clips, and it even
gets worse. Point two collides with point one, because instead of using the
voices to carry along the quest plots, all you get is tons of text to read.
While this would have been acceptable a couple of years ago, in today’s gaming
world this is not acceptable, especially if the game is based off of a
television show.
Legend of the Dragon is rated teen
and contains violence.
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Gameplay: 3.6
The fighting engine, or lack thereof, really
hurts this game and makes it very frustrating and unplayable.
Graphics: 4.1
You would think that since this game is based off the cartoon with the
same name that the visuals would be representative of the show but in this game
they are not.
Sound: 3.2
Since this game is based off a popular cartoon you would think that
there would be plenty of voice acting, but instead players are treated with
grunts and very heavy text dialog.
Difficulty: Easy
The game is so bad to play that part of the difficulty is actually
keeping the game turned on for more than a few minutes.
Concept: 4.5
The only thing good this game has going for it is the plethora of modes
to play in.
Overall: 3.7
The most fun you will have with this game is taking it out of your
PlayStation Portable and putting it back in its box. Avoid at all costs.
