Dragon Force:
The Eight Holy Warriors

Review by Chi Phan

STORY

The story of Dragon Force is broken up into 8 main characters. At the beginning of the game you can choose which of the 8 warlord character's storyline to play out. Note that all the 8 different storylines are pretty much the same with slight differences here and there. The story of Dragon Force starts off in the land of Legendra and it's eight countries. Goldark, one of the eight main characters from the country of Fandaria has broken out of prison and killed his older brother the king of Fandaria and declaring himself the new king of Fandaria. Goldark then set about to rage war on the other 7 countries of Fandaria. Now as one of the rulers from the other countries, you have recieved a message that war has broken out. Along with that comes a message from a holy person that behind this terrible war is a greater danger. The Dark god Madruk will soon be awaken and you have to find and unite the 8 holy warrior known as the Dragon Force to defeat him. You, the player of course in one of the holy warrior. Now it doesn't take a genius to figure out that the other holy warriors are the rulers of the countries of Legendra. With this in mind, you have to set out to conquer the other countries and unite the warriors of Dragon Force.
The story here isn't a very rich or deep storyline by any means or an emotional one. If fact it's more of an average story to be quite frank. You don't hate it or care too much about it as there aren't any moments in the story to give you any lasting impressions. It is however adequate enough for you to enjoy the game with. I do like how Working Designs put in the little small comedy quotes to help add the funness to the game.

Score: 6/10

CHARACTERS

Dragon Force has an abundance of characters. From the eight main warlords all the way down to the generals. Of course when you have this many characters, something has to give and that's their character developement. You really don't know anything about the characters in this game at all. Most of the characters personalities are made up with the quotes they use in battles. Don't get me wrong, some of the quotes that these characters make are pretty funny but you just wish there were more meat to the characters. I don't even have a favorite character in this game. I have a favorite fighter but not a favorite characters as most of them are just plain. On abundance I give high points but on characteristics a very low score. Overrall a 6 would be good as sometimes more isn't always better.

Score: 6/10

GRAPHICS

The game graphics are very good to excellent. Most of the eye popping graphics comes from the anime artwork scene which is excellent. And I mean excellent. The battle scenes are made up of small drawn character sprites which are done very well in a somewhat 3-D background. The world map is okay as it is mainly made up of castles and dotted lines showing you the roads of Legendra. The colors are very nice but even nicer in the artwork. The only thing that hurt the graphics are the opening and ending anime sequences. And I have to say that it is one of the poorest drawn anime cut sequences around. This is a major disappointed compare to the drawn anime artwork. Still an 8 overrall due to the artwork.

Score: 8/10

MUSIC

Music?? Honestly there's like only 3 musical tunes in this game. The world map tunes which is probably the same as the menu tune. The battle tune and the boss fight tunes. This is like a major disappointment here. They didn't really put much thought in this section of the game. A five is being generous here.

Score: 5/10

GAMEPLAY

Now for the most exciting part of the game, the gameplay. Have I mention how fun it is to play this game?? Well I'll mention it again just to annoy you readers out there. It is very fun and addictive. But enough of that and let's go into detail about the gameplay.
First off, Dragon Force plays more like a strategy game than a strategy rpg game. In most strategy rpg game you have your party members in a chess like board moving square by square. In Dragon Force you have an entire fighting unit ranging from 10 to 100 warriors. This of course applys to the enemy as well so there could be a total of 200 warriors duking it out on the battlefield. Which is very awesome to witness by the way. Let's backtrack a little shall we. Now the world map is made up of a bunch of different castles from different countries. Each castle is occupy by either your forces or the enemies. Your objective is to storm the enemies castle until all the castle on the world map is yours thus making you the ruler of Legendra. Now each warlord (main character) has his/her own small group of generals to begin with. Each general comes with his/her own different type of fighting unit as with your warlord. The fighting unit can range from regular soldiers to dragons to zombie. Each fighting unit has one advantage or disadvantages over the other of course. Now as the game progresses, you will have the option of recruiting defeated generals or search for new generals in the menu system. Now any defeated enemy generals will appear in the captive option of the menu system. Once the menu system comes up, you have the option of talking to your captives and trying to convince them to join your cause. Some will and some won't. In the menu system is also a search option. Throughout the game certain special generals will come with the ability to search or fortify. When you select a general to search, he or she will look for rare accessories, items or find a hidden general. The success rate of this vary by the way. You can also choose the fortify option which lets the general fortify a castle thus increase the size of fighting unit the castle can hold. There's also an award option where you can award any general who wins a battle an award. What does this award do? It give the general an additional 10 men to his fighting unit. In other words, this is how you can make your initial 10 fighting men become 100 fighting men. It's a good idea to hand out awards to help increase the capacity of fighing units available as well as keep any generals who's thinking about deserting you in line. This pretty much explain the basic of the gameplay and menu system. Now let's move onto the battle system.
Battle System: Okay once you have decided to move a general or generals units into storming an enemy castle, you will have the option of attack, talk, or retreat. Talk and retreat are pretty much the same. Anyways if you selected attack then a choice of all the generals and his/her fighting units will show up under the command of your leading general whom is storming the castle. You then can decide whom you want to enter battle first and so on. Now before a battle can begin, you have to decide the formation of your fighting unit. Each formation has it's advantages and disadvantages. Once that's done, your little sprites of fighting unit ranging from 10 to 100 men will storm the battlefield in a cool battle cry. This is fun to watch as hell. While your fighing men are in the mist of engaging the enemies fighting units, your general is station at the back. He or she can support their fighing unit by bringing out magic attacks or special attacks. Victory occurs when the enemies or your general is defeated in battle. This can be done when your fighting units has killed off the enemies generals or in a duel fight. A duel fight will occur when both armies fighting units ended up killing each other off. This happens quite alot by the way. A duel fight is pretty simple. It pits general to general fight in an automatic sequence. You can only hope that your general hp is higher than the other general and that his attack will do greater damage. So basically a battle will be won when a general is defeated. That pretty much sum up the battle system. It's pretty simple and very fun.
The overrall gameplay is very simple. It may take you awhile to learn what the advantages and disadvantages of the formation being use but that's not too hard. The gameplay is very unique as I have yet to see any game where you can pit up to 200 fighting sprites in a Braveheart movie sequence. It sure is alot better that the usually chess board square by square moving attacks like with FF Tactics or Vandal Hearts. Some of the dialogue exchanges between the two fighting generals are priceless. For obvious reasons the gameplay is definetly the strongest points in this game.

Score: 10/10

EXTRAS/REPLAY

In terms of extras, you can get a few extra generals here and there but that's no biggy. In fact there's not too many secret stuff overrall in this game. Now the main meat of course is the replay of the game. With 8 different warloads, you can have up to 8 different game. Since the game is so fun and addictive, you'll definetly want to play this game 8 times.

Score: 8/10

In the end of it all, Dragon Force is one of the funnest and most addictive game that I have ever play. Nothing beats seeing 200 little sprites hacking and slashing at each other on the battlefield. Sure the story isn't as great as it should be or the characters aren't as memorable as any FF characters but the game overrall is one hell of a ride. Anyone who played this game can tell you it's one fun ride from beginning to the end.

Final Score: 8/10