Budget titles need not be spotty affairs, as anyone who has played Earth Defense Force, or the creepy yet entertaining Burger King line of games can attest to, however in the case of Dragon Blade: Wrath of Fire, you definitely get what you pay for. With it, D3 and Land Ho have provided one of the worst examples of what happens when the word “budget” applies to both the price of the game and the level of resources that went into developing it.
Dragon Blade: Wrath of Fire tells the story of Dal, a young man of stoic features who is tasked by the spirit of a dead dragon to find the six pieces of the titular Dragon Blade and vanquish evil. Generations ago, Valthorian, a fire dragon, decided to hang out in the world of man and help them do whatever it is man needs help from dragons to do. Valthorian’s draconian cohorts didn’t take kindly to this, so they clouded the minds of six kings to assault Valthorian’s stronghold and chop him up into little bits. In the ensuing carnage, Valthorian’s soul is split into pieces of the Dragon Blade, the dragons run roughshod over the land and each king, save for one, obtains some dragon-like ability. The lone dissenting king among the bunch hides somewhere and plays farmer, keeping his piece of the Dragon Blade hidden until Dal finds it.
Why Dal feels the need to go out and save the world is unclear. Sure some beasties raze his village and kill his girlfriend, but save for a fairly noncommittal grunt of unhappiness Dal doesn’t seem all that tore up. Also, unlike in Okami or Legend of Zelda: Twilight Princess the land doesn’t seem particularly changed from the rampaging forces of evil save for the randomly spawning lizard men and wolves. Truth be told, had Dal simply defeated the bad guys in his village, rebuilt his hut and spent out his days using the Dragon Blade to make fruit salad he would have done everyone a world of good.
Most levels include running from point A to point B while monsters spawn in front of you and require assistance in reaching the monster afterlife. Dal’s attacks are controlled via moving the Wiimote up, down or side to side. Blocking is done via the A button with perfectly timed blocks producing a health shard, and moving while blocking letting Dal roll out of harm’s way. The B button is used for locking on to enemies, which is helpful when the camera gets whacky, but more often than not you’ll be surrounded by enemies, so just furiously swiping without locking on will be sufficient for the task. As you progress through the game and obtain dragon powers, they’re mapped to arrows on the D-pad.
Controls range from adequate to unresponsive based on the task. For the most part, the sword swinging works well, however blocking and activating dragon powers are less than perfect. As mentioned before, blocking at the right time nets Dal some extra health, however it’s tricky to determine when the game will register that you want to block and many times you’ll either block too soon, which doesn’t net you any health but at least you don’t get stabbed in the face, or too late which results in decidedly less health. Similarly, if you attempt to turn on your dragon powers while your opponent’s attack animation has started, Dal stands there stone faced as his opponent’s axe cleaves him in twain.
Once you’ve activated your dragon powers they have some interesting visuals and work well for clearing out large groups of enemies. Dal obtains two dragon fists, a tail, a head and some wings and while they’re all pretty cool, the fist you get at the beginning of the game is more than enough to get the job done.
Dal has plenty of enemies to use his new powers on; however they’re all just differently colored versions of the same core set of monsters. What the game lacks in originality it makes up for in volume as Dal will frequently find himself surrounded by a half dozen lizard men, all slashing furiously while you mash on the A button to block or flail wildly to rend them asunder. After fighting through wave after wave of baddies, and making it through various zones that can’t be traversed until you defeat everyone, you’ll come to one of the six kings who helped bring about Valthorian’s downfall.
Beating him will net you a new dragon power; however beating him also involves beating the horrible camera, a tremendous challenge in and of itself, as well as beating the crappy save system. Dragon Blade uses a checkpoint system however it also provides you with a finite number of lives, lives you may use up completely getting to the next king only to die while figuring out his pattern forcing, you to restart the level.
