If there's one constant in all fantasy endeavors, it is this; dragons are cool. Giant flying beasts intent on hoarding gold, kidnapping helpless damsels, devouring entire armies, and just causing general mayhem in their spare time couldn't possibly be wrong. So by all conceivable logic, a game revolving around taking up the role of a dragon should kick quite a suitable amount of ass, right?



Right.

Introducing "The I of the Dragon". Quirky name aside (undoubtedly the result of some interesting logic), Primal Software has developed a fascinating and enticing action/RPG hybrid that seems to have slipped somewhat under the radar with a fairly hushed level of development, yet has finally been released in a format that, I am pleased to say, is very fun to play. Here's some background. The game takes place in medieval times in the magical world of "Nimoa", which ends up being a slightly less-than-happy place. Many years ago, the citizens of Nimoa teamed up with the local dragons in a pitched battle to drive off a being of overwhelming evil known simply as "Skarrborr". They succeeded - barely - and went back to living in peace, but the alliance with the dragons began to slowly fall apart. Eventually, they took off for higher grounds, but left behind a small warning for the humans, preaching that Skarrborr will eventually return. As a contingency plan, they also planted a dragon egg at a hidden location, which would hatch when the time was right upon Skarrborr's return to assist humanity in their struggle. As you're probably guessing, the player takes control of this newborn dragon just as the forces of evil have sprung up once again to ravage the land. Ready to save the world, again?

As stated above, The I of the Dragon (which I may as well just start calling "IoD" from this point on) is actually an action/RPG title, meaning that while the focus is primarily on zooming over the landscape causing destruction and misery everywhere you go, there are also some secondary stat-building elements, as well as three separate character classes to enhance replayability and make the game more interesting. Starting off, players can choose from three dragons - Barroth, the magician, Annoth, the fire-breather, and Morrogh, the necromancer. Each of these classes is distinct, not only in basic performance and statistics, but in their actual combat capabilities. The fire-breathing dragon is probably the closest thing to IoD's "Warrior" class, specializing in heavy duty assault roles with a few supporting spells to help mess up enemies. The necromancer has a deadly poison for its primary attack and is capable of raising zombies and other undead creatures on the ground to in a given battle. Finally, Barroth's magical capabilities offer this dragon a huge number of spells that do anything from teleport the player around the map to converting enemy units over to the player's side -albeit temporarily - with the downside being some really poor defensive statistics that means it is usually best to evade and fight from a distance than try to mix it up and close range (though the magician gets a nasty fallback ice-breath attack for times when your spells are still recharging and you need to freeze an errant opponent). Since my run through IoD was focused on using Barroth, I unfortunately can't comment extensively on how the other two classes stack up, but there definitely appears to be enough diversity between the three types to make trying all of them out worthwhile.

So anyways, after the player is given an enlightening (and optional) tutorial, he can get started in the singleplayer campaign. IoD features a semi-linear singleplayer element, which is to say that, while the player has free choice (mostly) in where he opts to go and how to go about tackling tactical situations, he's still led down a straight, unbending path of progression through the game. IoD's introduction is, unfortunately, a little scant, as I was expecting the game to open up with a scene showing my dragon hatching from his egg and trying to figure out where the hell he was, but the game instead just plunked me into the first area, where I was quickly greeted by a guy on a zany floating carpet by the name of "Quibeck". Quibeck (or "floaty carpet guy" as I like to call him) is someone the player will encounter many times throughout the day, as he essentially pops up every time a mission objective is accomplished to tell you what to do next. As it stands, the dragon's first task in the game is to test his capabilities, squish some meager opponents, and work his way up the fourth experience level. Fairly straightforward stuff, so I'll just move on to describing how the game plays.

IoD's approach to control input can either be totally mouse-only, or keyboard only - or a combination of both. I suggest the latter approach to players wanting an optimal experience. Basically, the player clicks a spot on the terrain to tell your dragon to go there, or use the arrow keys to fly around manually. Page Up and Page Down increase and decrease the dragon's altitude respectively, or there are a couple of arrows in the interface to also adjust height (which can be clumsy to use in the middle of a fight). Attacking is as simple as either right clicking on a victim, or making sure it's targeted (T key cycles through available targets) and pushing the Tab key. Differing attacks and spells can be accessed either by the numbers or function keys at the top of the keyboard - or, again, clicking the relevant areas of the interface with the mouse. Manipulating the camera view using the mouse is also a breeze, and I never had any issues with the camera messing up on me once I changed it away from the default "tracking" mode.

Controlling the dragon is one thing, but handling it properly takes quite a bit more effort. The differing dragon types basically have two different types of attacks; primary, and magic. Primary attacks are neat in that they are effectively "always" available for use and can be charged up for a more powerful strike, but also tend to be difficult to deploy. A case in point would be the fire dragon's primary attacks, which at the lowest experience levels are restricted only to a simple slow-moving fireball (which travels slowly enough to make hitting targets difficult) and a fire-breath attack, which can be incredibly deadly, yet also requires the dragon to hover still over a target at close range. New attacks can be unlocked if points gained from leveling up are put into the appropriate skills, so expect quite a variety of tactical options. Magic attacks are a little more flexible in that the effects are typically varied to a much higher degree - everything from defensive to offensive spells are available - but they can take a long time to recharge based on the player's current stats and an excess of points must usually be spent upon level up in order to obtain a new spell. On top of that, while multiple spells can be deployed in rapid succession, the fact that they all try to recharge at the same time has an impact on the delay before they are ready for use again, based on the "Mana Inflow" stat. One final thing to mention is that players can only have a maximum of 12 slots for "armed" spells (and even then, new players only have access to a couple), so magic users intent on having a wide variety of spells at their disposal may find themselves doing a lot of hot-swapping between the armed and unarmed slots.

What-ho though, there's more! While dragons can typically last a really long time without food, that fact exists only under the assumption that said dragon is lazily sitting on his ass doing nothing but watch the grass grow. At the lower left of the interface are two bars - "Stamina" and "Hunger". Stamina dictates the dragon's current capabilities, including health/magic regeneration rates and movement speed, while the "Hunger" percentage will decrease with repeated excessive maneuvers (such as those incurred during a lengthy assault on an enemy stronghold). When the hunger gauge reaches zero, the dragon's stamina will be affected, as well as its capabilities. Fortunately, there's a rather simplistic way to alleviate the hunger situation - simply find some small creature (human or otherwise) wandering the landscape, switch to the "Grab" attack, right-click on the victim in question, and watch as your dragon swoops down and picks up the unfortunate victim. Click the "Grab" button again to devour the poor bastard whole. Valid targets for this can range anything from stray cattle to smaller monsters, but larger creatures cannot be picked up. It's also possible to devour corpses littering the landscape if a quick boost is needed. Eating people isn't the only use of the Grab command, of course - several times throughout the game, the dragon will be required to retrieve a person or object and carry it to another location.

I'm going to delve into stats and IoD's RPG element a little more. Essentially, each dragon has a variety of baseline statistics which determine what he can do and how effectively he can do it. The first three stats (Fly Speed, Life, Regeneration) are mostly self-explanatory and are purely defensive, but an increase to the "Fire Power" stat will have an effect on all of the dragon's primary attacks, while "Breath Capacity" determines how many times the dragon can use a primary attack before needing to pause to recharge. Finally, "Mana Inflow", as mentioned earlier, is one of the most important stats for spell-casters, as it determines how much power is available to recharge spells - definitely something to pay attention to. Gaining experience is pretty much the same standard fare as any other RPG, just go out and slaughter some monsters. Experience is also given for completing certain quests and missions throughout the game, so there are plenty of opportunities to level up. A secondary method the game uses to help players increase their power is through certain magic orbs hidden in certain enemy "lairs", which are released when they are destroyed. There are three types of crystals (red, green, and blue), each of which has a differing effect on the dragon when five of them are collected - anything from an increase in spell slots to the gaining of additional hit points.

IoD also features some interesting strategic elements. In the war with the humans against Skarrborr, the dragon is commonly called in to assist the natives with their problems in a given area. The game world is split up into a large number of different "sectors", which can be accessed and transitioned to simply by calling up the global map facility. The dragon's objective throughout the game is to establish outposts in each sector and begin pushing back the invading monsters, and is carried out in two ways - one, eliminating local enemy lairs to prevent enemy reinforcements from spawning, and two, creating a town. Building a town is free and can be done at any time, but towns can only be created in a pre-scripted location on each map ("Where the Earth magic is strongest"), Towns generally consist of some walls, a bunch of villagers, a central "altar" (which players can hang around for a quick health boost), and a selection of defenses, as well as its own complimentary "floaty carpet guy", who not only assists in the town's defense, but flies around the landscape sucking up corpses with his magic vacuum cleaner for energy. When enough energy is stored, the town can be upgraded, which will increase its defensive potential and size. A level 1 town is just a small selection of buildings with a couple of archers and hunters for defense, while a level 6 town is a full-blown metropolis with huge walls and towers and large armies of creature-riding knights. Towns are effectively fully automated and can basically look after themselves with no interaction from the player, but he must be nearby in order to initiate an upgrade, as well as effect repairs. Still, I found the "town" concept to be a really cool feature which added some interesting strategic depth to IoD, but I wish it had been carried out a little further - it would have been nice to have some kind of interface for amassing soldiers together to go assault specific targets, or to custom-build towns in a specific manner that could augment the dragon in different manners. One weird note - every time my dragon got hungry, I found I could just waltz over to the city and gobble up a villager with no negative impact on the game. While the poor villager screamed and twitched in agony as I hovered five feet above the town chewing the bastard's head off, nobody else ever seemed to give a damn, and they continued their merry endless patrol of the village perimeter. Freaks.

All of these elements I just discussed come together to make for a highly entertaining and refreshing romp that turns out to be much more than just "a dragon game where you fly around and blow stuff up". With the town-building element in place, there are times where you may have to break off an assault to go help out your human buddies (after turning one or two into a tasty snack, of course). Getting started in a new sector can sometimes be an interesting balancing act - do you go out of your way to try and clear out all the enemy lairs before trying to set up a town, or do you resolve to simply secure the designated "Earth magic" point, electing to hold out against the waves of monsters battered against your town until the floaty carpet men can scoop up enough corpses to upgrade the town sufficiently to defend itself? These are just some of the decisions that have to be made during gameplay, and with the three totally separate spell/attack styles between the dragon classes, a stat-building system that lets the player determine how his dragon turns out, and a surprisingly lengthy campaign that took me a bit of time to get through, IoD has an astonishing level of depth and enjoyment for a title most people have probably never even heard of before.