Thankfully the dragon fights don’t have these restrictions as each one takes up an entire level; however they can still be fairly difficult as you have to wade through three stages of pattern recognition, bad camera control and God of War type action where you have to perform whatever Wiimote gesticulating the game is calling for. At least the dragons look good and have cool attacks but by the time you get to them you’re wishing Dal had taken the express train to Heaven with his unlucky girlfriend.

Visually the game looks like an early PS2 era game, complete with the invisible hallways that keep Dal from completely exploring whatever field he’s in. The audio is nothing to write home about either, with Valthorian getting the lion’s, or in this case, dragon’s share of voice work. Most of the time you’re reading dialog while lizardman wizards and Minotaur chieftains pantomime. Fun stuff.

Dragon Blade: Wrath of Fire has a good chance to sell well given that there isn’t anything else of its genre available for the Wii, and who wouldn’t want to wave their Wiimote to slay dragons? Unfortunately even at 40 bucks, the price is about 30 too much and the game can’t be relied upon to provide anything other than brief moments of cool sandwiched between hours and hours of frustrating mediocrity. Dragon Blade isn’t budget—it’s low rent.