Reviewed: November 2, 2007
Reviewed by: Brian Wylie
Publisher
D3 Publisher
Developer
Land Ho!
Released: September 25, 2007
Genre: Action
Players: 1
8
8
6
8
8.1
Supported Features:
Screenshots (Click Image for Gallery)
It is time to fight fire with fire!! Your world is in major turmoil and you are the last person who can do something about it. In Dragon Blade Wrath of Fire you are Dal, a normal village boy who is about to get married, who has a special blood line flowing through you. This blood line has been giving you dreams of using a fiery sword. One day after a dream you wake up to find your village is being destroyed by monsters who eventually kill your fiancé and force you to want to help the spirit who is teaching you about your powers and end these monsters reign.
Dragon Blade requires the use of the nunchuk along with the Wii remote, although the nunchuk is used for more than just directing your character. When you press the little C button this centers the camera directly behind you. This is used mostly when you target on an enemy (I will talk about this later). The Z button is used to jump. This is mostly used when you are fighting against enemies taller than you.
The real fun comes with the immersive use of the Wii remote. Dragon Blade really allows you to get into the hack and slash experience and it really make the game so much better than it would be on any other system. You control the Dragon Spirited sword by swinging the Wii remote up, down, left or right. You can also thrust your Wii remote forward and this gives a deadly blow and allows you to pick up more health or fire gems.
You really need to increase the sensibility on the Wii remote before playing this game. You will come to realize that the sword follows about 85 percent of your movement when it comes to the up, down, left, and right directions. Thrusting the Wii remote forward only works about 30 percent of the time and on the bosses you really need to be able to get more fire gems to help defeat them.
When you put the two together you get pretty good control and can really get sucked into the game. I constantly found myself thinking I was actually fighting these characters and was trying to put some combinations of my own together and it really immersed me into the storyline and I couldn’t help but want to keep playing.
The game has a lot of mini sublevels that last about 8-15 minutes long. Some of the levels end suddenly while others have mini bosses you fight at the end, which you have to defeat to gain back the powers of the dragon that have transformed them into the monsters they are, and then you have the final boss. You have 5 lives to complete the levels from where you last crossed a checkpoint. If you run out of lives you have to start the level all over again.
The initial levels you have to go through will have you defeating a lot of enemies comprised of bats, giant spiders, monitors, and lizards. The only problem I have with these characters is the color combinations of the spiders. I really wasn’t feeling the green and purplish colors. The mini bosses are quit challenging even when you find out the pattern in which they attack.
You eventually come to the final boss which is a dragon that is using the humans to take over the world. There are certain areas on the dragon that you must destroy to move on. On the first boss, the water dragon, you have to defeat the chest, back hip area, and head to totally defeat him. Each area gets more and more challenging to destroy.
I really liked the graphics on Dragon Blade. The characters really look like they were well put together. The enemies look as lifelike as they can get being rooted in fantasy and all. Yes, this game is on the Wii so it doesn’t get too in-depth but the outfits of all the enemies and even the main character were really appropriate and fitting for the time of the game.
The dragons, I thought, were nicely designed, modeled and textured and extremely well animated. It's all in the details. One example is that the first dragon is a water dragon and he has webbings to help him adapt to water. The creators really did a good job of focusing on the little things and that make a big difference.
The backgrounds were a little cartoon based. The sand was really just a light brown ground. You don’t leave footprints in it, but the water on these levels whether it is a waterfall, fountain, or the beach really looked good. The characters really seem to flow and interact well with the background environments. What I mean by this is that when characters go up stairs they don’t jump over 3 or 4 at a time and end up standing on the edge of a step.
I am not going to lie, I was so into this game that I didn’t really remember or even notice the background music. I went back just to listen to it later and the soundtrack goes well with the situations. You do get to hear the swooshing of the sword as it goes through the air. And while you don’t really hear the enemies getting struck, you do hear yourself taking damage.
What did upset me and really killed this game as far as audio was the voice acting or rather the lack thereof. You have a narrator, the dragon spirit, opening up the game, explaining what has happened and what has been going on over the last 50-some odd years, and then when you get to the game part the voices are gone and you have to read the rest. This really upset me because the opening was actually done very well and then you think it is going to be like that the whole game and then they let you down.
Dragon Blade is not the average price of a Wii game having been released at $40. Now, I was kind of in a rush to get this review done so I have only completed about 40 percent of the game and so far the game seems a little short, but the gameplay really makes up for the lack of length.
This is a great price if you want a game the deals with medival times with a little modern day flair. This is a great buy and will really leave you wanting more after you turn it off. If I wasn't playing Dragon Blade I was thinking about playing it.
I really loved Dragon Blade Wrath of Fire. I'm sure more hardcore gamers will bash this game a little more than I did, but I really got into how well this game sucked me into a story line that made some sense and where I could understand everything that was happening. This game does both extremely well. It makes me want to continue playing just so I can see what I can unlock next and see how everything is going to end.
The last time I felt this way about a game was with the God of War games on the PS2. While Dragon Blade is not like God of War it does have some similarities, at least in the entertainment areas.