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   Company Hudson Soft ESRB Rating E for Everyone Release Date US - July 2, 2007 Controllers Wii Remote Classic Controller Gamecube Controller Wii Points 600  Review by: Corbie Dillard ©2008 Virtual-Turbo |
The
Turbografx-16 version of Dragon Spirit is based on the Namco arcade
title of the same name. While the Turbo version is extremely close to
the arcade title overall, it still doesn't keep the game from feeling a
bit dated in the visual department. The game is best described as a
prehistoric version of Xevious complete with the "bomb and shoot" game
play that Xevious made famous in arcades back during the 80's. Dragon
Spirit is certainly a solid shooter, but the main flaw in its design
seems to be that it just doesn't offer up anything new and the end
result is a good shooter that will feel a little too familiar to most shooter fans.
If you've played Xevious, you've basically played Dragon Spirit. You pilot a dragon through the prehistoric skies taking on a never-ending wave of enemy attackers. Your main attack is your fire breath, and if you're able to grab a power-up or two, you can gain up to three heads to really unleash some serious firepower. Your secondary attack is a fireball bomb that can target and destroy enemies on the ground below you. You'll find these bombs extremely useful in many of the later levels where the majority of the attacks will come from the ground and can create quite a bit of chaos in trying to duck and dodge the many attacks. You'll quickly learn that it's much easier to bomb and destroy these targets early on in order to avoid their devastating attacks. These fireballs will also allow you to bomb eggs that contain power-ups to make your dragon's attacks even stronger. At the end of each level you'll face off with the traditional end-of-level boss that must be destroyed in order to proceed to the next level. Most of the bosses are fairly high in difficulty as their attack patterns can be difficult to figure out and they don't leave you much room for error. You're best bet is to come to the fight with your dragon fully powered up if you're to have any shot at defeating them. Since the game doesn't feature any type of difficulty adjustment, you're going to have to take this game on at full strength and this is likely the one facet of the game that might turn off less seasoned shooter fans. All in all Dragon Spirit is a fun game to play through, but you'll likely come away from the experience wishing that the game featured a little more in the way of playability than the overly simple shooter design the game employs. If there's one area where Dragon Spirit begins to show its age it's in the visuals. The game was basically an 8-bit arcade title so I guess that's to be expected. Problem is, this game will inevitably be compared to many of the other TurbogGrafx-16 shooters and next to most of them, this game looks downright...well...prehistoric. There are very few colors used on screen at once and not a shred of parallax scrolling to be found. To be perfectly honest, about the only visual highlight of the game is the dragon itself and even it doesn't feature near the detail you'd expect from a TurboGrafx-caliber sprite. If you're a fan of the arcade title, you'll obviously enjoy this port as it's nearly arcade perfect, but for everyone else, especially shooter fans that have played many of the other TurboGrafx-16 shooters, this one might prove to be too bland. Now we get to heap a little praise on the game. After sampling the mediocre visuals, you probably won't be expecting much from the game's musical score, but you're going to get quite a surprise when you fire this one up. Dragon Spirit features some of the best Hucard musical tracks ever created and could give even a few of the CD titles a serious run for their money. There's not a bad song in the bunch and each tune has a very distinct and fresh feel to it so you'll find yourself wanting to get to the next level just to hear a new song. I wish I could say the same thing for the sound effects, but much like the visuals, not much emphasis is placed on them and none of them really stand out at all. It's just as well as that will leave your ears to enjoy the game's terrific soundtrack. It's difficult not to recommend Dragon Spirit as deep down it's actually a good shooter. The prehistoric theme is a nice change of pace and the game mechanics are all well executed. The only problem is that it just feels like this game has been done a hundred times before. Truth be told, this game has been done a hundred times before and shooter fans will likely not find enough new twists in this one to warrant a purchase. If you love shooters, you should give Dragon Spirit a look, but otherwise the game is just not up to par with many of the other great TurboGrafx-16 shooters already available on the Virtual Console. |
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