Dragon's Crownaaaaaaaaaaaaaaand finished
final level - 30
total playtime - 11 hours and 15 minutes
i spent around 3-4 hours sidequesting bringing my character from level 21 to level 28 after that i mopped the rest up of the game with the last hour... the rest of the game goes as following
spoiler (click to show/hide)
boss 7-B - is a chimera,a huge chimera,take the whole screen,there is a lion head,a goat head and a snake head and they each cast spells of different element,the lion breaths fire,the goat cast thunder and the snake spit poison and ice,as the fight goes on the floor crumble's and you get taken to the floor below,if you take too much time you get to an underground grotto,the chimera falls into the lava and you get nothing... one pretty cool detail is that as you beat the goat head it goes all scheletric
boss 8-B - eh this is actualy really cool,you have to stop the resurrection of the demon king,you kills a few grunt then you get teleported to the hell where you get to punch the demon king (which i swear really looks like diablo) in the face,i know i've said so many times that the game looks gorgeous but i think the demon king is one of the goodest looking mobs,but wait! the demon king isn't the boss,the boss is actualy a smaller archdemon,he teleports around and cast spells and frankly kinda pales in comparison to the demon king sequence... they should have made the demon king the actual boss
boss 9-B - and of course,to end the dungeons & dragons bestiary you obviously need what? a dragon (it's right there in the title) he sleeps around in a mountain of gold so you get the first strike,you can fight him in the room where you start (if you do,everytime the dragon moves the coins of it's mountain of gold scatters everywhere and it's a really neat detail) but you are actualy supposed to escape to the next room,after escaping he chases you around and you punch him in the face in the meanwhile,once in a while he charge's his breath and you have to pick up shields to protect yourself otherwise you get burned to a crisp,there is only one shield so the other party member are forced to close on you to block the attack which i guess means plenty of trolling opportunity when playing multiplayer... if you get chased up to the end of the bridge,the bridge crumbles and he falls and you get nothing exactly like the chimera and the kraken
after doing all the bosses,you get to the final boss and there isn't even an actual final dungeon,the game is like "here is the final boss,go ahead,i don't mind" the final boss is... a bigger dragon,no it's not the same dragon fight,just another different bigger dragon,he flies around and when he breaths fire you have to hide behind a bunch of walls otherwise you die instantly,oh and you can't credit feed because he's the final boss and they wanted to be jerks for some reason... it kinda feels rendundant,i understand the game is called dragon's crown but couldn't they have puth some eldritch horror or something? or make you fight the other dragon boss at a different time?
i'd say the biggest problem of the game are the RPG element itself,they aren't very deep... when you level up you get skill points to spend but the skills are all small stuff... i have one that let me do very small shockwave when using my up attack,one that extends the duration of my aerial attack and one that let me auto block... apparently the spell caster classes get to spend their skill points on actual spell and attack but as a warrior,i'm like "oh yeah,i haven't spend any skill points in a while" each skills require you to be a certain level before being able to be upgraded too so you can't just decide to spend all your skill point on a single thing and do a build a-la diablo
the loot is sort of half assed too,each piece of equipment has a level and you can't equip it unless you are equal or higher than that and you always seems to get equipment that is your level or 1-2 level above no matter what sorts of dungeon you go,each equipment has a rank and higher rank items have special powers but these too feel like barely tought and are stuff like "increase damage by 9%" and "deals 10% fire damage" the game throws you a lot of rank B,A and S items too so there is rarely a reason to use lower ranked stuff,it's pretty far from a dedicated dungeon crawler like diablo legendary items or collectable set
the game is basicaly a 5-6 hours arcade beat'em up,it plays fine and looks so good and amazing it will make you forget all the next gen stuff... as i said and repeated i can't imagine anyone who enjoyed the D&D sidescrollers (or arcade beat'em up in general) not liking this one barring the most hardened asshole but it gets stretched up by another 4-5 hours as you need to level up (this is amplified by the fact that the last 3 boss will escape and leave you with nothing unless killed in time) it feels more natural than odin's sphere repeating just for the sake of repeating and it's not as painfull since the stage are pretty short and you are focusing on clearing the sidequest but i can't help but think the whole thing was done just so that people wouldn't just buy the game,finish it and then sell it back in a flash
finishing the game unlock PvP,a random mode where the room gets mixed around and you fight a random boss and hard mode,i tought i would have to redo the game as a whole for hard mode but you start right away with all 9 stages unlocked,from the second leg of the game,the bosses all get an increase of level and it's pretty obvious they want me to level up more by the fact that ending the game also unlocks a shitload of new sidequest (mostly involving soloing a boss or defeating it under 2 minutes) so frankly it kinda seems more like "drag it around a little more" than "hard"
there is no actual plot need to finish the game with the other classes but each class you finish the game off gives you a ps3 trophy related to it,so yes if you want to get the platinum you have to finish the game 6 times (and it wouldn't surprise me if some of the hidden trophies are "finish the game on hard" and "finish the game on extreme" so finish the game 8 times?)
other pet annoyance
- you can't actual open any chest or door in the game by yourself,by moving the right analog stick you move around a cursor and with L1 you click things ordering your thief friend to do the dirty job for you,it's kinda puzzling why they decided to do this as you have to wait for the thief to open stuff for you,some chest are trapped but the thief is invincible and he's the one who takes the damage so what's the point?
- after a certain point you get magic runes that let you get special effect,some of the runes are inscribed on the level and some are brought by yourself and by combining 3 of them you can get effect like gaining an extra life or summoning a bunch of fireballs,the problem is that while the game tells you what runes get you an effect,it only does so when speaking to the wizard NPC... forgot what a combination do? you're on your own
- the AI is not bad,if a situation calls for a special action it will happily do it and if it has low health it will pick/use health items,but it tends to die somewhat quickly and i've seen it standing on top of traps quite a few time
