Ok, so Dragon Force. I played for like 8 hours last night.
This game I read about a lot in magazines, and all the gameplay footage I've seen made the game feel overwhelming. Real time, menus, keeping track of the kingdom... it does feel daunting. But I sat down and did some homework, which entailed:
- Reading the manual
- Watching
a youtube video that goes over some intro stuff
- Googling to read general threads on reddit
And I jumped in. I picked Wein because people said it was a decent starter campaign and because it sounded like ween (it's actually Wine as I learn later) and did some progress. Marched over, did some what could be considered "tutorial" combat battles. After playing about 8 hours, I am much more comfortable with the gameplay loop, and to a degree it actually negatively affects the game. The game basically relies on a chart, similar to pokemon. Water beats Fire, Fire beats Grass... but for unit types. So Cavalry beats Soldier, Archer beats Harpy... you get the idea. Once you understand this, or reference it, all you do is prepare your team by examining all the enemy generals marching around the map. For reference, the manual shows this chart so it's not exactly cheating to know this information.
This also goes out the window when you unlock Dragon types, which is literally just RNG when you search castles during break time. They are literally better than any type in the game besides like one or two other units.
So what do I like about the game:
- I like the real time aspect, but while also being able to pause and take a second to analyze and prepare
- I think being able to have 200 units on screen during a battle is pretty wild (100 vs 100)
- Distilled the gameplay is actually pretty simplistic, even though the presentation is like playing 52 card pickup
- Slowly making progress as you get stronger feels good ("Just one more fight...")
- 8 campaigns if you really care to, though from reading it sounds like they are mostly similar
Honestly this game might be the gateway drug to me finally playing Ogre Battle and Unicorn Overload, I'm kinda hooked. I will definitely be playing Dragon Force 2, but apparently that one is not as good as the first according to fans. I am a believer, and more people should check this game out.