Dragon Force

DRAGON FORCE

Working Designs / Sega of Japan
Saturn
Available Now

— by Mark Johnson

Welcome to the continent of Legendra, where the evil god Madruk is starting to stir from his sealed prison. Eight countries are in the midst of a war for domination of the land and their leaders together hold the only key to preventing the dark lord from rising to destroy them all. However, this is not an RPG but a real-time fantasy strategy game, with an emphasis on plot and the individual generals.

After numerous delays, DRAGON FORCE for the Saturn was finally released in North America this December. Although this game was originally produced by Sega of Japan, Working Designs took this off Sega of America's hands for North American release.

After being treated to a standard historical narritive and a cool flashby of the anime stylized main characters, the actual game begins. The initial goal is to take over all the castles in Legendra and defeat or persuade the seven other countries. After uniting the continent, attention turns to the great evil about to awaken, and the scope switches from masses of armies to individual character quests. Each leader has their own view on the war; mini plots and special areas are different for each one.

There are three main modes the player will find themselves in: the war council, the main map, and combat.

The war council is similar in style to other epic wargames (Romance of the Three Kingdoms comes to mind) where the player rewards generals with extra troop allocations and items, meets individually with trusted generals or captured ones, searches or fortifies castles with generals of high intelligence, and saves. The plot also can expand here if special events occurred during the map phase or enough time has passed.

The main map is where the player can watch and direct the action. Armies from every side are visible at all times, and you will see them march across the countryside taking over castles and running furiously from defeats. You control the game by selecting castles to deploy or recruit troops for your generals, and directing armies with up to five generals to different locations.

Combat is the flashiest part of DRAGON FORCE, where two generals taunt each other before ushering their peons into battle. Soldiers, Cavalry, Dragons, Mages, Harpies, and many other troop types clash, with the player having limited control over them. Formations are initially chosen, then commands such as advance, retreat, disperse, and full out melee can be issued. The generals do not move from either end of the field, but can cast deadly spells at each other and their armies during the battle. And if both armies are destroyed (which often happens since one general can single-handedly kill thirty to fifty soldiers) the generals can fight to the death in a duel.The manual is again a full color glossy Working Designs one. I found that except for troop type strength and weakness charts it was rather skimpy on detail. However, this game is not as complicated as a Koei historical wargame and is pretty easy to pick up and play.

Working Designs has also done another WD translation, which means a relatively literal translation with specific cultural comments being replaced by more North American humor. This has annoyed some "purists" in the past with other WD games, but I personally found the translation to be fine (except for the dubbing of the ending cinema). And plenty of WD humor can be found throughout the piles of taunts the generals have ("Want to learn how to sword-swallow? One easy lesson!").

Players must beware of the memory requirements. Saving the game requires a hefty 284~ blocks, and suspending the game between war councils simply cannot happen without an external RAM cartridge. So without extra RAM, only one saved game can exist in the internal memory. Also note that once you finish the game you will need "proof" that you have won (ie a saved game) to access extra characters. But Working Designs did include a special Dragon Force sticker to put on a Saturn Backup RAM cartridge.

One thing I specifically liked about this game was the lack of save-o-fobia, the tendency to go back to a saved game as soon as a battle goes the wrong way. In DRAGON FORCE you will lose battles... lots of them. But it certainly does not mean the end of the war, although you may lose the occasional general to the enemy.

So how is the gameplay? Addictively repetitive. After finishing it twice now, I look back noticing that half the time it was truly fun and half the time I just plowed along trying to get to the interesting parts. The subplots and interactions between your leaders add a great touch to the game, but I wish there were more of them. Also, I believe there could have been more options for control in the game, but then again if Sega overcomplicated the interface it might have just turned into another Koei epic. But after everything, I did enjoy the game and I plan to embark on another leader's campaign soon.

If you like strategy games be forewarned before starting this one; it will kill time faster than you can say "Asa-gohan desu yo!" I grabbed DRAGON FORCE just before the great blizzard of '96 hit Victoria. While trapped in my house it easily consumed my entire week, just for Wein's campaign . It may get slow at times (especially as the war starts to turn in your favor and you have more generals than you know what to do with), but if you are into strategy games or epic fantasy storylines, be sure to give DRAGON FORCE a try.

Rating: ****