I've played a few Wii games in my time, and this is one that sucks and rocks at the same time. Let's find out why as I take a look into Dragon Blade for the Wii. First of all, I would like to say that this is a pretty game. The Graphics are nice, and realistic, but with an anime touch. The water is nice looking, and the landscapes look huge. The landscapes LOOK huge that is. In reality, the confined-ness of each level makes you wish you were fighting in some dark, ugly looking corridor, so that you aren't taunted by the prettiness of it all. (not only that, but the characters lips don't move) The boundaries aren't just the normal big rock or piece of coral or building with no door, no, these level boundaries are INVISIBLE WALLS! You don't even know where you can go, and you'll probably spend collective hours just trying to jump over small cracks, some of which, might I add, do have walls inside them as well. That leads me to another thing. You can jump relatively high, but it is only used to hit enemies that, truth be told, can usually be hit from the ground anyway. Now, I must talk about the repetitiveness. The game features a variety of environments, but not so much with enemies. You will find that the enemies you will be fighting will mostly be lizards, boars, and minotaurs. Their move patterns are rarely different, so by the third or fourth level the creators must have realized this, and the enemies start attacking you in very large numbers. For the first little while, this shouldn't trouble you, but eventually you will find yourself dying over and over and OVER. The maps of the levels vary much but the enemies are very often seen and extremely predictable. Also, the storyline is terrible, picking up from nowhere, and rushing the plot elements until there is only one plot, to kill other dragons (I thought dragons weren't evil. ???). It does, however, explain it a bit at the beginning. Another thing is that this game is so annoying, difficult, and repetitive, that you probably won't finish it, and if you do, however, finish it, you probably won't want to play it again. Now to the pros. The graphics are beautiful. See the pictures below, and realize that these are relatively medium res, so don't expect these to be perfect examples. The cinematics are very pretty. Next, the controls. For a game of this caliber, you wouldn't expect it to be much better than I already described. Well, it can be! The controls are extremely nice. You'll feel stupid swinging your WiiMote around like an idiot, but you'll also feel it's worth it. The meaty feel of the controller will actually make you feel as if you're swinging a sword (well, if you have any imagination at all). There are five slash types (up, down, left, right, and forward) and the fact that you can stall yourself in the air is a fun concept to explore too. You can string your attacks into many combos. The jump button (Z) is easy to press, seeing as your finger should be resting on it the entire time, and the addition of the Dragon blade pieces (in which large dragon limbs in the form of molten fire sprout from your appendages and allow you to perform special moves) helps the control diversity even more. The music in this game is repetitive, but all of it is beautiful and worth listening to for at least 6 loops. The next thing that is good about this game is the bosses. They're huge and possess interesting abilities. Not only that, but they provide the only bearable fights in the game (by bearable I mean fights in which you won't die fifty times before you win). The bosses are challenging, more so because they have multiple weak points that you have to destroy. The sword you use has a good range and is beautiful as well. Here are my final comments: Presentation: 2. As I said, the story was rushed and difficult to understand. Graphics: 9. The graphics were extremely beautiful! All they did was miss the lip animation. Sound: 7. Although repetitive, the music is pretty good sounding. Gameplay: 6. The controls are intuitive and well handled, but with invisible walls EVERYFRICKIN'WHERE the gameplay is frustrating. Lasting Appeal: 2. This game is not worth playing again, in fact, It's likely you won't even want to finish it. Overall: 26. Rent it.
This seems like it could have been a good game if they'd put more effort into it. The second picture reminds me of Dark Cloud, which is an absolutely awesome game. Nice review, but a shame the game wasn't up to scratch.
