Dragon Sinker (PC, Steam)
Aug. 21st, 2023 02:21 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
chuckro1,000 years after a trio of heroes defeated the evil Wyrmvarg, the creature has awakened once more. The creature can only be defeated and re-sealed by a union of humans, elves and dwarves. Unfortunately, everyone in this world is tremendously racist.
The other KEMCO game I got in the 2020 Steam Golden Week sale. I played some of this in 2020 but apparently failed to make any notes about it.
You start play as the human prince (and his nervous advisor), but are quickly joined by the haughty elf princess and her jerkish advisor, and the random dwarf craftsman and his horny wife. Characters generally get a single personality trait for their anime-style bickering; and though you get lots of additional followers joining you, none demonstrate any personality after their initial introduction. The plot is painfully generic; you’re trying to collect and restore the three legendary weapons so you can defeat the evil dragon.
This game has a weird party and job system based around each team having a leader and three followers. You can only buy equipment for the leader, but you can set classes for the followers (with each class giving them different skills and combinations of classes giving various bonuses). You then have three leader-follower parties that you can swap among during battles to take advantage of their setups and bonuses. Leaders have a set skill list but can learn new skills as their followers master classes. Besides swapping parties, battles are a fairly standard turn-based affair.
The graphics are very mid-SNES-era pixelated; I’m reminded most strongly of the SNES remake of Dragon Quest. The music is particularly “beepy”.
There are sidequests designated in the usual EXE-Create way, with people in towns having the “grumbling” thought balloon to signify them. Some of the sidequests don’t require you to hike back to the person, which is nice (though some do). They also have the randomly “big red” or “small blue” versions of enemies that are popular in EXE-Create games.
The IAP system works off DRP points, but at least on Steam there’s no actual store option. You get 1,000 DRP to start and another 5 every few battles, and you can either buy stat-increasing items and special accessories; or you can use DRP or lottery tickets to randomly get consumables, optional party members, or high-end weapons. I spent 400 DRP right off the bat on the XP and JP doubler accessories. The fact that they rebalanced the IAP currencies and shops for a bunch of these games for the Steam versions (similar to what they did for the Humble standalone versions of a bunch of the older games) is definitely a nice touch and probably necessary for playability.
This and the Steam version of Tears Revolude have the same problem of the controls being designed for a touchscreen (or maaaaybe an Android device with a controller attached) and nobody really cared about keyboards. RPGMaker games default very nicely to using X and Z for control keys, where these use Spacebar/Enter for Yes and Backspace/Delete for No, neither of which is actually particularly comfortable for extended play. And you can’t remap them.
Honestly, the Steam versions of these games generally feel like lazy ports: The graphics were clearly designed for viewing on a 5” phone, not a 20” monitor. The control schemes are designed for touch. The games were balanced with IAP in mind and have various fixes to compensate for that. Steam in general doesn’t do “pick-up-and-play” as well as Android devices can, and KEMCO games are often best suited for 15-30 minute bursts. Oh, and at full price the Steam versions of these games cost twice as much as the Android versions: Most of the KEMCO games on Steam are $10-15, versus the Play Store ad-free “Premium” versions topping out at $8.
Overall: I can see why I didn’t make it through this the first time I tried; the big gimmick is the multiple parties setup and that isn’t appealing enough to make the rest of this Dragon Quest 2 clone interesting. I played 90 minutes into it a second time and decided there are other things I’d rather play. (And it’s particularly interesting given how much I liked Dragon Lapis, from the same series.)
The other KEMCO game I got in the 2020 Steam Golden Week sale. I played some of this in 2020 but apparently failed to make any notes about it.
You start play as the human prince (and his nervous advisor), but are quickly joined by the haughty elf princess and her jerkish advisor, and the random dwarf craftsman and his horny wife. Characters generally get a single personality trait for their anime-style bickering; and though you get lots of additional followers joining you, none demonstrate any personality after their initial introduction. The plot is painfully generic; you’re trying to collect and restore the three legendary weapons so you can defeat the evil dragon.
This game has a weird party and job system based around each team having a leader and three followers. You can only buy equipment for the leader, but you can set classes for the followers (with each class giving them different skills and combinations of classes giving various bonuses). You then have three leader-follower parties that you can swap among during battles to take advantage of their setups and bonuses. Leaders have a set skill list but can learn new skills as their followers master classes. Besides swapping parties, battles are a fairly standard turn-based affair.
The graphics are very mid-SNES-era pixelated; I’m reminded most strongly of the SNES remake of Dragon Quest. The music is particularly “beepy”.
There are sidequests designated in the usual EXE-Create way, with people in towns having the “grumbling” thought balloon to signify them. Some of the sidequests don’t require you to hike back to the person, which is nice (though some do). They also have the randomly “big red” or “small blue” versions of enemies that are popular in EXE-Create games.
The IAP system works off DRP points, but at least on Steam there’s no actual store option. You get 1,000 DRP to start and another 5 every few battles, and you can either buy stat-increasing items and special accessories; or you can use DRP or lottery tickets to randomly get consumables, optional party members, or high-end weapons. I spent 400 DRP right off the bat on the XP and JP doubler accessories. The fact that they rebalanced the IAP currencies and shops for a bunch of these games for the Steam versions (similar to what they did for the Humble standalone versions of a bunch of the older games) is definitely a nice touch and probably necessary for playability.
This and the Steam version of Tears Revolude have the same problem of the controls being designed for a touchscreen (or maaaaybe an Android device with a controller attached) and nobody really cared about keyboards. RPGMaker games default very nicely to using X and Z for control keys, where these use Spacebar/Enter for Yes and Backspace/Delete for No, neither of which is actually particularly comfortable for extended play. And you can’t remap them.
Honestly, the Steam versions of these games generally feel like lazy ports: The graphics were clearly designed for viewing on a 5” phone, not a 20” monitor. The control schemes are designed for touch. The games were balanced with IAP in mind and have various fixes to compensate for that. Steam in general doesn’t do “pick-up-and-play” as well as Android devices can, and KEMCO games are often best suited for 15-30 minute bursts. Oh, and at full price the Steam versions of these games cost twice as much as the Android versions: Most of the KEMCO games on Steam are $10-15, versus the Play Store ad-free “Premium” versions topping out at $8.
Overall: I can see why I didn’t make it through this the first time I tried; the big gimmick is the multiple parties setup and that isn’t appealing enough to make the rest of this Dragon Quest 2 clone interesting. I played 90 minutes into it a second time and decided there are other things I’d rather play. (And it’s particularly interesting given how much I liked Dragon Lapis, from the same series.)
