Rogi Reviews Dragon Chaser

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Rogissidor
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Rogi Reviews Dragon Chaser

Post by Rogissidor »

Dragon Chaser is a little too retro for its own good. It's probably unfair to review it without playing through all the way but I'm not sure I have the patience for this one. That said, it's impressive in scale for a first game. I gave it a half hour and wandered around to four towns before giving up.

Writing
I would say the writing is fairly average. It sets out to tell a retro RPG story and there's enough flavor text to build a world. There's a lot of named towns and the people talk about their relatives in other places but it's hard to follow. Lots of worldbuilding and lore sprinkled around but not really a story to follow, at least not in the parts I played.

Visual
Yep, it looks like Dragon Quest. That's fine but it would benefit from a little more unique visual touches, maybe a really funky color palette.

Audio
The music is a bit odd, annoying in spots at worst. Some of the town themes are about halfway there, they might benefit from slower tempo and some 8-bit instruments.

Gameplay
The difficulty curve at the beginning is enough to turn off 9/10 people. I died in my first fight and had no chance. After that I pushed this one aside for a while. I decided to give it another shot and try to get some better armor. I wandered around until I found a treasure chest with enough gold to buy something. Then, I wandered back to the starting area and found some slimes. It's not a far walk to the second or third town so that was where I had first died, so the low level encounter area should be a lot bigger. Okay, so now I can grind slimes? Nope, two rats killed me. I gave it a shot but this is too rough for me.

Technical
I didn't notice anything particularly unique. Some maps had missing collision. Scripting is minimal in keeping with the theme.

Personal Review
I don't mind the retro vibe but there needs to be a hook to make it worth the player's time. In the time I played, I didn't see a lot that made me want to keep going. It’s a solid Dragon Quest clone but to me it felt weighed down too much by that. Maybe look at the early Ultima games and draw some inspiration from those, they were a bit more open-ended if that's what you're going for.

Favorite Thing
I went poking around in the data and I'm impressed with the scale of this one. It's huge.

Worst Thing
Unapologetically obtuse and not for everyone.
Attachments
...but then the slimes would one-shot me.
...but then the slimes would one-shot me.
DragonChaser_6.png (30.55 KiB) Viewed 1658 times
If they were all slimes, I'd be level 2 right now.
If they were all slimes, I'd be level 2 right now.
DragonChaser_5.png (27.71 KiB) Viewed 1658 times
Feels like Dragon Quest
Feels like Dragon Quest
DragonChaser_4.png (34.78 KiB) Viewed 1658 times
Lots of names, but do they weigh in the plot?
Lots of names, but do they weigh in the plot?
DragonChaser_3.png (22.92 KiB) Viewed 1658 times
Ambitious scale
Ambitious scale
DragonChaser_2.png (48.74 KiB) Viewed 1659 times
Me neither.
Me neither.
DragonChaser_1.png (33.04 KiB) Viewed 1659 times
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