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.
Rogi Reviews Dragon Chaser
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- Rogissidor
- Slime
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- Joined: Tue Apr 11, 2017 12:25 pm
Rogi Reviews Dragon Chaser
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- ...but then the slimes would one-shot me.
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- If they were all slimes, I'd be level 2 right now.
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- Feels like Dragon Quest
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- Lots of names, but do they weigh in the plot?
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- Ambitious scale
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- Me neither.
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