X Marco: The I of the Dragon

[Vahrokh]

Time to declare victory on the "war on subscribers"?

Yeah, if one year ago someone had told me how they thoroughly torture who had been guilty of chosing a race whose numbers "had to be contained or all will play it" with giving them a miserable life I would not even had bothered subscribing at all.

Meanwhile I'll see if I can get a copy of I o the dragon

Good choice. I found my copy with a rebate since it's not a new game.

I can tell you in advance some things of it, tho':

- very nice out of game interface, while the dragon graphics (expecially if you chose a bad gamma correction) are not as nice as those of Horizons dragons and show their wintage.
If you use 3D glasses both are amazing and well done.

- you'll like the "Baldur's Gate like" advancement system. You start with a weakling (hatchling anyone?) that levels up and can choose where to spend points (stats and / or spells). Later your body alters and becomes more and more powerful until you are a machine of destruction. Not ethernal, capped, suckadom.

- the game is simple and/blasphemy mode on/ fun /blasphemy mode off/. A start up company making this game as a demo of their engine (do you see any similarity?) and yet they understood what a player wants orders of magnitude better than AE will ever do in the best case.

When I am bored with Horigrind PermaTeleport (Dralk -> Bristugo -> Manta -> Last Stand -> Mithril -> smelt it to full -> recall to Dralk -> make scales -> Bristugo -> Saritova -> Pawn V -> Last Stand with intermixed happy CTDs, 24/7 since I have nothing more to do) and want to play a Game I fire up the I of the dragon and go killity.

- the attacks are what you "expect" from a dragon. Powerful (you may decide how much) or precise and improve as you level up. The moves are well animated, all magic spells have animation and sound (!!).
Yet if you suck at the game you die. But if you are very good you are a force to be reckoned with, with no asinine capping or dead ends.

- the effects are "dynamic", so if you fire a magic geyser, you see the actual terrain morph to tiny cones and spit stuff that then drops and digs holes burning what is in between. You get many spells and each is original and serves a different purpose.
Spell book full? There is a storage to place the least used in, not needing a deletion.

- quests with tangible results, where you feel important. You slay a ton of mobs and their lairs? You rebuild a city and get power and slots etc. Not a timid pathetic "+2" in a forgotten stat that is broken and would not affect you anyway. And in some quests the "view" changes and you impersonate i.e. a bowman whose role is important in that moment.

- three "flavours" of dragons for all the tastes. You are a Lunus? You play the "grunt"specialized infire and sports his physical prowess. You are Helian? There is a blue magician ice dragon with high magic predisposition that has a complement of spells. You love deaders? There is a black necromancer dragon that summons undead etc. etc.

- the game since launch never needed a patch. The effective workforce were four, capable, programmers. The game runs of every kind of dusty hardware and fast yet has as eyecandy as Horizons plus the effects affect the world. In Hz they are just a static effect animation.

I think that the playerbase should gather some pennies and send a copy of Baldur's gate, Planescape: Torment, Drakan and The I of the Dragon to AE so they learn what a game is about.

[Marco]

Thank you very much for the review Vahrokh. I don't care much about graphics though, I want a graphical representation of the world, and that's it. Even a graphically simple game can be lots of fun, like pong or tetris. Never a dull moment in any of these, even though I don't like the category.

[Blue Hasia]

I to have a copy of The I of the dragon But the game is bugged for me. It seems to like to crash My pc when i click on certain buttons[:(]. I have never been able to play more than 5 mins of the game with out it crashing.[:(]

[Vahrokh]

Well, I have it in 4 computersand never had a glitch. Are you sure you are using a decent DirectX setup?

[Blue Hasia]

I belive I currently have directX ver 9.0c
or in geek term
DirectX Version4.09.00.0904

[Marco]

I to have a copy of The I of the dragon But the game is bugged for me. It seems to like to crash My pc when i click on certain buttons[img]/Web//emoticons/emotion-6.gif[/img]. I have never been able to play more than 5 mins of the game with out it crashing.[img]/Web//emoticons/emotion-6.gif[/img]

Is it the "esc" key?

[Marco]

What kind of computer do you need to run IOTD on full detail? My system can't handle it [^o)]

[Blue Hasia]

most of the time it is buttons I click in the games HUD with the mouse, but the esc key can be one.

and I have a sony vgc-ra810g model pc Its a very nice Pc
the pc runs Doom 3 great
half-life 2 at low detial fine
far-cry no problem
and of course it can run HZ at 20-30 fps on avg

[Lachewpacabra]

I'm playing on a Commodore 64. The lag isn't too bad, but the graphics are a bit choppy.

[Poony666]

Hmm maybe its about time i traded in my "Dragon" for a Commodore 64"

[Fireclaw]

I completed I of the Dragon using an air dragon.

In my opinion I of the Dragon really isn't a very good game. Sure you play a dragon, but the controls are awful giving zero sense of actually being the dragon in flight. Instead it feels more like a 3rd person RTS except that you control just a single unit. There are a few missions where you control a character on the ground instead of the dragon. Those missions are awful.

Most missions are fairly repetitive. The game pretty much proceeds on rails without any real control over what happens, giving it more of an arcade game feel as opposed to an RPG.

High points:
1. you get to play a dragon
2. 3 different dragons to play (I completed the game as an air dragon but also had a fire dragon that got pretty far along including getting almost all the spells). The air dragon is very fast with lots of precise long-ranged fast-firing attacks. The fire dragon uses its breath weapon as its primary attack with spells secondary.
3. Beautiful spell effects - fire dragon spell effects especially look awesome. Similar to magic carpet with volcanos, etc.
4. Incredibly cool animation and sound effects when you eat a creature.
5. Cool animation when the dragon flies low over trees and the downdraft from the dragon's wings causes the trees to blow around.

Low points:
1. repetitive missions.
2. feels more like an arcade game with RTS interface. Doesn't feel like you are actually the dragon.
3. Awful interface.
4. very limited character development.
5. missions are very carefully controlled leaving little freedom.

[Marco]

Big deal if it's an "arcade game". You can have hella fun in an arcade game, in fact the most entertaining games I have played are arcade games.

Anyone tried the metal slug series? I suck at it but anyway - f.u.n. (greatsoundtrack too)
Tyrian series? Yeah I'm cheesy and using a self-recharging shield, you still need to evade shots to survive - f.u.n.
Silpheed is quite fun too, but VERY hard for me, the soundtrack is good though.
Had the demo of Vanguard Ace, liked it as well.

Nothing wrong with arcade games, it's the fun that counts, not the genre.

(Wonders when the forums overzealous censoring object will censor "fun" using that lovely stristr(...) logic we've all learnt to love...)

[Fireclaw]

Big deal if it's an "arcade game". You can have hella fun in an arcade game, in fact the most entertaining games I have played are arcade games.

Very true! Some arcade games can be incredibly fun. I wasn't bashing on I of the dragon because it has an arcade-game feel. Nothing wrong with being an arcade game - that was just to help in describing what the experience of playing the game was like.

The problem is that I of the Dragon is simply not a very good game in my opinion - it wasn't very well done or very fun. If I were a magazine reviwer I would rate it about 55-60%.

[Fireclaw]

Game ran adequately for me even with hardware acceleration on. I did get a few crashes, that were repeatable if I went to an immedate save before hand, but not enough crashes to severely impact the gameplay.