Dragon Fantasy: The Black Tome of Ice

[h1]Massiver Qualitätseinbruch im Vergleich zum ersten Teil[/h1] Nachdem der erste Dragon Fantasy-Teil ein gutes Fundament für die Serie und das Entwicklerstudio legte, durfte man gespannt auf das nächste Spiel sein. Dummerweise entpuppt sich die Fortsetzung Dragon Fantasy: The Black Tome of Ice als recht schludriges Machwerk. Bugs in Form von Crashs und Grafikglitches sind für ein JRPG im 16-bit Retro-Stil jedenfalls nicht akzeptabel. Ich mein, musstet ihr euch mal in solch einem Spiel mit Tearing herumplagen? Aber auch unabhängig von derartigen Problemen ist das Spiel einfach nicht gut. Die Story setzt zu sehr auf Klamauk und Anspielungen, einige Gameplay-Mechaniken wie das Monster-Fangen fügen sich nicht mehr gut ins Gesamtbild ein und der Schwierigkeitsgrad wirkt selbst auf der höchsten Stufe zu lasch. Weitere Schwachpunkte in Form einer kurzen Spieldauer und unbequemen Mikromanagement helfen da freilich auch nicht weiter. Selbst Fans des Vorgängers sollten sich zweimal überlegen, ob sie ihre Zeit und ihr Geld in diese Fortsetzung investieren wollen. [h1]Pro und Kontra:[/h1] Pro: - klassischer, unkomplizierter Retro-JRPG-Spaß - Teil 2 bietet einige neue Features wie Sidequests und Crafting - gibt ein paar nette, große Boss-Sprites Neutral: - die Pokémon-artige Monster-Fangen-Mechanik ist zwar ganz nett, fügt sich aber nicht mehr gut ins Gesamtbild ein Kontra: - zahlreiche Bugs und Glitches hinterlassen einen sehr bitteren Nachgeschmack - Spieldauer von ca. 13 Stunden ist etwas dünn für das Genre - schwache Story mit zu viel Klamauk und Cliffhanger - arg niedriger Schwierigkeitsgrad - unbequemes Mikromanagement

I was torn on whether to put a positive or negative review for this game. I finally decided to go positive because "mixed" felt kinda harsh... Then I do one more fight before writing this review, I capture a monster and get a level up for all characters, yay! Text box announces my party is full (because of the captured monster)... and then crashes. So negative it is. This game has some undeniable charm to it: it's nice looking with decent character sprites, animations, quite detailed and beautiful environments/tilesets AND it's definitely not made with RPG Maker! Music sounds nice though somewhat inappropriate for the pixel artstyle of the game, but no big deal. I noticed BGM loop points are ackwardly implemented. It has a FF6-style world map with an accurate reproduction of SNES mode 7 pseudo-perspective effect. However the game also came with all the annoying features from the "good old JRPG days", such as save checkpoint system, a huge ♥♥♥♥♥♥♥ pile of technically-not-random-but-still-forced monster encounters and verbose, mostly uninteresting one-way dialogues. A few generic NPCs have blablablah that span 5 or 6 pages of text box. Navigating the combat menu becomes a chore, the cursor doesn't memorize your last choice and I think the UI lacks clarity: adding icons, more colors and better layout would help a lot. I felt annoyed that I can have up to 4 characters in combat, yet they decided to go for a UI targeting layout with only 3 visible characters at a time that requires scrolling down to select the 4th character. WTF? The screen has sufficient space to show all 4 characters, why did you do it this way game? You get the traditional dungeon -> city -> dungeon -> city... approach, with Fedex fetch quests thrown in for good measure that you can get in the city by talking to random NPCs that tell you their life problems and stuff. You can't get any more cliche than that. Thankfully these side quests don't get in your way. You can complete most of them by just playing the main story normally. The game also has a convenience feature where you can visit a NPC that will hand all side quests reward to you instead of having to remember where was that godamn quest NPC. I didn't play the first game so I don't know if there is any interesting backstory for the characters. The story felt like events/small plots connected together with no overarching plot. It just feels disjointed and so random, especially near the ending. Humor is hit or miss. Some funny lines here and there. I fell asleep a couple of times while playing due to the long mostly-empty-but-padded-with-monsters dungeons and filler dialogues. Early boss fights were decent but still, due to game's simple mechanics there is a hard limit to how engaging its combat system can be, it feels "solved" and becomes VERY quickly bland at best, or a chore at worst. The game had an interesting mechanical twist where your party splits up and you have to play sub plots in whatever order you prefer. It was interesting because the monsters and equipment you got in the sub plot you did first could be used to make the other sub plots easier. On the bug side: - At some point, shop menu stopped responding to gamepad input until I "unlocked" it by using the mouse. - Characters can jump to ackward positions in combat when there are cliffs and other obstacles. - Slight clipping issues and approximative collision of sprites and map elements, no big deal though. - Well, the game can crash. Hope last time you saved is not hours ago when it happens! Thankfully the game can be beaten in 10 hours or so, that's a positive to me as I actually prefer when flawed JRPG-style games don't overstay their welcome.

Bought this for 99 cents. So wait for a sale to pick this up. For that price, it's definitely worth it.

Sweet music