No preamble or headers this time around. This review should be short and simple, so I'm just gonna get right into it!

The plot of Dragons Crown is very straight forward, and mostly just serves as an excuse for the game to happen. The entire game is narrated, with the only exception being the occasional 1 or 2 lines uttered by shop keeps and player characters. This style of storytelling works well, and the writing and voice acting for the narrator is really solid, giving the story a sort of D&D feel. The meat of story is in the "tutorial", the section of the game where you play through the first 9 levels for the first time. After the tutorial, you unlock the "b route" for each level with a new boss battle. Beat every B route to collect all 9 talismans so you can fight the big end boss.

Of course, this means the game essentially revolves around playing those 9 levels over and over again, which sounds like it could be awful, but in execution it never gets dull. Not only is the combat and general gameplay loop engaging enough to keep these levels fun forever, but the levels themselves are very distinct. It shocked me how often they experimented with unique mechanics in a genre where the levels themselves aren’t much of a focus beyond the background (in my experience at least). An example of this would be the section filled with barrels of oil and water. Not only can you break them to spill their contents, but if you kick them, you can roll them into enemies or each other. Theres plenty of examples of these unique, typically level specific environmental interactions. Vanillaware tried to make it so the RPG influences didn’t just come from when you’re in town digging through your inventory, but also the levels themselves and how you interact with them.

However, beyond interaction with simple objects like barrels or cannons, actually walking to the background elements and interacting with them could feel quite clunky, so Dragon’s Crown gives you a cursor controlled with the right stick. This seems like a somewhat bizarre, perhaps even gimmicky inclusion at first, but ends up being extremely convenient. You use the cursor to uncover hidden bits of treasure, interact with certain parts of the environment (such as runes) , or to order your little thief friend to unlock chests and doors. It helps the world feel more alive and interactive, while not bogging down your hacking and slashing.

SIDE NOTE: While making this review I found out you can actually click on certain characters and it’ll have a special message. Most importantly, this means you can make Rickey do a handstand.

This leads to another way the game makes revisiting the same levels fun, which is the side quests. In town you can accept up to 5 at a time, which will always give you varying amounts of Gold, XP, and perk points. This means that no matter what level you are, they are always worth doing. I found myself really prioritizing side quests and I ended up doing all of them; Not just for the reliable rewards, but because they usually had some nice flavor to them. Each quest is poised as a “request”, usually to complete some objective like “kill X number of goblins”. Upon completion you get a unique artwork, and a little blurb about how what you did resolved that quest. Some of the little stories these tell are really fun and provide a great extra incentive to want to revisit these levels.

The perk system and the gear isn’t anything as crazy as something like Diablo, but makes advancing a bit more engaging beyond just numbers going up. With the perks you can (to a very small degree) even specialize your build in certain ways. Its nothing too crazy, but its enough to make it feel like the perks you select really matter, even if they are quite simple. And of course, the actual beating guys up part of the game is great. Once you get a good grip on how to use all your character’s skills effectively, chaining together moves and keeping a long combo going without getting hit is immensely satisfying.

Now for the most important topic of all: The visuals. All of Vanillaware’s games have gorgeous hand drawn art, and Dragons Crown is no exception. Each background looks like its own painting, and its another reason I don’t get sick of replaying levels. The actual characters in gameplay have really nice animations but still retain a lot of detail due to the way the sprites are constructed. From what I gather it essentially works like more advanced flash animation, with each little part of a character separated and then reassembled. I tried to find more information on how or why its done this way but I couldn’t. Either way, the end result is pretty fantastic.

When it comes to the actual designs in the game, it is, for lack of a nicer term, generic fantasy. However, it definitely leans more into old school fantasy, with its sometimes outlandish character designs and exaggerated proportions. Most importantly, it takes a lot of D&D inspiration, especially when it comes to the monsters. A big reason for this is that the entire game is a spiritual successor to the 1994 arcade game Dungeons and Dragons: Tower of Doom. George Kamitami was one of the lead designers on that game, went on to form Vanillaware, and was the game director for Dragons Crown. Tower of Doom, its sequel Shadow of Mystara, and Dragons Crown are a really unique breed of game, and I haven’t really seen anything else like it.

To finally sum everything up, I adored Dragons Crown. It's got an addicting gameplay loop, fantastic visuals, and some really unique and innovative design choices. If any of this sounds remotely interesting to you, I highly recommend you give it a shot. They released a remaster on PS4 called Dragons Crown Pro, which has 4k visuals and a redone soundtrack with a full orchestra (which sounds incredible btw) . But, if you’re like me and don’t own a Playstation, RPCS3 runs the game flawlessly and is very simple to use and set up. I’m definitely going to be trying some of Vanillaware’s other games soon. Who knows, maybe they’ll get reviews as well. Either way, I appreciate you taking the time to read all this, and hope you'll check out my page again in the future!