Dragoneer's Aria

"An Improvement From Blade Dancer, but Still Not Very Good"

When I got my first PSP, one of the first games I got with it was Blade Dancer: Lineage of Light. Not knowing what to expect, I gave the game a try and it ended up being one of the worst PSP RPGs I've ever played. I was hoping to put the horrible experience behind me, but then along came Dragoneer's Aria, a pseudo sequel to Blade Dancer. I did some reading up on Dragoneer's Aria, and from what I read, Dragoneer's Aria fixed a lot of the problems that plagued Blade Dancer, so I figured I would give it a try.

While Dragoneer's Aria does indeed fix quite a few problems that Blade Dancer had, it has its own assortment of problems that are almost just as bad. Presentation-wise, it's not really a bad game, but the battle system is one of the most god-awful and slow paced ordeals I've ever seen in an RPG. Battles are dragged out for far too long, and since the battles are where you will be spending the majority of the game, it will stymie any enjoyment you would otherwise be able to siphon from the game.

Dragoneer's Aria is a turn based RPG from Hit Maker that delves into the ancient dragon lore of the town of Granadis. Granadis is home to a clan of Dragoons whose job it is to protect the remaining dragons in the land. A young man named Valen Kessler is on his way to his graduation ceremony to become a full fledged, ascetic Dragoon. On his way to the ceremony, a Black Dragon swoops down and attacks the city. The town is shocked by the incident, and the head of the Dragoons decides it's a good idea to send Valen on a journey to seek out the other dragons for aid and see if he is able to conclude the reasons for the Black Dragon attacking the city.

On his journey, Valen will be accompanied by a girl name Euphe that he comes into contact with in town. Euphe is the typical, innocent female companion character that has striking resemblances to Rinoa from Final Fantasy VIII. Things kind of follow a predictable path during the game, and even though the story tries to deceive you and pull some double crosses, you will see them coming a mile away.

For those of you that have suffered through Blade Dancer, you will find a lot of similarities in the gameplay. The main game consists of being thrust into a large, open field with randomly spawned enemies, and you will need to come in contact with them to fight them. All of the enemies show up as flying eyeballs with wings. In Blade Dancer, you were unable to tell what the enemies were, but now you can press left or right on the d-pad to see the names of the enemies. This is a nice little feature, but it's kind of useless since there are so many different palette swaps of each enemy. The fact that any given enemy in Dragoneer's Aria might have five or more variations means that you will need to fight them just to see if they are tough or not. Well, I take that back. There is one way to tell. Enemies that will be tough for you to fight will chase you, and enemies that are rather weak will try to run away from you, but still, I don't see why each enemy couldn't have been given their own field models.

When you get into battles, it's a standard turn based affair, but the problem is the slow pace of the battles. Each enemy encounter is encumbered with mandatory character and enemy animations, slow loading times, and a system that drags it out so long that it makes battles in Legend of Legaia look fast. Seriously, people that say they don't have problems with slow battles have never played Dragoneer's Aria. The battles in Dragoneer's Aria are licentious, and the length of them goes far beyond anything I have ever seen in an RPG to this day.

It's kind of a shame too, the rest of the game is not all that bad, but the battles will just bore you to tears. Let's have a closer look.

Graphics 7/10

Now I may be a bit biased since I've been playing nothing but DS games for the past few months, but I thought the graphics in Dragoneer's Aria were pretty decent. Nothing too spectacular, but good enough to impress me during the cut scenes and battles.

Some of the character models are also well done, despite their obscure guises. Valen is a rather androgynous main character since he sports a ponytail and speaks in a kind of wimpy voice, but for some reason I enjoyed him being the main character and didn't mind him at all.

The one thing that really drove me crazy about the graphics was the laughable amount of palette swaps the enemies have in the game. The developers weren't even subtle about it either. They threw piles and piles of the same looking enemy with different colors in almost every area. The enemy designs and models actually look pretty good and they are animated very well, but you will just be seeing them far too much.

Sounds and Music 8/10

I'm not really a huge skeptic when it comes to music in games, but from the time I spent with Dragoneer's Aria, I really thought the music was well done. Again, maybe I'm a bit jaded since this is the first non-DS soundtrack I've heard in a while.

The music actually reminded me of the music in Sword of the New World: Granado Espada. In fact, so did the art style. In case you don't get the reference, Sword of the New World has some really great music for an MMORPG, some of the best I've ever heard.

One final thing about the sounds that I really enjoyed was the ability to have the entire game voiced in the original Japanese dialogue with subtitles. It made some of the characters a bit more bearable, and it took me back to the days when I used to watch anime all the time. I did not use the English voice option, so I cannot comment on that, but from what I've heard about it, you're better off sticking with the Japanese dialogue.

Story 5/10

The story in Dragoneer's Aria comes together quite nicely at the beginning, but it soon falls apart because of one glaring problem: the slow and boring battle system. Wait, how can a battle system ruin a story? Quite perplexing huh? Well let me explain. The problem is that when you get sent on a quest to do something, like finding a dragon, the time it takes to do it is beyond comprehension due to the drawn out battle system and constant need to level grind. Half of the time you will almost forget why you are even where you are, and you'll feel like the game exists solely to level your characters and advance to the next area. Then you'll make it through an area, walk through the opening, and a cut scene will ensue, and you'll think to yourself, “Oh yeah, that's why I'm here.”

I just found myself not really caring about the story at all. There is some interesting content in there, like double crosses and some funny dialogue, but it's too far between, and it just falls by the wayside.

Gameplay 2/10

Ugh, this is where things really get bad. It's a shame that a few key things in Dragoneer's Aria were done so poorly, because the game does have some interesting ideas in the battle system, and the game is pretty straightforward and easy to follow for the most part. However, having a crappy and slowed paced battle system just trashes this game.

Before I get to the bad stuff, let me highlight some of the positive aspects of the gameplay. First things first, the number of options the player has in this game are quite impressive. The game has standard equipment, a crafting system, standard magic spells that come in the form of Lusce (much like materia from FF VII), Dragon Orbs, which give elemental based magic attacks, and Rush Attacks that are high end physical attacks that use magic points. There is also a defense stat that can be raised via a small mini-game, field abilities for each character, and the standard attacking options. Aside from standard attacking, all of these battle options can be leveled up the more you use them. Each ability has its own dedicated menu that you can keep track of their progress too.

The problem with all of these battle options is that they are poorly balanced. Why use a magic attack that does 26 damage, when you could use a Dragon Orb attack that does 260 damage. You do have the option to level the lower powered magic spell, but it's quite a long process to do so, and it will require quite a bit of grinding and time.

This brings me to my biggest gripe with the game: the slow pace of it all. Keep in mind that I've enjoyed most aspects of this game so far. Dragoneer's Aria really sticks its head in the fire when it comes to the slow paced battles. They almost make the game unplayable. Imagine almost every enemy confrontation in an RPG taking 10-15 minutes to play out. Now imagine boss fights taking 15-20 minutes or longer. I'm sure there are some long confrontations in other RPGs too, but Dragoneer's Aria beats them all, and makes every battle far too drawn out to be entertaining.

One of the main reasons the battles are so long is the poorly implemented and uncouth Mana and Energy system. During battles, each character shares Mana from a shared pool at the top of the screen, much like Skies of Arcadia. Each level of a spell takes up 1 Mana, which is 100 energy. So a level 3 spell requires 300 energy. Energy can be accumulated by either attacking in battle, which gives you 50 energy, defending in battle, which gives you 100 energy, or to get some from a “Mana point” which is much like a Draw Point from Final Fantasy VIII. During the battle, you will need to balance out your regular attacks with magic attacks to keep from using all of your Mana, and not being able to do something as simple as heal yourself.

So this leads to a lot of “tug of war” battles with the Mana and Energy bar that will require you to hold back on your strongest attacks just to preserve your Mana and energy. It also doesn't help that it takes a long time to replenish the Mana bar using standard attacks and defense tactics. Trust me, it's quite a pain.

Speaking of the poor balance, there also seems to be some inconsistency with the spell damage. Sometimes you will use a spell and it will hit the enemy for double digit damage, and the next time you use the spell, it will hit for triple digit damage. This really confused me. I'm not talking about different enemies either. I'm talking about the same spells on the same enemies.

There's also an issue with really tough enemies lurking right by the weaker enemies in a lot of the areas. You may fight one group of enemies, take them out with no problem, then get wiped out by the next group of enemies in two rounds.

I must say that Dragoneer's Aria really has a lot of depth in the gameplay area, and I could explain more about this game's gameplay for pages and pages, but I don't see a point since the game is just far too boring and slow paced to enjoy.

Longevity and Re-Playability 3/10

If you can stomach the incredibly slow gameplay in Dragoneer's Aria, there is a lot of game here, and quite an interesting one at that. The game has a lot of things to do, and tones of depth, but it all comes at the ultimate cost of grinding in slow paced battles that will start getting boring rather quickly. This would be a great game for someone that's looking to kill a lot of time with a single game, but others should probably pass on this one.

Conclusion

Dragoneer's Aria is a valiant effort from Hit Maker, but there are still far too many flaws with the game for it to have any broad appeal. Even though there were times when I enjoyed this game, I really can't recommend it.

Reviewer's Score: 5/10, Originally Posted: 04/13/09

Game Release: Dragoneer's Aria (US, 08/21/07)