The Dragon Warrior

...I really don't know what to say.

Granted, I know it's Zan's first game and all, and it looked kinda cool from the main page and the images despite the rather... well, poor mapping, but it hardly felt like a game. It felt more like he was just trying to get the hang of the program, threw together a small pack of maps and a vaguely defined story, and put it on here. I really tried hard to enjoy it on some level, despite it clearly being a really amateur effort and because I'm generally really lenient when it comes to scoring and judging, but no matter how I attempted to squeeze even a bit of fun out of what little it had to offer, I got almost no enjoyment out of playing. Here's what it has to offer, menial as it is:





At the very least, it was kinda... interesting that Ralph (excuse me; Oddjob) was created as opposed to just waking up one day, beating off for a bit, and going on this, well, "adventure", for a lack of better wording.

That old guy's a dick, btw

To be completely honest, almost nothing of interest happens. The dude just does a few things to get dragon warrior equipment back for the old dude I mentioned above, aaaaand... well, that's it. No developments, no other notable characters, nothing terribly exciting, yadda yadda. The entire thing just felt really stagnant. The one time something cool happened was at the end, where you meet the goblin, and he gives you the choice of joining up with him or blowing him off. The game page mentions that there's 3 endings, but there's really only two as far as I know; never managed to find that third one. Or, at least, I didn't bother, lol.





...a game that's APPARENTLY supposed to be an action RPG, and yet the battle utilizes the default VX battle system. I was like, "what the hell". Either Zangan needs to relook what the genre entails, or he needs to spend more than 10 minutes making a game, because I was really disappointed with what I got, honestly. Other than that;




The rest of the game seems to involve tasks akin to an adventure game as opposed to any actual action. None of it is really fun, though, apart from maybe feeding the dog the biscuits and making him run around like a 5-year old with ADHD. Other than that, there's little to no snappy or interesting dialogue that an adventure game is kinda SUPPOSED to have. Like I said, like everything else, the gameplay is very undefined and thrown together, as if someone asked the creator to make a game before heading off to Applebee's just to see what he was capable of, and this was the result. Then his friend saw the game after they got drunk and ate a bunch of nachos, and then he threw up and just looked at the screen like a puppy in-front of car lights. The game just simply doesn't seem to know what it wants to be as far as gameplay goes.





I'm sure there was SOME attempt at a nice-looking map... but every area just looks incredibly rushed and barren, with almost no detail, and what little there is is haphazardly thrown onto the tracts of grass and land to make it not look like... well, utter shit, if I were to be blunt. More than anything, it really just looked like the program was tested to see how it worked, then without observing what was done for more than maybe a few seconds, Zan decided he was cool with what he did, and the rest is history. At the very least, it wasn't impossible to tell where to go, so this part of the game gets a .1, but I have nothing else to say other than that, in fear of me sounding like a total douche if I continue. The Drop, this ain't.



There's absolutely no custom/creator-produced content (apart from some RTP edits here and there), the game is strictly factory-made. Granted, I wouldn't mind it if the game was made entirety with the engine's resources... if it weren't this game! HAH! See what I did there?


But yeah, nothing else to really say. I would have gone more in-depth like I did with my other reviews, but it should've been evident to me that this was really nothing more than a test game. I'm sorry if I sounded harsh at several points, but I was really looking forward to an at least admirable effort at a first RPG Maker production (no, I didn't just bother with this game just to add an extra review to my resume), since those are always interesting to play, and I really tried my hardest to be lenient, but all things considered, I could just not find the heart to sugar-coat my thoughts; the experience was just too below even my easy-going standards. I felt like I had to be critical so the creator would see where I'm coming from with my views and maybe take some of them to heart.

I recommend that the creator look into some tutorials here to get a better grasp at general quality and community expectations. There's a lot of things you can try out that're guaranteed to net you some fans. There's also a lot of awesome fan-made content that'll likely catch your eye and scripts that are easy to use and fun to configure. With just a little more effort, I'm sure your next production will be a future hit!