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Sacred Reviews: Dragon Hunter
thesacredlobo- 08/28/2023 10:34 PM
- 52 views
Intro
"Dragon Hunter" is RPG developed by Hunt147 using RPG Maker 2003 that is considered by some to be one of the worst games on this site. To be fair this opinion is apparently shared by the game's developer to a certain extent as well if he's comment on lolzallen's review is anything to go by.
And to be fair this game is like Battlefield Earth (2000) in one way. It's that both of these projects are so atrocious that there are multiple layers of awfulness the audience/player can peel away only to find another shitty layer underneath. I suppose, one could put a positive spin on this by saying this does mean the game has nuance to it, but this nuance only exists in the form of it being a shit sandwich rather than just a single massive turd.
Story
Hunt147's Summary
I normally wouldn't devote time to criticizing the summary provided by a game's developer, but in this case I feel it's worthy of notice. This is because the developer gives away the game's biggest plot twist in said summary.
While this plot twist itself is rather overused in my opinion. It's still bad form to simply leave it out there all pink and naked since it means the player can no longer be surprised when it turns out Cyrus was unintentionally working for the final boss at the start of the game.
The Intro
The opening text crawl for this game is both riddled with spelling and syntax errors. While the bulk of the errors in the intro are the result of missing spaces. The syntax errors range from weirdly worded sentences to punctuation errors so bad even I noticed them, and I've been told on more than one occasion by halibabica that I'm not in the best position to criticize others on this topic. After all, I tend to just submit rough drafts for my reviews rather than write something out and then go through it a few times to iron out such issues myself.
To make matters worse some of the information contained within the opening is rather useless like the developer's Runescape and Everquest 2 names as well as a warning about the game's difficulty and how the player is "reccommended" to save every five minutes. A warning that is mostly pointless in my opinion, but I'll get to that when I cover the gameplay. Though, I'd say the worst part of the opening bit is the mention of a war between the "Europeans andEgyptians...". This is the worst part in my opinion since the previous useless information was at least in the form of contact information the average player wouldn't care about, but the war mentioned in the opening has zero impact on the game's story and is never brought up again.
Greatest Strength/Weakness
To be brutally honest I really can't think of anything positive to say about the game's story. I suppose some would argue most of the game's dialogue does serve to help advance the game's plot, but that plot isn't particularly interesting because the developer doesn't spend enough time on developing Cyrus or his enemies in order to turn them into actual characters beyond everyone in this universe apparently being battle junkies obsessed with power. At least that's the way it seems for the most part. I suppose Hunt147 does try to give some depth to Command Eiffel, but the timing for it is all wrong since it happens just before he dies.
To make matters worse the player will probably hate Eiffel by the time it happens. Not because Eiffel is a villain you love to hate like Frieza, Scar, or the Joker, but because you have to fight him over half a dozen times over the course of two hours. He simply shows up way too much and thus comes across as non-threatening. So much so that even the game makes fun of him for being a loser.
Gameplay
On the gameplay front the game utilizes the default combat system for RPG Maker 2003 which makes commenting on it rather difficult in my opinion. After all there isn't anything majorly wrong with the default system beyond how slow it is and just about anything I could say about it probably has been said at this point. So I suppose the real question is just how well balanced is the combat is in this game. And the answer to that question is that combat is balanced rather heavily in favor of the player. This is because as a ninja Cyrus possesses the ability to equip multiple weapons as well as the ability to easily out speed most of the trash mobs you'll be fighting in this game. As such it's pretty easy to land two to four hits before most regular enemies are able to even act once.
To make matters worse a lot of the weapons in this game grant Cyrus a basic attack that will hit every enemy on the field at once. As a result most regular fights in this game end with Cyrus punching, bashing, slashing, or piercing everything to death before it can even hurt him. As a result most battles in this game are extremely boring.
To make matters worse the encounter rate in certain areas of the game is so high you'll find yourself engaging in battle every one to four steps. As a result you'll find yourself getting frustrated with the amount of trash mobs you'll be seeing since the only reason to have the encounter rate that high is to simply pad out the game.
The game also makes it pretty easy to farm certain stat buffs as well from certain fights that are touch encounters that can be reset by the player simply leaving the map. Though oddly enough this system isn't broken because it means you can make your character absurdly powerful by abusing those stat boosts, but because they can be farmed for cash that can be used to buy the absolutely busted sword that appears in the final shop of this game that costs 40,000 gold. Which oddly enough is a lot of money in this game since most of the trash mobs drop under 200 gold when defeated. And this is still the case when you get to the end of the game.
Though the best method of farming gold is to take advantage of a respawning chest that contains a mythril knuckle. This weapon is not only a major step up from the weapons you were probably equipped with at the time, but it also sells for 4,500 gold. So if you farm 10 or 20 of these you'll easily be able to afford the best gear in the game for Cyrus and his teammate that joins in the last 30 minutes or so of the game.
Mapping
I realize I normally shove this in another section when doing these reviews, but the mapping in this game is so bad it deserves it's own category. That's because the maps in this game suffer from three distinct problems. The first issue is that a lot of the maps are absolutely massive while containing large numbers of the same tile next to each other.
The second issue is that maps in this game are designed to basically force the player to spend as much time as possible navigating them by forcing the player through a very specific path. This results in maps that are both visually boring and a chore to navigate. Especially in areas where the encounter rate has been jacked up to further pad out the game's playtime.
And thirdly the way maps connect in this game is super odd. And this issue comes in three slightly different flavors. For starters certain maps have connections that lead to different areas that doesn't make logical sense.
And $%# #$## is this building ugly!
The best example of this is the above map. Both of the slightly different colored pathways leads to a different area. This is really weird since them being side by side would usually mean they go to the same location. For the second flavor of this issue you have maps where you'll enter an area but have to travel to different point in order to reenter the map you were on previously. You can't simply just walk forward a step and turn around. And finally a lot of dungeons in this game are impossible to exit upon entering them. I'm guessing this was meant to make the game harder, but it just comes across as lazy in my opinion since it seems to imply the developer didn't want to put in the work to create a teleport to the previous room.
Graphics and Sound
As far as I can tell most of the graphical and sound based assets used in this game come from the RTP for RPG Maker 2003. As such, I don't have a lot to say about them. After all, there isn't anything super wrong with these assets in my opinion, but it does mean this game really doesn't stand out from the dozens of other games that have been made over the years with the RTP when it comes to how the game looks or sounds.
Conclusion
"Dragon Hunter" is a game that suffers from all of the staples of an early project, but these issues are dialed up to 11 by the developer creating maps that force the player to spend as much time on them as possible. As such this three hour game is one of the most boring and frustrating games I've played in a while. And seeing as how I've put together a nine part Let's Play for this game that will become accessible in October of 2023. My advice is to skip this game and watch my Let's Play if you want to experience this game since at least you can experience all of the sloppy maps and bad gameplay decisions through my experience rather than your own.
"Dragon Hunter" is RPG developed by Hunt147 using RPG Maker 2003 that is considered by some to be one of the worst games on this site. To be fair this opinion is apparently shared by the game's developer to a certain extent as well if he's comment on lolzallen's review is anything to go by.
Hunt147
Best review ever for one of the worst games ever.
And to be fair this game is like Battlefield Earth (2000) in one way. It's that both of these projects are so atrocious that there are multiple layers of awfulness the audience/player can peel away only to find another shitty layer underneath. I suppose, one could put a positive spin on this by saying this does mean the game has nuance to it, but this nuance only exists in the form of it being a shit sandwich rather than just a single massive turd.
Story
Hunt147's Summary
I normally wouldn't devote time to criticizing the summary provided by a game's developer, but in this case I feel it's worthy of notice. This is because the developer gives away the game's biggest plot twist in said summary.
Hunt147
But, after some slaying, he realizes he's been on the wrong side.
While this plot twist itself is rather overused in my opinion. It's still bad form to simply leave it out there all pink and naked since it means the player can no longer be surprised when it turns out Cyrus was unintentionally working for the final boss at the start of the game.
The Intro
The opening text crawl for this game is both riddled with spelling and syntax errors. While the bulk of the errors in the intro are the result of missing spaces. The syntax errors range from weirdly worded sentences to punctuation errors so bad even I noticed them, and I've been told on more than one occasion by halibabica that I'm not in the best position to criticize others on this topic. After all, I tend to just submit rough drafts for my reviews rather than write something out and then go through it a few times to iron out such issues myself.
To make matters worse some of the information contained within the opening is rather useless like the developer's Runescape and Everquest 2 names as well as a warning about the game's difficulty and how the player is "reccommended" to save every five minutes. A warning that is mostly pointless in my opinion, but I'll get to that when I cover the gameplay. Though, I'd say the worst part of the opening bit is the mention of a war between the "Europeans andEgyptians...". This is the worst part in my opinion since the previous useless information was at least in the form of contact information the average player wouldn't care about, but the war mentioned in the opening has zero impact on the game's story and is never brought up again.
Greatest Strength/Weakness
To be brutally honest I really can't think of anything positive to say about the game's story. I suppose some would argue most of the game's dialogue does serve to help advance the game's plot, but that plot isn't particularly interesting because the developer doesn't spend enough time on developing Cyrus or his enemies in order to turn them into actual characters beyond everyone in this universe apparently being battle junkies obsessed with power. At least that's the way it seems for the most part. I suppose Hunt147 does try to give some depth to Command Eiffel, but the timing for it is all wrong since it happens just before he dies.
To make matters worse the player will probably hate Eiffel by the time it happens. Not because Eiffel is a villain you love to hate like Frieza, Scar, or the Joker, but because you have to fight him over half a dozen times over the course of two hours. He simply shows up way too much and thus comes across as non-threatening. So much so that even the game makes fun of him for being a loser.
Gameplay
On the gameplay front the game utilizes the default combat system for RPG Maker 2003 which makes commenting on it rather difficult in my opinion. After all there isn't anything majorly wrong with the default system beyond how slow it is and just about anything I could say about it probably has been said at this point. So I suppose the real question is just how well balanced is the combat is in this game. And the answer to that question is that combat is balanced rather heavily in favor of the player. This is because as a ninja Cyrus possesses the ability to equip multiple weapons as well as the ability to easily out speed most of the trash mobs you'll be fighting in this game. As such it's pretty easy to land two to four hits before most regular enemies are able to even act once.
To make matters worse a lot of the weapons in this game grant Cyrus a basic attack that will hit every enemy on the field at once. As a result most regular fights in this game end with Cyrus punching, bashing, slashing, or piercing everything to death before it can even hurt him. As a result most battles in this game are extremely boring.
To make matters worse the encounter rate in certain areas of the game is so high you'll find yourself engaging in battle every one to four steps. As a result you'll find yourself getting frustrated with the amount of trash mobs you'll be seeing since the only reason to have the encounter rate that high is to simply pad out the game.
The game also makes it pretty easy to farm certain stat buffs as well from certain fights that are touch encounters that can be reset by the player simply leaving the map. Though oddly enough this system isn't broken because it means you can make your character absurdly powerful by abusing those stat boosts, but because they can be farmed for cash that can be used to buy the absolutely busted sword that appears in the final shop of this game that costs 40,000 gold. Which oddly enough is a lot of money in this game since most of the trash mobs drop under 200 gold when defeated. And this is still the case when you get to the end of the game.
Though the best method of farming gold is to take advantage of a respawning chest that contains a mythril knuckle. This weapon is not only a major step up from the weapons you were probably equipped with at the time, but it also sells for 4,500 gold. So if you farm 10 or 20 of these you'll easily be able to afford the best gear in the game for Cyrus and his teammate that joins in the last 30 minutes or so of the game.
Mapping
I realize I normally shove this in another section when doing these reviews, but the mapping in this game is so bad it deserves it's own category. That's because the maps in this game suffer from three distinct problems. The first issue is that a lot of the maps are absolutely massive while containing large numbers of the same tile next to each other.
The second issue is that maps in this game are designed to basically force the player to spend as much time as possible navigating them by forcing the player through a very specific path. This results in maps that are both visually boring and a chore to navigate. Especially in areas where the encounter rate has been jacked up to further pad out the game's playtime.
And thirdly the way maps connect in this game is super odd. And this issue comes in three slightly different flavors. For starters certain maps have connections that lead to different areas that doesn't make logical sense.
And $%# #$## is this building ugly!
The best example of this is the above map. Both of the slightly different colored pathways leads to a different area. This is really weird since them being side by side would usually mean they go to the same location. For the second flavor of this issue you have maps where you'll enter an area but have to travel to different point in order to reenter the map you were on previously. You can't simply just walk forward a step and turn around. And finally a lot of dungeons in this game are impossible to exit upon entering them. I'm guessing this was meant to make the game harder, but it just comes across as lazy in my opinion since it seems to imply the developer didn't want to put in the work to create a teleport to the previous room.
Graphics and Sound
As far as I can tell most of the graphical and sound based assets used in this game come from the RTP for RPG Maker 2003. As such, I don't have a lot to say about them. After all, there isn't anything super wrong with these assets in my opinion, but it does mean this game really doesn't stand out from the dozens of other games that have been made over the years with the RTP when it comes to how the game looks or sounds.
Conclusion
"Dragon Hunter" is a game that suffers from all of the staples of an early project, but these issues are dialed up to 11 by the developer creating maps that force the player to spend as much time on them as possible. As such this three hour game is one of the most boring and frustrating games I've played in a while. And seeing as how I've put together a nine part Let's Play for this game that will become accessible in October of 2023. My advice is to skip this game and watch my Let's Play if you want to experience this game since at least you can experience all of the sloppy maps and bad gameplay decisions through my experience rather than your own.
