Dragonlands

Hello inspectors!
I admit I never played nor heard about Dragonlands until I recently saw this video on youtube.



Cool isn't it?
Dragonlands is a classic Rpgmaker 2003 game made by AlucardX that unfortunately exist only as a 2 hours demo released in 2010. Yes, don't let yhe "completed" sign deceive you, the game unfortunately is not finish and ends with a cliffanger. The good thing is that it contains a sort of first chapter, about the protagonist first mission and some free time post-assignment.

The game starts with our alter ego, the newly appointed Inspector CROSS (all caps! Anyway you can change the name if you want) of Havalon that earns his first case: investigate the mysterious attacks of a group of pirates. This will lead to a series of adventures, battles and the reveal about the presence of a powerful criminal involved in all this mess. Then there is some free time where CROSS will be involved in a really difficult quest: entertain Embrith, his terrible sister (probably intended to be a future party member, but we'll never know since the game ends some time after that part). The game includes some optional areas like the casino and some extra activities where you can spend the post-mission


I like Veers a lot, since CROSS' sister Embrith is a brat!!!

Dragonlands is a classic jrpg adventure game, but in this demo only the protagonist CROSS is a permanent party member, all the other allies joins and leave during the adventure. Each one uses different weapons, and normally have a single special attack skill that costs MP, but soon CROSS will learn also a magic spell, a classic elemental fire attack that's quite important when encountering slimes, immune to physical attacks. The game uses both fixed encounters and random battles, but the difficulty is pretty low (well since this is just the beginning of the story it's was predictable), and you can also run away easily if you're tired of the many encounters. Oh and remember that all dungeons have optional secret areas where you can find extra loot.

The game includes also some stealth sections and interesting parts like the escort mission in which you have to take a prisoner back to Havalon city, and the developer made an interesting choice: the prisoner is actually a useless party member that does not act but can still be harmed and even killed by the enemies, so it's necessary to keep him alive and well to avoid a game over!

What about saving your game? The game says you can save your game when indoors, but this is not really true: the game includes two "dungeons", a forest and an indoor area, and well you cannot save in this case! On the other hand you can save outdoor in the city during the visit of the sister. It's also pretty annoying that CROSS' sister is added to the party but her charset still follow us, but she's easily lost, anyway this won't change anything. I think that just having her enter the party was enough, isn't it?


The escort mission. It's so amusing if you run from battle, because the prisoner's sprite stays left behind, while everyone else leaves the screen!

Visually the game is nice, and competently mapped, the areas are all well detailed (also include some place where you can jump, not that this changes the linear paths) and used the classic REFMAP assets, facesets and charsets, while the monsters are all Milano Cat's battlers (and technically do not merge very well with the rest, I mean I saw them better paired with some Fire Emblem sprites due to the low-detailed appearance, still they're good even if the facesets/charsets of the various pirates for example are completely different!). Speaking about good mapping, Havalon is a cool city, I liked it, be sure to take a map from the bulletin board, because it's very useful EVEN IF I found no indication about CROSS' house, and I located it just by chance.

What else? The cutscenes are really well made, starting with the intro scene with the bird, I also found a bit odd that the game, after the sneaking part and battle, skips with the party back to a safe area despite they were technically in a dangerous situation were they were risking capture! But uhm ok, nevermind! It's just a minor issue. Nothing to say about the rest, music is well selected, even if not original, but it's good.


A race between a snake, a cat, two dogs and a chicken? That doesn't seem balanced to me!

Final Verdict
Dragonlands is a well made classic rpgmaker 2k3 game.., well its beginning at least! The game is a perfect (linear) introduction that explains how the game works and offers a simple first mission introducing the main characters, some of them already familiar to CROSS, but not to the player (like his sister, his colleague Kregg, and his friend). There aren't a lot of abilities and options but things are kept simple for the new players, anyway it still offers some peculiar sections like (simple and short) stealth parts and (optional) gambling minigames. I also liked the graphics, it's on par of many other good games that uses the Refmap asset pack, such as Villnoire, to give a game with a similar attention to mapping and details.
Not bad, not bad at all! I only hate two things: the first is that the game in the second half canges the font with a more readable one (should have done that from the beginning!). The second is that the game ends with a murder mystery! Nooooo you can't leave me like this! And yet... you did that!
Also... no dragons in this game, despite the title! SIGH!