Dragon's Crown.

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I'll keep this post short and sweet for a change. Who picked up this game, and who is enjoying it? Did you get the ps3 or vita version? Which class or classes did you choose? Now, discuss.

Well, I'm not gonna get a chance to finish it, as I'm moving across the country, but my best friend and I have been playing through the game, him as an elf, me as an amazon.

My initial impression was very positive. It was almost like someone took a hub based RPG and applied the sidescrolling craziness of old school arcade games like TMNT. Actually, not almost, exactly like that. The difficulty curve was good, challenging but not too much so, and both characters felt balanced. Plus, with effective lower grade items that you commonly receive, the rarity of the higher grades was not damaging to the gameplay, and made the S & A class items super rewarding to find. Oh, and the artwork was BEAUTIFUL, especially if you're a healthy, steak-eating, heterosexual member of the male species.

Early on, the only problems were the fact that with the craziness of the action, it was very easy to lose track of your character, resulting in things like me thinking that I was kicking ass, when I was actually looking at an NPC companion and my toon was walking into the left border, and the fact that the sidequests unlock after you finish the area that they take you to, meaning that you have to return and do the whole level over, which feels repetitive and grindy, much like this horrendously run-on sentence.

However, there comes a point in the game where the difficultly curve goes vertical. This is not a problem, sometimes (I don't like it, personally), but especially in this, it's the result of some seriously bad design decisions. For example, there's a castle area. When you first go through, it's an awesome level, but when you go through on the B path (you get a second path through each area and a second boss after this point) the second path has constantly falling fireballs which ignite the ground. If you touch the fire, you take MASSIVE continuous damage. There's a warning, much like in WoW, where the ground glows momentarily before igniting. The problems with this are that the warning is dull, brief, and does not stand out in the chaos of the action. Two, the fire falls so frequently that the entire floor is just about on fire sometimes, and even when it's not, it's easy to get lost in the action and land in the fire. Three, even the Amazon, who can stay in the air for a ridiculous amount of time with her various jumps and air moves, gets knocked out of the sky by the falling fire, so you can't avoid it by staying airborne. Other bosses feature armies of adds that can stunlock you just by looking at you (and will do so, passing you between each other like a cheap joint until you are dead) to a boss that is tiny and nearly impossible to hit, that uses the same grab type stunlock that always hits if you are nearby and does insane damage. If you get hit, you're dead.

Just about every level and especially every boss after this one point in the game take the game beyond challenging and right into "douche" territory. To make matters worse, the supply of potions sold in the shop also seems to dry up around this point, so you have to rely on rare food drops for health. Also, if you don't defeat these bosses within a certain period of time, you receive almost no items or experience for the entire run.

I thought, personally, that it was a wonderfully retro-but-somehow-innovative game with great potential, up until that point. After that point, which is actually quite early in the game, it just feels abusive, like the developers were trolling us. Some people like that. To me, that's bad design. I like challenging games. I like games where the challenge gradually increases, and you don't even really register it unless you start a new game. A vertical difficulty curve is straight bad design.

So, I can't honestly recommend it.

The game hasn't released here, but from reading reviews of the game and fueledbycoffee's opinion of it, it doesn't sound like I'll be picking it up. The gameplay itself looks fun and as usual for the developer the artwork is fantastic, but it does appear the game is very much balanced for multiplayer. I had been hoping for a good singleplayer action RPG experience, so while the game might still be good, it doesn't look like it would meet my expectations based on earlier footage and my experience with other Vanillaware games.

I just thought I would point out that the difficulty can be lowered by going to the temple. Your difficulty was probably bumped up to hard. I haven't reached the point you are at, mind you. I like the game a lot. It's not without its flaws, but I do like the mix of role playing elements and classic beat em up action. I started with an elf, and though she can be adapted to work with various play styles, she seems to do way better attacking from afar. However, the limited number of arrows can be problematic at times. She can still do ok in close combat though, if she's left with no other option.

Planning to get it soon. Likely the start of next month.

I bought it on Vita. I'm playing ACNL daily and trying to play SMT IV so I've only gotten an hour or less each day to play. First thoughts were it was a disappointment like Muramasa, but last night I was rather enjoying myself.