Dragon Lore Series Thoughts

Started by Umbrella Terms, Mon 29/01/2018 06:38:18

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Umbrella Terms

I've recently gone through the Dragon Lore series of adventure games, which only consists of two titles. From what I had heard, they were very forgettable games, and that is most definitely true of the original, Dragon Lore: The Legend Begins. Bland characters and puzzles made for a uninteresting adventure. But the sequel, it tried a lot. Too much. The sequel, Dragon Lore II: The Heart of the Dragon Man, added so many systems that it's more of a point and click adventure/RPG game hybrid. Unfortunately, all those systems just hampered the experience and turned what would be an alright game into a frustrating one. I go much more in depth in these videos I made, especially the Dragon Lore II video.




If you've played either of these games, what did you think of them?

ThreeOhFour

#1
Probably one of my biggest frustrations with Dragon Lore is that they didn't explain enough of the story in the game itself, instead relying on you reading the manual and remembering it. This isn't too uncommon for the period - Legend's Companions of Xanth has a lot of moments which make very little sense unless you've read the accompanying Demons Don't Dream, but it's a shame to see adventure games in which telling the actual story completely in game seems to be something of an afterthought. Other than that, my thoughts basically mirror your own. But yeah, stuff like your issues with opening the inventory point out how clear it is that you're meant to read the manual before playing these games. For interface stuff, though, I usually consider this a thing of the era, rather than a design issue that really needs to be addressed, because I don't see anybody doing this anymore.

But, the thing is, it's a Cryo game, and so going in I basically expected it to be this. I love Cryo's Dune, but every other game of theirs I've played has been disappointing in some way. Commander Blood is at least entertaining in its messiness, and silly enough to make me laugh despite not being either well written or well designed, but the rest are mostly just obtuse and bland and hard to get into. Lost Eden probably gets the closest to Dune for me, but also gets repetitive and the graphics simply aren't as memorable or stylish.

Umbrella Terms

I actually didn't realize there was a manual for the first game. :shocked: Reading through it now, it makes more sense that the original seems bland, as it's front loaded in the manual. It also confirmed my suspicions that the two games are essentially a prologue to the actual story, one that would unfortunately never came due to the third game never being developed. The games as well as the manual hint at a world so much larger than we ever see as players/readers, and it's disappointing it never got fully realized. The manual actually has some good foreshadowing and connections that don't even begin to reveal themselves until the second game, adding much more weight to what is a confusing story without it. It at least reveals that the developers had a clear vision for what they wanted this series to be, sadly it wasn't executed well.

ThreeOhFour

Yeah, that's basically the issue with the story - the manual promises a somewhat detailed tale, with vaguely interesting characters, and the game itself only delivers the most abridged version of this promise when you play it.

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