Dragon Knight is a 2D beat ’em up in where we travel the lands in search of dragons to slay. We play as Sue, a young woman accompanied by her adoptive father/mentor who guides her path from the shadows. An interesting premise and one of the selling points of the title is an amazing storyline, but I’ll say this from the get-go, do not go in expecting a decent plot. It is marred by a poor English translation, and it doesn’t even feature an ending, which is pretty insane considering they decided to release it from Early Access. If you are considering it, consider it for the gameplay alone as it does deliver on that front.
Sue is tasked with defeating dragons, so naturally she has what it takes to mow down any of the various foes that infest the many roads she will travel to get to her destination. There are a great deal of weapons to get your hands on ranging from bows, swords, or massive axes, all of which contain different stats and activatable abilities. A sword you find may have better overall stats than your current one, though their unique skills are just as essential to take into consideration. Some allow you to slow down time, fling a magical projectile or other quirks that may be just important as your stats.
Depending on what category your weapon falls in, it will have a new moveset. This means that all swords will handle the same and switching to something that differs from one will open up a unique fighting style. Considering that you can only hold a single weapon, it can be all too easy to stick with what you know and never want to experiment. That would be a mistake as this title isn’t all that challenging in the first place aside from the last boss. You’ll regularly be getting new weapons to play with as every battle area you manage to defeat will award you a chest filled with random goodies. In them can be a multitude of things such as items, weapons, artifacts or a new armor set.
Artifacts grant powerful passive effects and are quite rare in comparison to everything else. They can grant you coins after every enemy you kill, refill a point of your health each second, or give you a random chance to paralyze an enemy to name a few. The big tradeoff here is that you need to give up one of your six inventory slots, which can also be used to carry more healing items or thrown weapons such as kunai. That will quickly add up if you decide to carry around a few. Armor is an interesting thing in this game; it affects not only your defense but also your movement speed among other things. Take enough damage, and it will tear off, leaving you in the nude & pretty vulnerable.
The amount of unique armor sets is impressive with you being encouraged to switch it up since it costs quite a bit to repair. I guess that brings me to coins, oh man the coins. It’s not that they in themselves are useless, but the people they are for certainly are. This is an entirely linear game with no backtracking, so the shopkeepers you may encounter will be one of the many you don’t need. Many of them don’t even tell you the prices for their services, forcing you to discover how much you’ll be spending after you’ve agreed to pay it. What is the more significant problem is that whatever they sell you is entirely random. Say you want a healing item. Well, you better start crossing your fingers as that merchant gives you whatever he feels like in exchange for your cash.
Dying will cause you to lose everything you have aside from your gold and the souls you’ve collected. Souls are of much higher value as they allow you to level up your character via the skill tree to increase your health & attack alongside others values. It too has a problem as you can not see what choosing a specific path will lead to nor what the next thing you’ll unlock is. This can lead to many times when you’ll wish you didn’t spend so much to unlock and discover what the next perk was. It is hardly a deal breaker as acquiring more souls is easy, and things stay the same price despite how much you level up, though it is still an annoyance worth mentioning.
Okay, that’s all well and good you may be thinking, but what about the hentai. Well, it is honestly all too easy to forget that you are even playing an adult-oriented title. Aside from Sue’s breasts being exposed when her armor breaks apart, all they have is random images scattered throughout story sections. And I mean random. They make absolutely no sense and are there just for the sake of it, however out of place it may be. Imagine playing a match of Quake 3 and sudden porno appears for half a second. That’s about how strangely out of place the lewd CG pics where here.
For those interested, there is a free patch that uncensors said images and their artwork is as great as the rest of the game. Everything from your environments, the characters, and the flashy attacks look really lovely. Right from the start, you are introduced to a fantastic comic book styled intro to set the plot up, which makes it all the more sad that it is mediocre at best. You will learn nothing new throughout the course of the game with all characters involved being wholly uninteresting and the lousy translation doing nothing to help. There are two sections in the story where you do have a decision to make, that while minor was still a pretty neat addition.
What really ruins everything about the plot is the way it “ends”. It ends in a matter that forces you to retread throughout the entire game for a second time and when you finally do so again there is nothing. You can beat the game as many times as you want but that final fight you’ve just worked your way up to again will never arrive. Worst of all is that if you thought the game was easy the first time, returning to it as a far more leveled up character is mind-numbingly dull. Dragon Knight had the makings of a decent title but many questionable decisions and the lack of an ending seriously drag it down. Its gameplay is enjoyable which is a big part of the beat ’em up genre and pulling off the absurdly overpowered counterattack doesn’t lose its charm, so it isn’t a total lost cause, yet be aware of what you are getting into.
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