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Rise of the Dragon Slayers vs. T-Master
Rise of the Dragon Slayers
Stargames Software
Download: 394 KB
V.S.
T-Master
Review # 1 for T-Master
Them's Fightin' Words
    To start off, in light of recent comments on the message boards, a review is merely your own opinion, and nothing more. That in mind, know that I'm not one to give out high marks easily.

The fact that this is an obsolete RPG file is only the first clue of the terror to come. Well, where should we begin? Should we start with the music, which sounded like a five year-old banging together pots and pans? Or should we start with the storyline, which could be summed up with, "Let's go kill dragons," "No, let's save them," "OK." We could also go over the horribly designed battles, which made me think the creators never bothered to test the monsters' stats. Stay seated, because this is going to take a bit.

Normally in a game, you expect a decent soundtrack. Whether it's ripped or not, you at least expect it to fit and be half-decent. Rise of the Dragon Slayer doesn't adhere to these old fashioned principles, apparently. The music is neither have decent, nor does it suit the game. In fact, it is an orchestra of neverending chaos that made me want to run outside screaming, "I am the lizard queen!" The music in Dragun sounded like someone banging on a piano endlessly, and I had to mute my speakers for the duration I was in the town.

The graphics, however, were fairly decent. A lack of effort in a lot of places, is what mainly hurts them. I thought the maptiles were really well done, except for a few cases. The tables and counters looked like rugs to me, and the indoor floor maptiles were awful. I really liked the stone walls and staircase maptiles, as well as the various lighting effects throughout the game. The walkabouts, however, were another story entirely. For one, both heroes seemed to be shamelessly palette swapped versions of each other(which they were not, it just appears that way unless you scrutinize the walkabouts carefully). Secondly, when walking up or down, the legs never even moved. The heroes hands swayed back in forth as they magically floated down the map. I mean, come on! Even in Magnus, the creator actually took the time to animate his characters' legs! In addition, there was only one battle background in the entire game. It was poorly done, at that, consisting only of teal airbrushed over different shades of blue.

As far as I'm concerned, the story was non-existant. It simply wasn't there. The introduction starts off with a tale of the seven elemental dragons. The dragons are all peaceloving, and live in harmony, you know, the works. Then, mankind, for one reason or another, starts to hunt down the dragons. These people are called SLAYERS. They kill the Light Dragon and plunge the world into eternal darkness. Now, years later, the populace uses fireflies for light. There is also a war going on between the SLAYERs, and the anti-SLAYERS. Don't ask me about that, it's never explained. That's right, people use fireflies for light. Instead of replacing your flashlight's batteries, you'd replace its fireflies. Then the game begins. You start with a couple characters, who are never really introduced, but are named Raynio and Caya. Their grandfather asks them to go get some fireflies worth 40-45C. C is the unit of money in the game. I'd imagine it means copper, but I can't be sure. Anyways, they walk downstairs, and can talk to some guy in the corner, who gives them 50C for agreeing to do this task. At this point you can go to the armor shop and load up on gear, and nothing will be able to touch you for the rest of the game.

Another flaw of this game is the awful NPC dialogue. The first man you see as you walk out of the house, says something along the lines of, "I am guarding this. Someday I will get a better job and get a big house and get paid to guard." Since you're already outside, you're bound to find out the name of the town, Dragun. Hmmm, I dunno, I think the creators must have been trying to connect the town name with something when they thought of it... *gasp* could it be... Dragons? It also amazes me that they could come up with such creative names for equipment, such as Initial Sword, and Initial Bow. If you haven't guessed, those two items were initial equipment. Anyways, against my own judgement, I'll continue with the plot. They go to the firefly pond thingy, mating grounds, or whatever, and see a swarm of fireflies. Now, you have to understand that the yellow ones are males, and the red ones are females. The yellow ones are going to run like hell, and you're going to have to chase them until you corner one. Then you engage in a ferocious battle with eight of them. They have no attacks, die in one hit, and you net 48 exp for killing them all.

At this point I'd also like to comment on the battles. First of all, the spells are all messed up. I didn't test their effectiveness, partially because I don't like to inflict pain upon myself, and partially because I couldn't tell if they were working or not. The three initial spells had no attack animation. Nothing. What's more, haste was only usable on the enemy! So anyways, you kill the males, and can now kill the females. Go ahead and kill them all, you'll need the exp to battle all those fearsome porcupines on the overworld. Now, aren't these fireflies supposed to be worth 40-45C? Well, I thought so. Try and sell them at the item shop, and you can get 2C per firefly. You can't cash them in anywhere else, that I could find at least. So basically, you just wasted time. On the way back to town, the two grandchildren run into some bandits. Fearing for their lives, because the bandits look ever so scary, they run behind a rock. Actually, they stand behind a rock, and face the firefly pond. The bandits, all being far-sighted, walk close to them and never suspect a thing. They mention their evil plot to collect some 100000000C award by slaying a dragon. Who's offering this reward? Nobody knows.

Frankly, I don't think anyone cares. They just want the money so they can get a "big house" and "lots of pretty womans". After that, everything will be all happy happy for them! However, one of the thieves fears for his life because the dragon could kill him. Ironically enough, I thought the reason the dragons couldn't fight back was because they couldn't kill humans. It seems the introduction and the game contredict each other. The travellers then decide to go on their merry way, up to the firefly swamp thingy, apparently. Maybe they know a secret passage out of there, who knows?

The rest of the game goes on and on. You go through some cave and meet the Water Dragon, who knocked off two of the thieves. Suddenly the party members shift their ideas and decide to help the dragon instead of kill it! They explain that the only reason why they originally wanted to capture it was because of the reward Endar was offering them. My question is, "Who the hell is Endar?". I don't think his name was mentioned once before that point. So the dragon sends them off on a quest to defeat Endar! You eventually arrive in some town, and some guy you've never met will run up and exclaim, "Are you OK!?" You'll then say, "Yes, now you are joining us?" Then the man will join you and everyone will be on their merry way. You'll reach some mountain and assasinate a guard that you couldn't kill earlier(but you can now because you have the thief for some strange reason). You will then walk forwards, and a SLAYER will appear on top of the party member in the rear. Also, some funky creatures with two legs will run around as the SLAYER exclaims, "Ahahahaha, I see you have met the SLAYER drones! To prison with you!" The sad thing is, I haven't changed the dialogue much.

As a closing statement, I have only to say that this was a complete and utter lack of effort. The dialogue was the absolute worst I've seen in a long time, and was riddled with grammatical errors. The plot was in coherant, inconsistant and idiotic. Half of the time it made no sense, and the other half of the time it still made no sense. The characters had no personality and would jump from one quest to another, not really going anywhere. The graphics are the only thing which prevent this game from being a total bust, although they aren't that great themselves.
Final Scores
Graphics: 3.5/10.0
Just about average, from all standpoints. Maptiles were well done for the most part, with a few exceptions. Walkabouts really could use some work, so the two heroes don't appear to be merely palettes swapped versions of each other. Also might want to get more than one battle background in there. Good lighting effects
Storyline: 1/10.0
To be blunt, this storyline rivals that of Magnus in it's inconsistency, lack of effort, lack of thought, lack of good characters and basically lack of anything else that constitutes a good plot.
Gameplay: 1/10.0
This was awful, as well. Grammar errors abound, although that's not too serious. Battles were poorly thought out, as well as item costs. The fact that you never do anything with the fireflies is also annoying.
Music: 2/10.0
Horrible, awful, terrible! If I was ever looking for benefits to being deaf, not being able to hear the music in this game would definately be number one. The only thing that saves this from a 1.0 is another game I've played with worse music.
Overall Grade: F-
Final Thoughts
    Plain and simple, this wasn't ready to be released. The plot is incoherent and shallow; the gameplay is very poor. Thankfully, this isn't a long game, because I don't know how much more of it I could take. My advice would be to avoid this like the plague.  



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