Dragon Blade: Wrath of Fire

Metachronos overall score = 5.9 / 10

Positive
# Lots and lots of boss battles

Negative
# The controls are imprecise
# Visuals look incomplete
# The story ends when the game begins
# You die cheap deaths
# Takes six hours to beat

You can tell by the randomly generated title that Dragon Blade isn't going for creative gusto. This game could have just as easily been called Dragon Fire: Wrath of Blade, Blade Wrath: Dragon of Fire, Dragon Fire Blade: Wrath Of, or Of Wrath, Dragons, Blades, and Colons. What it can never be is worth your money or time. This Wii-flinging hack-and-slash action game features a couple of decent boss fights, as well as a few interesting enemy encounters. However, its low budget, high price tag, fickle controls, and terrible cheapness keep it from being a game worth generating in the first place. The most interesting detail about Dragon Blade is that its plot was penned by author Richard A. Knaak, author of such diverse titles as Dragon Hunt, Ice Dragon, The Crystal Dragon, and Day of the Dragon. In this, his latest opus, a good dragon named Valthorian enters human society until his five evil siblings take over the minds of humanity's rulers and convince them to chop Valthorian into little pieces. Somehow, the good dragon's soul is contained in a sword, which is found by a farm boy named Dal, right after some bad guys kill his girlfriend.



Speaking of cheap, Dragon Blade looks like a bargain-bin game, even though at the time of this review, it cost $40. The environments look unfinished and the enemies look silly. Dal himself is a nondescript hero, although his sword is impressively fiery. The music is generic Japanese adventure fare, and in place of voice work are little emotive sound bytes. When you're holding your dying girlfriend in your arms, you say, "Uh!" and she says, "Argh!". Then again, with lines like "Now it's time to vanquish you again, forever!" who needs voice actors? Though your inner dragon hunter may yearn for mortal combat with giant scaly monstrosities, you should save your money for a better game than Dragon Blade: Wrath of Fire.