Game of Dragons

Genre: RPG

Players: 1

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Review:

WARNING: THIS GAME HEAVILY PUSHES MICROTRANSACTIONS AND LOOTBOXES

Game of Dragons is a free-to-play RPG released on Nintendo Switch in 2022. This game incorporates some elements of Card RPGs and Board Games without neatly fitting into either of those categories, and features a story set in a medieval fantasy world where two realms are in conflict with each other. Or at least, that seems to be the idea – this game’s localization is absolutely terrible.

When it comes to the presentation, there’s some absolutely gorgeous artwork here, but the game’s art style is wildly inconsistent, with some vaguely realistic hand-painted art mixed in with ugly cartoony characters that don’t fit at all. There are also some 3D elements that could look nice, except the framerates are so absolutely abysmal whenever these elements are on screen that they become a slide show that’s outright painful to look at. These visuals are backed by appropriate orchestral music that would seem a lot more majestic if the entire game wasn’t chugging while you listened to it.

Unfortunately, while the graphics in this game are an absolute mess, the gameplay is arguably worse. Players are plunked into screen after screen full of menus without any sort of tutorial. There are a multitude of pages of instructions, but it’s all poorly-organized and does a terrible job of helping players to understand how to play the game.

As best I can understand, players can move their character on a hex-based grid in a turn-based Board Game sorta’ setup, and then something may happen depending on the tile you land on – shops and other friendly spaces allow you to make purchases, and hostile spaces have you getting into a fight, as does encounters with wandering enemies.

Once you get into a fight, you have no direct control over your character – both they and the enemy move automatically on a chessboard-style grid, and players can activate attack cards as they appear on the bottom of the screen to use them against enemies within range, with very little control over the battle aside from this.

Keep in mind, while I may be making this sound simple, I’m not entirely certain that I’m describing everything accurately, because the game screen is filled with all sorts of icons and gauges, and the terrible performance makes it difficult to follow the action. Despite how very little interaction players seem to have with the game during combat, I just felt lost, wondering if I was supposed to be doing something more, and when I won battles it didn’t seem like the victory was due to anything I did.

Even something as simple as playing the game is needlessly complicated – players need to navigate the menus to accept a quest and then navigate to “Play” to actually play it. This is a symptom of the menus in this game being overall pretty poorly designed. In fact, I feel like i should probably be criticizing this game more for its microtransactions, with apparent use of lootboxes, pay-to-win, and multiple currency types… except the entire experience is so confusing that I cannot imagine anyone wanting to actually pay money into this thing.

I feel conflicted in my final assessment of Game of Dragons. This game isn’t completely without merit – some of the aesthetic elements are truly beautiful, and I give the game credit for trying to be inventive with its gameplay. Unfortunately, those nice aesthetic elements are mixed in with ugly elements that clash terribly with them and then strangled by horrible performance issues, and while the gameplay may be unique, it is so incomprehensible that I just keep coming back to the fact that I was absolutely miserable every second I struggled with trying to play this game. Do not waste your time with this one.

tl;dr – Game of Dragons is a free-to-play RPG with unique gameplay and some really gorgeous artwork. Unfortunately, these elements are overwhelmed by issues with an inconsistent presentation that’s mangled by horrendous performance issues, and poor overall menu and game design that makes the gameplay incomprehensible. I suppose there may be some players out there who can wring some enjoyment out of this game, but for me it was a torturous experience I couldn’t get away from quickly enough.

Grade: F

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This game has been nominated for one or more of eShopperReviews 2022 Game Awards:

Runner-Up: Worst Game

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