Review: Legend of the Dragon

Summary: Horrible- do not buy.

Jackie was planning on being out of town this weekend, so I asked her to rent a random Wii game for me while she was gone. She came back with Legend of the Dragon- looking at the cover it appeared to be some sort of RPG, and she knew I liked those so she picked it up.

Once I fired it up, I found the fatal flaw of this plan. For starters, this was a 3D cell-shaded fighting game similar to Virtua Fighter- between battles you move around this board finding temples to fight at. Well, “move around” isn’t the right phrase… imagine a board with 20 randomly placed points and lines connecting randomly between them… now hide all of the dots except the one you’re at and show the connecting lines leading off in that direction… you can move as much as you want, until you find a temple or some random guy hiding in the woods, then you go back into fight mode.

Anyways I should mention the plot. You start off by selecting one of three characters who is a martial artist that has mastered the way of the dragon (I chose young cocky guy rather than young whiney girl- the 3rd person wasn’t actually selectable I don’t think). Along comes this zodiac lord right as you finish your training and he takes over the world or something. Before you can take him on you must visit all of the zodiac temples and learn their secrets- ironic since neither the book nor the intro/storyline bits teach you how to fight or how the controls work.

Now, I haven’t even gotten to the best part. The Wii is known for bringing a new level of interactivity to the gaming industry with it’s motion sensitive controllers- the only time this is really used is when an opponent randomly changes into a costume and blasts you with a laser beam or some crazy shit like that- then it tells you to shake the controllers to “blast back”. other special moves the opponent uses require you to do a series of movements- I don’t know what those movements are, or how to do them, I just guess that it has something to do with the motion sensitivity since the analog stick and arrow keys don’t have any effect. I tried flailing with the controls as well, but to no avail. So to sum it up, the controls really suck. Probably the worst use of the wii controllers I’ve seen yet.

Speaking of special moves, I couldn’t figure out how to activate them- nothing in-game mentioned it, I even consulted the manual, but no joy. Fortunately the combo system was simple enough- they only gave you two attacks- punch and kick. combos consisted of AA, AB, ABA, etc. the booklet even mentioned AAA->AA, although I’m not quire sure what that meant, I presume it’s pretty awesome.

My third or 4th battle in, I had already established that the jump and kick fighting tactic along with the crouch and kick style of crap-fu were the most powerful in the game- I simply cornered the opponent and then jumpkicked them to death. Little did I know “the fat guy” would shake all that up- you see, he can only be hurt with combo attacks, and since he moves around, you have to time your “AA” or “AAA” combo attack so that the last hit hit him- if you hit him with the first attack, he bounce away from the second. fortunately there was no 60 second time limit like the previous battles, so 10 minutes later I finally killed him.

And what was my reward for defeating the slow moving, slow swinging fatguy who they called the pig master? I GOT TO PLAY AS HIM! First I fought myself and said “ok, I can see what they’re doing here- it sorta makes sense.” After that battle, I was fighting people I had previously fought and thought to myself “well, this is annoying, but I guess it’s to get you used to fighting as someone else.”

It wasn’t until I fought the second or 3rd random person I’d never fought before as fatguy that I got pissed off. I’d been playing fatguy for twice as long as I’d been playing young cocky guy- how long was this shit gonna go on? I just used the jump and kick move, only now it was the “jump and bellyflop”. After a while I just gave up and tried to quit- it warned me, “if you quit now, you will have to start this mission over again.” wondering wtf it meant, I quit, and found myself standing outside fatguys place ready to fight him for the first time. This is when I turned off the Wii.

And this marks the first game for the Wii that I actively did not like. Don’t buy this, don’t rent this, just ignore it and maybe it’ll go away. Ugh, normally I’d proofread an article like this, but I really don’t even want to go back and remember it. The only reason I’m writing this review is so I don’t have to repeat it.