3ERSS Dragon Force

Developed by Sega and brought over to the States by the eager
translators at Working Designs, Dragon Force is an excellent strategy
RPG; it's one of those hidden gems of the 32-bit era that allows Saturn
owners to snicker at all of those Playstation drones who never knew
what they missed out on.

You begin the game as one of rulers of the eight kingdoms that make up
the continent of Legendra. And, despite the differences between you
and your enemies, you must convince them all to unite under you (but
after you kick their asses, of course). Failure to do so will result in
Legendra's doom as the evil Madruk prepares to unleash his wrath after
spending centuries locked up in a mountain.

Gameplay

The gameplay in Dragon Force is incredibly deep. From the very
beginning, where you must choose which kingdom you will represent,
you are forced to make decisions that affect how the game will play out.
The initial goal of the game is to organize your armies and attack
neighboring kingdoms. Armies are commanded by your generals, with
each capable of commanding one-hundred troops. The number of troops
a general can control depends on their experience level: if they are
successful in battle you can present them with awards, with each award
raising their command capacity by ten troops.

There are ten types of generals, each with different skills that will affect
gameplay: fighter, knight, spirit user, magician, priest, monk, samurai,
ninja, beast, and thief. Some are stronger fighters, some stronger magic
users, some more loyal, some less loyal. A general's level, and his ability
to use different skills or spells, increases with battle wins. There are
also ten types of fighters that a general can control: soldier, cavalry,
mage, samurai, archer, monk, harpy, beast, dragon, and zombie.

Generals will begin the game with a class of fighters that complements
their own class. For example, a samurai general will start the game
controlling samurai soldiers. But searching the castles you conquer
provides you with items enabling a general to command a different
class. That is, finding a Dragon Crest in a castle will allow that same
samurai general to control both samurai and dragon fighters---though
not at the same time, you must select one type at a time. This ability to
switch back and forth, though, becomes crucial to winning battles since
the fighters match up differently against each other. Some fighters,
such as soldiers, are average and usually have no significant advantage
or disadvantage against other types of fighters. But some fighters will
be significantly advantaged or disadvantaged against another class.
Harpies, for example, will have a slight edge over almost every other
class, but send them out against an army of archers or mages and
they'll get massacred. In contrast, archers and mages will get
annihilated by just about any other class of fighters besides Harpies. All
in all, the system works very well; even though some classes such as
Dragons and Zombies are obviously superior, the presence of a class
that has a major advantage over them counters their domination.

That said, as monarch of your kingdom you recruit troops for you
generals and send out your armies to conquer other castles. You can
watch your armies (represented by character sprites on the world map)
traverse toward castles, just as you can see enemies marching towards
your own castles, and thus, prepare for battle by recruiting more
soldiers. This also prevents the annoying random battles that have
become the staple of the RGP genre. Armies that attack a castle will
find themselves at a slight disadvantage in battle, so you must make
sure you are matched up well with the generals you are going to attack.
Likewise, the various "terrains" of Legendra will have geographic
affects on fighters as well, providing some classes with advantages in
certain environments (e.g., Archers will have a +25 advantage in
mountain battles).

I mentioned earlier how you can search your castles for items that will
make your generals stronger, but you also have the option of fortifying
the castles instead to increase their level, and thus, increase the
advantage your troops will have over attacking armies as well as
increase the number of reserve troops the castle can hold. Only certain
generals can search or fortify a castle, so you'll have to rotate certain
generals to hit up all the castles.

A castle can hold up to ten generals and you can send out armies of up
to five generals (for a maximum of five-hundred troops) to attack
enemies---though you can send another army right behind them just in
case. When you enter a battle all or your troops and the enemy
general's troops will be onscreen. You must then choose a battle
formation (such as offensive, defensive, surround, protect, squad,
breach, or raid) followed by a subcommand (such as advance, retreat,
standby, melee, etc.). You have the advantage of watching which
formation your enemy selects before you must pick a formation.

As the onscreen troops duke it out, the generals can use magic spells to
either attack the enemy troops, the enemy commander, or both,
whenever their MP meter fills up. The number of spells you can perform
is limited by the amount of MP you have. Once the enemy's troops are
wiped out your troops will attack the enemy general until he either
retreats, is defeated (i.e., his life bar is depleted), or he kills all your
troops, which will then lead to a duel between the two generals. If you
don't want to fight the duel you can retreat. You can also retreat before
any battle, and this will come in handy when you know you are
mismatched, but it will cost you a small number of your troops to do so.

The AI didn't seem too great as I found the game fairly easy (I won
around 82% of the battles I was in). Most of the time the enemy general
would go into an offensive attack---even when it was at a disadvantage---
allowing me to sit in a strong, defensive position and wipe out his army.
And sometimes the enemy general would repeatedly waste MP on a
spell that had no chance of hurting me or my fighters. On the other hand
though, the computer will retreat when it knows it cannot win a duel,
and a few times some of my own generals would refuse to fight if I tried
putting them at a major disadvantage. Once in a while the AI would
surprise me by creatively using spells to drag out a match and force a
draw instead of taking a defeat; thus, the AI definitely seemed
inconsistent. There were some other minor gameplay flaws, such as
when an army would get caught in a retreating loop when I would
command him to retreat from a castle under attack, only to have him
get attacked again on his way out of the castle by the same army, thus
trapping him and forcing me to get massacred.

To save you some headaches later on take this advice: know the names
of each of the other monarchs and when you get them to join your side
focus on leveling them up (as well as yourself) by battling a lot with
them. Also, search your castles often and visit towns and towers to get
access to Dragon Crests (and other Crests) which allow your generals to
control different fighters. Then use them on your monarch generals to
make them very versatile (that is, so they can switch between multiple
troops) and then save most of the awards your generals win and present
them to your monarch generals until they are maxed out in multiple
troop areas.

But, all in all, this game has some very deep gameplay. Sega did a
superb job with this game, one of the best strategy RPGs out there.

95%

Graphics

While the in-game graphics are nothing spectacular, the still-scene
anime segments are superb. The in-game graphics get the job done, and
the character sprites look decent as do the battle spells, but they are
not very detailed and I couldn't help but be a little disappointed that all
the troops look the same as do most of the generals. The world map is,
again, not that detailed (and the water just looks pathetic), but it
doesn't have to be. Besides, Dragon force compares very favorably to
other strategy RPGs and this game depends more on gameplay, not
graphics. Nevertheless, the anime scenes are marvelous, as are the
intro and ending movies.

80%

Sound

Just like the graphics the sound gets the job done, but that's about it.
The music is fitting, but not memorable. It sounds good at the start, but
you'll grow sick of it in the long run, though it does set the mood
whenever it is necessary to accompany the storyline. Voice acting is
only found in the intro and ending movies and is well done. And, for the
most part, the battle sound effects are good (I loved hearing the pre-
battle war cries), but some of the sound effects in the administration
mode are a little overdone and can get annoying after awhile.

70%

Replay Value

Most RPGs are too long to make anyone consider playing them, so
gamers only do so for two reasons: 1) either the story is that good 2) or
the gameplay is. For Dragon Force, it's both. The story will grab your
attention, something that most strategy RPGs cannot boast. And given
the fact that each of the eight characters results in eight different
stories, this game actually has too much replay value. Theoretically, to
get everything out of the game you would have to conquer it with each
of the monarchs, which would put total gameplay well past two-hundred
hours (something most people aren't willing to do). Although, the
gameplay is enjoyable enough that you'll probably consider doing a
second-run through.

90%

Overall

This is easily one of the best strategy RPGs of the 32-bit era. It's obvious
that Sega put a lot of effort into this game and that Working Designs put
even more into translating it and improving it for its domestic release. I
definitely recommend this game to anyone interested in the genre. Any
of the minor flaws are forgivable based on the fact that everything else
in the game is so well done.

93%