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Posted on Sep 18th 2014 at 03:01:03 PM by (SirPsycho)
Posted under Working Designs, strategy rpg, tactics, duels, awesome sprites, scaling, dragons


Dragon Force is a rather unique strategy game for the Sega Saturn that mixes turn based strategy with real time tactical movement, decision making, and party building. Development for this game was started by J-Force, but Sega eventually took it over and finished it. In North America, it was localized and released by Working Designs. Sega used Working Designs' English translation for the European release of the game.

Dragon Force focuses on a continent-wide war between the various kingdoms and empires of Legendra (terrible name...). There are eight total kingdoms to choose from, but only six are initially available; the other two are unlocked after your first time beating the game.




In Dragon Force, each kingdom gains control of various generals, by either recruiting them by searching in various castles, or by recruiting captured commanders. There are ten different types of generals, each with their own strengths and weaknesses. There are ten main types of common soldier as well, and each of these also have their own specific strengths and weaknesses. You don't have to worry so much about trying to remember each soldier type, since the manual includes a table detailing the effects that these common soldiers have against other types.

With so many different countries and stories to choose from, the game has plenty of built in replayability. For this review, I only played one scenario from start to finish and dabbled in a few others. I picked Highland as my main campaign, and after playing it, this one seems to be designed to be a tutorial type of campaign. Highland is rather isolated, so you do not have to worry about border wars early on, and there is an easy, peaceful annexation of Palemoon. This campaign makes me wonder if Lord Wein and the elves' Queen Teiris will be more than friends after this giant war.

Given this easy annexation, I then stormed Tristan to basically conquer the entire Eastern half of Legendra. The rest of my conquest then focused on the Western half, picking off kingdom after kingdom until I finally took down Goldark. The threat continues as the evil being Madruk is still working to be awakened; simply conquering Legendra is basically only the first half of the game.


While this game is quite fast paced in the beginning, it gets bogged down in the middle. You can just run around and storm castles all day long, making sure your enemies have little, and later nothing, to counter your assault with. Once you've finished the conquest, absolute chaos ensues, but you can basically spend the time grinding levels until you're ready to easily blitz through the rest of the game. Turns begin taking quite a long time when you're storming castle after castle and being counterattacked. Just before I was done conquering, it wasn't unfounded to have single turns take nearly an hour or more! This game ends up being a major time sink, and as a result, I've just been pecking at it for months while I've strolled through other games.

Each one of the scenarios are quite long and rewarding, and if you could only pick one Saturn game to have on the system until the end of time, this would be a great candidate. Is it worth the price tag? It is if you enjoy the game and play through every single campaign to see the story unfold from the many different perspectives. This game is not cheap though, and in most cases, it may be one of the last games that anyone collecting for the Saturn will pick up. Holy crap this game rules!




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Comments
 
Ah, Dragon Force.  I remember this game coming highly recommended, so I picked it up when I got my Saturn.  During this age (1998), I was particularly into strategy games.  While I was a bit disappointed in the basic strategy that the game offered (as opposed to Super Conflict and Panzer General), but the game was just so visually stimulating and down-and-out fun I couldn't help but enjoy myself.  I've since know this game as the summer blockbuster of strategy games:  A little light on the strategy, but just so explosively entertaining it come easily recommended.  Alas, based on my playing it previously and it's  relatively high price I'll never pursue it again.  Wonderful game.  Wonderful review.
 
@bombatomba: I definitely feel that this game is RPG first and strategy second, but that's not even close to being a bad thing. Some of the individual fights I had are quite memorable, such as about 25 Samurai holding the line against 60 Dragons with a leader that has the Resurrect spell and four uses of it, adding another 120 Dragons to the original total. Rudger, one of Wein's Highland commanders, was my early game strongman, he was pretty much untouchable for a long stretch of the game for me, and even held a castle by himself against an army of 4 generals. Rudger also hit on every beautiful female leader, reading the reactions and all the rejections was hilarious.

Working Designs released another, more pure and hardcore strategy game on the Saturn. Iron Storm. This is part of the long running Japanese Daisen-ryaku strategy series, and was the first one of the series released outside Japan. Victor Ireland did want to localize and release the original game that was on the PC-Engine, but it never came to fruition. Iron Storm is the last Saturn Working Designs game that I can review at the moment, and for those looking to collect some Working Designs games for Saturn Iron Storm is probably the best starting point since its easy to find a nice copy for less than $40.
 
I always loved Working Designs and every game I own from them is one I love...it seems that I will need to get my hands on a Saturn and start looking for the 6 games they released for it. There is a lot more RPG/Strategy love out there and I need it.
 
@Boshamp:  I totally get it.  One of the things that SirPsycho's series has got me is nostalgic for the Working Designs.  Not so much the omake but the manuals, the boxes, and the games.  I.really used to like turning to the the Notes section of the manuals, too.  *sigh*  Maybe it's time to start considering selling that Jak movie disc...

I remember Iron Storm being good, but I don't think I ever got very far into that game.  The reason?  Dragon Force.  I even had a official memory card so that I wouldn't loose the saves when the Saturn's internal battery died.
 
@bombatomba: I had to buy one of the Interact memory cards. Dragonforce and Iron Storm both take up almost the entire internal memory, there's no way you could save both games at the same time.
 
Sounds like a JRPG version of the board games Risk or Diplomacy. Both of which I really enjoy. I'll check out some YouTube playthroughs of this because you've done a good job of describing the feel of this game.

Would you say the lengthy turns and slow pacing in the game are a downside? Seems like this game has a lot to offer if you put in the time and effort... If you're patient enough.

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