Eragon: The Dragon Rider Legacy
Last chance for the the age of Dragonriders … the DS touch-screen style!
Tags: Eragon: The Dragon Rider Legacy Categories: DS Reviews, Reviews
Posted by Craig "American Idle" Hansen on Dec 30th, 2006
| Title | Players | ||
|---|---|---|---|
| Eragon: The Dragon Rider Legacy (title page) | 1 | ||
| Developer | Publisher | Genre | Online |
| Action | No | ||
 |
Eragon is supposed to be the multimedia wunderkind of this holiday season, filling in the gap left by the absence of any Lord of the Rings, Narnia or Harry Potter films; but the Nintendo DS version of the game based on the film, which is in turn based on the novel by teenage author Christopher Paolini, simply doesn’t deserve to walk among those giant franchises. The tale of a young farmboy who discovers what seems to be a gem while out hunting one day, but is actually a dragon’s egg that hatches, making him the surrogate parent and ultimately giving him the chance to become a kingdom-saving dragon-rider in the fantasy world of Alagaesia.
It’s rather standard wish-fulfillment fantasy work that owes more than a little to filmic and literary forebears, including the Anne McCaffrey Dragonriders of Pern novels, George Lucas’ Star Wars movies, as well as the more obvious Tolkein and C.S. Lewis influences. As a result, the story feels derivative – mostly because it is. In the same way, the game feels derivative of the Lord of the Rings games EA has been publishing, which is due in large part to the fact that Stormfront, who developed the Eragon game for Vivendi, was the developer of those games as well.
 |
However, while most of Stormfront’s LOTR games were deep and well-developed, the Eragon game for NDS seems rushed and lacking in depth. Perhaps the developers were given too short a schedule in which to work on the game; it feels like something that was built out structurally and then quickly filled in, like a ballistics-gel dummy. The licensed content of the Eragon game serves both as tie-in and promotional material for the film, which is about to be released. The strategy works; both my wife and my nephew are interested in seeing the film after playing the game, and said they may not have been interested without playing the games first. However, the games based on the movie are all over the place.
 |
With Eragon, Vivendi has attempted a bit of an experiment. They have one version of the game that is standard on all the console platforms it appears on, from PS2 to Xbox to Xbox 360 to PC to whatever. Yet, on the handheld side, each platform is given a slightly different game. The GBA game is given a “turn-based RPG” treatment, while the DS version is a more action-based RPG that makes use of the touch-screen; the PSP, naturally, becomes more of an action game, using the larger, higher-res screen to given the game a more cinematic presentation that is closer in spirit to the console/PC versions of the game.
 |
The focus of this review is the NDS version, which as more of an action RPG utilizing the system’s touch screen, which would seem to be right up my alley. However, the game comes off poorly, despite being in a genre I generally enjoy – it’s a different game entirely from the other versions, but unfortunately that does not help much. The game starts out in a standard-enough way, but unlike most RPGs, introduces magic into the game’s battle system at a snail’s pace. This limits the style of attack one can take into battle, as well as healing options. My wife observed, as she played it, that the game throws some difficult battles at the player far too early in the game, before magic is even introduces as a balancing force, or before one is really accustomed to the touch-screen battle system.
 |
The graphics were better than expected for the DS version, and were nice enough to draw comment from my wife, but don’t really measure up to Square-Enix’s Final Fantasy III on the same platform. There is music and a limited amount of voice work, and the quality of the sound is markedly better than the GBA version, though well below PSP and home console standards. The battle system is more appealing to my wife than to me, because she enjoys a more action-oriented gaming experience, but the lack of magic and high level of challenge on early battles make it a limited improvement. Despite the novelty of the touch-screen, the battle system itself is still pretty standard.
The game is brief and can be beaten in only a few hours; however, the novel can possibly be read in just a bit more solid reading time than that, and would offer a more enjoyable experience in exchange for the sacrifice of time out of your life. In the final analysis, however entertaining the movie might be, Eragon is an experience that’s better to read than it is to play.
| What Works | Score |
|---|---|
|
+ The game loads up when you put it in your DS, no problem! + The graphics on this version are not bad, by DS standards. |
6.6 |
| What Doesn't | |
|
– It’s actually playing the game that’s a problem; it’s unpleasant at best. – Magic introduced at a snail’s pace. – Bare-bones battle system lacks variety, despite touch-screen novelty. – Early battles not balanced to character’s starting level. |
|
| Under the Shrink-wrap | |
| Eragon is still an experience better read than played… but this one’s possibly the most playable of the lot. | |
[ Post the first comment | View related posts ]
Tags: Eragon: The Dragon Rider Legacy
Posted by Craig "American Idle" Hansen on Dec 30th, 2006 and is filed under DS Reviews, Reviews. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can post a comment, or trackback from your own site.
