Eragon: The Dragon Rider Legacy
Can the age of Dragonriders fare better on GBA?
Tags: Eragon: The Dragon Rider Legacy Categories: GBA 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 | ||
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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 GameBoy Advance 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.
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However, while most of Stormfront’s LOTR games were deep and well-developed, the Eragon game for GBA 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.
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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.
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The focus of this review is the GBA version, which as a turn-based RPG would seem to be right up my alley. However, the game comes off merely 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 awfully difficult battles at the player far too early in the game, before magic is even introduces as a balancing force.
The graphics are standard fare for GBA and do not even approach the best-looking titles on the platform, even within the RPG genre, such as Final Fantasy Tactics Advance. There is only music with no voice work and the quality of the sound is nothing to write home about. The battle system is slim and basic, providing a turn-based interface so bare-bones it would fit in well alongside the original Dragon Warrior on NES.
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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 GBA, no problem! | 6.3 |
| What Doesn't | |
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– 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. – Early battles not balanced to character’s starting level. |
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| Under the Shrink-wrap | |
| Eragon is an experience better read than played! | |
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Tags: Eragon: The Dragon Rider Legacy
Posted by Craig "American Idle" Hansen on Dec 30th, 2006 and is filed under GBA 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.
