INTRO:
In the days of yore, the adventure game genre was the fore-runner at showcasing advances in computer graphics, before this was overtaken by first-person and third-person action titles.
This was the case for Dragonsphere, which showcased how a game could take advantage of 256-color RGB graphics, which was nascent during the time of this game.
PREMISE:
An animated intro movie accompanied with only music reveals the overarching plot of the game’s story. An evil in the form of a dark sorcerer called Sanwe has arisen to threaten the medieval fantastical kingdom of Gran Callahach. However, Sanwe was stalled by the magic of the kingdom’s court wizard, buying the kingdom time to come up with a way.
Fast-forward a couple of decades, the kingdom has yet to find a reliable way; the only knowledge there was about a way to defeat Sanwe was a vague prophecy about a bunch of fantastical MacGuffins. Meanwhile, the previous king had passed away, and the newly crowned king has sworn to find a way to defeat Sanwe on his own where even armies could not.
So off the king goes, with the player guiding his actions and words like so many other player characters. Yet, all are not as they seem, as the player would find out later (or expect, given the many hints which foreshadow a plot twist).
THE PLAYER CHARACTER & USER INTERFACE:
The player character is a sprite that moves about the current screen, towards wherever the player clicked the mouse cursor on; this is par for the course back then, and is still so now. There may be some attempt at perspective in some scenes, e.g. the player character seems to grow bigger as he moves into the foreground, but generally, the player character’s sprite and those of others remain the same size wherever they are on-screen.
The user interface is something that veterans of the early 1990s computer game scene would remember all too well. The actions which the player character can take are displayed with text labels on the lower part of the screen, together with his inventory of items, which are always visible.
The user interface would seem to be rather intrusive by today’s standards, but it is functional enough for the purpose of the gameplay.
INVENTORY SYSTEM:
For better or worse, the game presents items in the inventory as a list of text. The player needs to select the words which are the names of the items in order to interact with them.
Considering the other games that would come later, such as the games which use SCUMM, had an icon-based system to display the inventory with, the list in Dragonsphere might seem archaic and cumbersome.
LINGERING COPY PROTECTION:
Unfortunately, Dragonsphere was one of those games of yore which resorted to questions of seemingly random nature for the purpose of copy protection. In its case, this was implemented through one in-game scenario in which the player character is accosted by a bunch of sentient (and very deadly) vines. The vines will ask questions, the answers to which can be found in the documentation of the game.
However, from a narrative perspective, none of these answers could possibly have been known by the player character, or even observed by the player up to the point of the scenario.
It is a jarring moment, when the player has to refer to some document outside of the game to find the answers. This scenario could have been edited out of the game without any problem in the DOSBox version of the game, but then, the people who once coded this game are already elsewhere, and MicroProse is already defunct.
GETTING THE PROTAGONIST KILLED:
One of the ‘appeals’ of the adventure games of yore is that the protagonist can get himself killed. In the case of Dragonsphere, there are a lot of ways to do so, each of which is furnished with entertaining animations that would have been quite painful - or at least distressing - to the protagonist.
The consequence of death of the protagonist is, of course, just a slap on the wrist. The game makes an “Oh no!” message, which also includes a statement which becomes increasingly distraught as the player character gets killed again and again in the same manner (if the player wills it). The player character is then respawned into the scene, usually by walking in from an edge of the screen.
The game does mention and show in more than a few ways that a hazard is very much a hazard, so it is the player’s (likely deliberate) fault if the player character does get killed.
SOME PIXEL-HUNTING:
Unfortunately, like some of its contemporaries, Dragonsphere is one of those point-and-clickers that have the player hovering the mouse cursor over anything visible on-screen to see if there is something small that the player character can interact with.
In the case of Dragonsphere, there are small objects that the player character would need in order to get past certain obstacles. Most of these small objects are located on other objects which happen to have considerable colour contrast against them, but the rest are located on surfaces and other objects into which they blend in.
“BEFORE YOU GO…”:
The developers of the game do seem to be aware that some players might not spot important objects because they are too small. However, instead of pointing the player to where they are through the use of visual indicators, the developers have resorted to scripts which check the player character’s inventory for anything that is critical to puzzles which occur later. If the player fails these checks, the player character is not allowed to move on to other areas until the player finds what exactly is missing from the inventory.
It is important to note here that some of these checking scripts do trigger in the “Challenging” difficulty mode too.
“WHERE DID I GO WRONG?”:
On the flip-side, the game does punish the player for not having done something critical (at least on the default “Challenging” difficulty).
For example, there is one milestone where the game checks the player’s inventory for the presence of four particularly important things, each of which can be overlooked if the player is not careful. If these items are not in the inventory, the player character is doomed. Just before the player character is eliminated in an awful way, the protagonist does mention his mistake, so the player would at least know what to do after the game restores a checkpoint.
SIGNET RING:
Most adventure games at the time expect the player to have the player character use his/her feet (or other equivalent ambulatory body parts) to get from one place to another. In Dragonsphere, the player character can make use of a ring which can send him back to the hub area when it is invoked. The player character can then go to other places from this hub area.
However, not all places allow the use of the ring. This is sometimes due to the convenient trope of magic (i.e. there is sorcerous interference), or the limitations which are imposed by the morality of the player character.
SOME REGIMENTED PUZZLES:
There are some puzzles which suggest that the player can fool around with things before actually doing the right thing, or even deliberately do the wrong thing if only to find out what happens. However, these puzzles would just block the player from doing so, resorting to statements which mention that whatever the player is trying to do is impossible, for whatever reason.
For example, there is a puzzle which involves a magical freezer. Presumably, the player could try to freeze many items. Some items, such as food, can indeed be frozen. However, if the item which is to be frozen is not exactly the thing which is needed to solve another puzzle, any other item which is frozen thaws immediately after they are removed from the freezer. The exact item does not thaw.
WRITING:
The writing is convincingly the best aspect of Dragonsphere. It is done by Douglas Kaufman, who also wrote for the venerable Master of Magic and Alpha Centauri. The writing is not particularly witty, but it does have considerable dry humor.
For example, there is a lot of monologue on the part of the player character about how bizarre some things are, as well as hindsight that something that seemed so clever earlier does not seem so clever after having seen the underwhelming consequences.
LONG CUTSCENES:
For better or worse, Dragonsphere has a lot of long and unskippable cutscenes. For its time, the cutscenes would have been quite a joy, because they were some of the most well-animated cutscenes to be seen in computer games at the time.
To anyone else though, they may seem long-winded. This is especially so after the player realizes how they were made. Furthermore, the cutscenes only have music; there are no other sounds (though the lack of voice-acting might have been for the better).
(As a side note, the GOG version of the game compiles the cutscenes together with the main game package. In the original version of the game, disk-swapping was necessary.)
ANIMATIONS ADAPTED FROM LIVE-ACTION VIDEO:
Almost from the start, an observant player might notice that the human characters are surprisingly well-proportioned. Furthermore, the main characters, especially the player character, have a considerable number of animation frames.
This might seem like a lot of effort has been invested into sprite animations, and in making them believable too. However, there would be scenes where the player is provided with close-up views of the faces of some characters. These reveal the truth: the sprites were the result of applying filters to the video-captured motions of human actors and actresses.
After this realization, the player’s perception of the sprite animations might well change. The movements of the human characters may seem exaggerated. Some, such as the climbing animations and fencing animations, might even seem unconvincing to people who are actually well-versed in such activities.
Besides, these “fluid” sprite animations are contrasted by the jittery animations of other characters and non-living objects.
Nevertheless, Dragonsphere would be one of the earliest games to pave the way for the use and implementation of converted live-action captures in adventure games. (Later examples of these include Toonstruck.)
LIVELY COLOURFUL SCENES:
Dragonsphere was not the first game to use 256-colors RGB graphics of course, but it is one that prominently used that color palette to create scenes with details of considerable contrast. The scenes might have even been amazing for the game’s time, if it is compared with its contemporaries.
The first few scenes in the royal castle would have been evident of this. There are liveries, banners, crests, insignias and ceremonial weaponry with plenty of colours, expressing the complex oaths of feudal fealty to the king of a realm of duchies and baronies.
(BAD) VOICE-OVERS:
Unfortunately, where the visual designs of the game were great for a game of its time, its sound designs are marred by generally poor voice-acting.
The voice-actors and –actresses for the younger characters, such as the wife of the protagonist, are noticeably less skilled than the others. Most of them do little more than read off the script with unconvincing inflections.
On the other hand, there are some voice-overs which are so bad that they are hilarious. Chief of these are the exaggerated groans which the protagonist makes when he dies. (A certain Paul Lahaise did these.)
There are other issues with the voice-acting. One of these is the noticeable change in the voice-acting for a certain hermit in a cave. After raising a matter about the player character’s true nature, the hermit’s voice noticeably changes from a calm baritone to a comical burr. (Perhaps this is to accentuate a certain plot twist concerning the hermit, but if it is, it is a clumsy attempt.)
SOUND EFFECTS:
The sound effects are just as bad as the voice-acting. Many of them are not immediately recognizable as being associated with whatever on-screen occurrence that they are supposed to accompany.
Of course, the sound effects for obviously magical happenings are at least excusable; there is no noise in the real-world that could ever approximate magic in works of fiction.
However, the same excuse could not be said for occurrences which are facsimiles of happenings in the real world. For example, calls by creatures which resemble raptor birds sound like warbling, containing none of the pitch that one would expect from raptor birds. An even worse example is human laughs, which are also warbles.
MUSIC:
At the very least, the music in Dragonsphere is more pleasant to the ears than its other audio assets. Composed by Michael Bross, the MIDI music was captivating enough that fans have even made MT-32 remixes. (MT-32 was an advanced form of MIDI, for its time.) Most of the tracks are composed of MIDI versions of reed and string instruments.
Most of the tracks are also foreboding and ominous. The ones which play in scenes with lethal threats are even more so.
SUMMARY:
For a point-and-click adventure game of its time, Dragonsphere would have been an impressive piece of work, at least at first glance. Great use of RGB graphics lent to a would-be immersive atmosphere of medieval fantasy, and its music would have enhanced that too. Its writing would also have sealed the deal. However, bad voice-acting and terrible sound effects almost scupper this otherwise splendid MicroProse title.