Hmm... Can you say barbecue?
Play as Caim or allies, and fight the Republic's heavy forces on foot or on dragon. Weild devestating weapons, such as hammers, scythes, lances, swords, wands, or more. For those of you who loved the Dynasty Warriors or Samurai Warriors series, this is straight up your alley. Storm castles, blast down sky fortresses on your dragon, wage war on a large scale on foot, and even use magic! Of course, there are no items to speak of on this game, so you'll have to survive on greenish energy balls that restore about a tenth or more (depending on the variation), of Health. There is also a Magic meter, which allows you to cast Magic spells until you have under a bar of Magic power left. Each low-range, low-power Magic attack consumes roughly a bar to half a bar of Magic power, each long-range, heavy-power Magic attack consumes anywhere from two to three bars of Magic power. Also, you have the ability to level up your weapons, therefore evolving the size, shape, and power of the weapon, not to mention the power of the magic is generates. However, you can only level it up to level 5, and then it cuts off and finishes its evolution. There are roughly a hundred or more weapons to earn through either combat, treasure chests, or completing objectives or missions. If you collect all of them, you can unlock the alternate ending, which is Chapter 13.
Just as you can level up weapons, you can also level up your dragon as well. As your dragon levels up, it will grow tougher scales, and will grow in mass and attack power. It will take on a gangly appearance by the end of Chapter 10 or 11. And just as you had magic on foot, you can also perform magic on the dragon, only it is now the dragon's magic, and not your own. This helps if you are fighting multiple enemies, because if you have two or more magic bars full, you can perform the shotgun-like magic, which generates about fifty fireballs that find and destroy the enemy. The form of the dragon magic varies, depending on if you are in an aerial battle (on that does not allow you to disembark from your dragon, you have to complete it on your dragon's back), or if you are in a ground battle (one that allows you to switch between fighting on foot and in the air). The different levels you achieve, give you more powerful and devestating magic than the levels before.
While playing through the story mode, there are three allies that you can unlock, and each of them have their own special blood-pact with a spirit beast. When engaging in battle with an enemy, before you enter the battlefield, you will have to choose one ally to accompany you on your journey. While on the battlefield, when you are not on your dragon, you will be able to switch between Caim and that ally by pressing a button. Now, there is a time limit as to how long you can remain in that form. In this form, your health bar will gradually depleet, until there is nothing left. Once there is nothing left, you will return to the form of Caim, until you have regained enough health to do the change again. Each ally has their own weapons, their own Magic, and so forth. This allows you to have a slight advantage if you are running out of health as Caim, you can switch to one of your allies. However, this advantage is nothing drastic, as the game is still challenging, even with this added bonus.
The storyline of the game is a bit strange, and I never really found myself able to really get into it. It's about Caim, a warrior of the Union, one of the stronger military nations in the world at the time, and about the Republic, another strong military nation. Recently, the Republic has launched a full-scale invasion of the Union, and when the game starts out, they have already reached the capitol and captured the Goddess. After this, I lost much interest in the storyline, because it strayed along the path of some sacred seals, and the destruction of the world by your friend. Around the end of the game, the storyline really spiralled out of control when there were giant infants walking around, and you had to scorch them away.
However, the graphics are beyond solid during the game movies. Most of them are even at PS3 level, and thus are cut shorter than they could have been if they had had less advanced graphics. The overall graphics of the game are really quite stunning, and if you enjoy beautiful, flowing graphics over actual gameplay, this is certainly your game! All-in-all, the gameplay itself is quite good, even though they made the actual game about 20 hours long.
Here's the Break Down:
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Storyline: 4.5 out of 10
Character Development (Through the storyline): 6.5 out of 10
Gameplay: 10 out of 10
Audio: 8.5 out of 10
Graphics: 10 out of 10
Cutscene Graphics: 10 out of 10
Side Missions (There are a bit to do once you have beaten the game. Every time you beat a chapter you unlock some): 7.5 out of 10
Overall Score: 7.5 out of 10
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If you like solid, hack-and-slash games, with little to no storyline, this is probably your thing. I would recommend this game to fans of the Dynasty or Samurai Warriors series, fans of Hack-n-Slash style games, or fans of the Draken (a very similar series) series.