Interesting concept, but too much defending and bad controls kind of ruins it.
The majority of the game is spent with the player defending this or killing that (mostly defending), and though that's not so bad, the controls make it difficult.
I felt that the dragon turned too fast, and they don't let you change the sensitivity. I found it difficult to kill enemies in most situations, because my fire wouldn't seem to be hitting them or my dragon wouldn't pick them up or he just flew too fast. Using the brakes is annoying, because if you hold them down, it'll make you strafe rather than just sitting still so you can actually hit something.
I'm not sure how to describe the controls, but they made doing things like quickly killing enemies before they destroy something you're supposed to defend quite difficult.
It's fun being able to fly at high speeds through environments, but a lot of levels are rather closed-in, like small circular areas or winding valleys.
The graphics are nice, and environments are quite well-detailed, but they're all just a bit dull. Not bland and flat, just dark and dull. I mean, I'm sure there's at least one cool-looking environment, but the few that I played wouldn't be it.
The sounds aren't all that great. There's no music in-game, and all of the sounds lack satisfaction. They at least have spoken dialogue for the game, except for the words that boss the player around. Eating an enemy or lighting him on fire brings about no really satisfying audio.
There's something satisfying about the game- The dragon can pick up and either eat or drop whatever he's holding. Like, if you pick up an animal or a human, you can eat it, but it only creates a red puff as their bodies simply disappear, and like I stated above, no cool sound effects play.
You can also drop enemies like bombs onto other enemies, assuming you can aim that well with the bad controls. It's fun to see enemies drop, and the camera luckily locks onto them so you can see them as they fall, rather than forcing you to turn around quickly or something.
The man on the back of the dragon does a number of things from shooting a bow to casting spells, but the player has to do it all while simultaneously flying the dragon and using the dragon's attacks, which gets really annoying. It would've been nice if the player could switch between the two, like the player would fire the man's weapons and the dragon would control itself, or the player would control the dragon and the man would do his own thing. Oh, well.
I was quite surprised to see that the game actually had a small number of cutscenes. They're confusing, quick and the voice acting lacks enthusiasm, but they're there! Rarely.
The single player was pretty uninteresting. Mostly alone, the player flies around and kills enemies while defending things that make no attempt at defending themselves. The only way to enjoy the single player is when the player doesn't have to defend anything, and must instead kill everything, because it gives the player time to line up his attacks and whatnot.
For some reason, there are story missions and then there are arena missions. Arena missions are just multiplayer with no customizeable options.
The multiplayer feature is actually pretty good, perhaps the only thing making Eragon slightly interesting. Limited to Ad Hoc and four players, the multiplayer comes with a variety of gametypes, but best of all, computer-controlled players, which are VERY neglected in games that need them. The player can do a quick match in multiplayer by himself, or play with a friend and computer players so it's not limited to lame 1 vs 1 crap. There are even three difficulty settings for the AI, which is weird since the actual single player game has no difficulty setting.
There's even team play, which is another strangely neglected feature in multiplayer games I've played on the PSP with computer-controlled players, such as Gun: Showdown and Medal of Honor: Heroes.
It would've been nice if multiplayer had support for eight players at least, perhaps even as high as sixteen. The free-for-all gametypes (they CAN be teamplay) are deathmatch, last-man-standing and a gametype where the players have to give eachother some disease, like tag or something.
The gametypes that force teamplay are based on trying to control certain spots for a certain amount of time, picking up stuff and transporting it to a certain place, or defending stuff. With only four players, such tasks are toiling. The players can't really back eachother up, and the idea that one player defends a base while the other attacks the enemy base results in boring gameplay so it boils down to both players needing to rush the enemy base before their own base is destroyed.
Only four players doesn't ruin anything, but it would've been nice to have more, especially since the game supports computer-controlled players to fill up empty spaces. Multiplayer is still pretty cool, if only for a little while.
Multiplayer has one true shortcoming: To play on multiplayer levels, they must first be unlocked by getting to them in single player.
Eragon's not an entirely bad game, especially with the fun multiplayer, but the controls bring the game down dramatically, especially with the need for the player to defend everything.