E3 '07: Dragon Blade: Wrath of Fire Impressions

Now that the Wii's stellar sales have proven that the console is here to stay, developers have taken notice and are starting to create more original games for the system. One such game is Dragon Blade: Wrath of Fire, a hack-and-slash adventure from D3. It wasn't playable at E3 2007, but we were given an extensive look at the game in action.

Dragon Blade's story is being penned by Richard Knaak who's best known for the "Dragon Lance" series of novels. As the story goes, a fire dragon tried to help mankind stop a war but was betrayed by some dark dragons and was sealed into a magic sword. The sword was broken apart and its shards were spread across the land. You play as a boy named Dal, who is the descendant of a king and is in possession of the hilt of the sword that contains the fire dragon. It's up to you to put the sword back together and vanquish Vormanax, the leader of the dark dragons for good. To do so, you'll have to fight kings and dragons across the game's six worlds and 20-plus stages.

In the first level, we saw Dal making his way around a large fortress. It wasn't long before a group of lizardlike creatures appeared from out of nowhere, forcing Dal to whip out his sword. To swing the sword, you move the Wii Remote in the direction you want to swing, and you can put together combos by quickly moving from one attack to the next. Watching one of the game's producers play it, it appeared that short, subtle motions were enough to swing your sword, so you shouldn't have to worry about waving your arms like a madman to kill just one foe. Once all of the enemies were dead, the force field that had been blocking the path ahead disappeared, and Dal was free to move on.

The next level we saw began outside of a castle on a rickety-looking bridge that spanned a moat full of bubbling lava. This is where we were introduced to Dal's dragon powers. These powers are earned by defeating kings, and once acquired, they can be mapped to the D pad. As long as you have enough power in your meter, you'll be able to unleash a variety of attacks with each different power. Fire claw turned one of Dal's hands into a giant flaming claw that he was able to use to smack around flying bats and hoglike creatures with ease. Dual arm turned both hands into giant flaming hands that could be maneuvered by moving the Nunchuk and Wii Remote in conjunction. Another attack we saw was the dragon tail whip, which was a flaming whip. Another attack was called dragon head. Last but not least, the dragon wings attack gave Dal the ability to double-jump and dash. The last part of the game we were able to check out was a fairly long boss battle, which pitted Dal against a giant three-headed dragon.

What stood out most about Dragon Blade's visuals were the interesting character designs. Many of the creatures Dal was fighting appeared to be a cross between humans and animals, such as rams, lizards, and a burly-looking creature that resembled a hog. The levels weren't extremely detailed, but they looked fine and had an interesting Asian-inspired design to them.

We would have liked to get some hands-on time with the Dragon Blade, but unfortunately, that wasn't in the cards. Hopefully, we'll be able to spend some more time with the game before it ships to stores this fall.