"I feel a rush coming on and that's bad for you!" The best game sega saturn as to offer...
I will start by saying that this is my favorite saturn game by far, never have i spend so many hours playing a saturn game.
Story and characters:
As soon as the game starts you view an introduction video explaining all about the past of Legendra and the battle against the Evil God Marduk, this is a good thing because you get to immediately know the basic background story of Legendra.
You can then start by choosing one of the main characters of the game, each of the main characters is the ruler of a specific kingdom.
The avaiable rulers are as follow:
1st) Wein, the ruler of Highland who is given the task of gathering all of the Dragon Force members by the godess Astea herself.
2nd) Goldark, the ruler of Fandaria and the main antagonist during the begining of the game who sets out to conquer the entire land of Legendra in order to end the war started by his brother Gizzdark. He is only avaiable as a playable character after you finish the game once with another ruler.
3nd) Teiris, the ruler of Palemoon and the elf tribe who is given the task of gathering the Dragon Force members by the late Palemoon elf queen Farla.
4th) Mikhail, a samurai who is heir to the throne of Izumo and who initially sets out protect Izumo from the threat that is Fandaria and is later given the task of gathering the Dragon Force members by wiseman Frest.
5th) Reinhart, the young leader of Tradnor who already knows about the Dragon Force trusting on Wein to gather all of the members. He is only avaiable as a playable character after finishing the game once with another ruler.
6th) Leon, the monk who rules over Topaz who is first warned about the upcoming events by his master Kazabu and who is later given the task of gathering the Dragon Force members by wise man Frest.
7th) Gongos, the beast king who rules over Bozack and who sets out to defeat Goldark.
8th) Junon, the masked female knight who rules over Tristan, that is determined to get her revenge on Goldark for killing her father. She is later given the task of gathering the Dragon Force Warriors by wise man Frest.
While the main objective of each ruler is the same in the end, the means to each you reach that end differ from character to character. Each of the rulers as their own story and personal enemies, so you won't get bored by playing the game 8 times with all of the rulers.
Gameplay:
Each of the rulers have their own group of generals from the get go and as the game progresses they can obtain more generals by capturing them, joining with another kingdom or by searching for avaiable generals. Each general as it's own class: soldier, knight, samurai, spirit user, magician, priest, monk, ninja, thief, beastman, drangonman and immortal tribesmen. It's worth noting that all of these classes are capable of using different types of attacks and all of them require different strategies to get the best out of them. All of the generals are given control to an army of 10 to 100 men, there are a lot of different army types avaiable to choose from: soldiers, cavalry, samurais, archers, mages, monks, harpies, beastmen, zombies/undead and dragonmen. All of the armies have streghts and weaknesses and you have to come up with different strategies to use them in the best way possible for example an army of soldiers is strong against an army of monks but is weak against an army composed by cavalry. You can also choose from a list of different battle formations that you can use during a battle with an enemy general.
As you battle in different locations on the land of Legendra you will find yourself in different types of terrains like desert or snow terrains for example.
Graphics:
Dragon Force ia s 2D animated game, the characters look like they were taken from an anime series and are very well designed for a 32-bit console game. What i find really wonderful is the design of the characters during the cut-scenes and FMV sequences, you can see that the game developers had a lot of care and paid attention to detail while developing the game.
Soundtrack:
Every music in this game fits well to the moment you are experiencing, there is a wide range of themes avaiable and i must say there isn't one which i did not enjoy. One thing i like to point out is how well each of the main characters theme fits them while you explore the vast land of Legendra.
In conclusion i would like to say that this is a must have for every sega saturn owner even today i still like to play the game from time to time, it's a shame that this game is not as well known as other not so good titles. I would recommend this game to everyone even at this time and age, if you intend to play Dragon Force get ready to spend a lot of hours on your saturn on what is arguably the best game created for it and as such a 9.1 score is far to low for this great game in my personal opinion.
Thanks for reading!