Dragon Takers Review - Gaming News

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A New Twist on a Familiar Formula

With the same grim inevitability as death and taxes, a new KEMCO JRPG, retro styled of course, has heaved itself over the horizon.

Dragon Takers is the latest in a long line of these RPGs from this publisher, however, like a few, it does threaten to bring something new to the table this time around.

So, without further ado (mainly because I think I have used every journalistic trick under the sun in my attempts to introduce these games in new and exciting ways), let’s dive into the world of Dragon Takers.

Dragon Takers Review 1 — Take that Dragon!

The story of a game like this is always a good place to start, so start here I shall. We are Helio, a pretty useless individual scratching around for survival in a village. The issue appears to be that we cannot use skills, and while it isn’t explained what skills we can’t use, it seems to make us a second class citizen.

One day the Dragon Army, who have been waging war on the whole world under the command of Drake Emperor Tiberius, appear in the village in an attempt to kidnap a young girl, one of Helio’s friends. As luck would have it, just as Helio is about to be killed by a dragon attack, he gets a new power – the legendary “Skill Taker” power. This allows Helio to take the skills of his enemies and use them as his own in battle, and as you can imagine, for a bloke who until recently had no skills, having all the power potentially available makes a bit of a change. But can Helio use these new found powers to get stronger and rescue the maiden, or will his quest come to naught? Well, that’s where you come in…

Retro Aesthetics and Familiar Sounds

It will come as a surprise to absolutely no one that the overall presentation of Dragon Takers is very retro in style, but for a change this game appears to be a generation back from the usual KEMCO output. Instead of running 16-bit style graphics, these are closer to the 8-bit style, closer to an early Final Fantasy game, for instance. Another difference is found in the battle screen, where instead of being a side-on view with both sides of the fight in clear view, this time the field of battle is vertical, with the enemies appearing at the top of the screen.

Other than that, everything is pretty much the same as every other page in the KEMCO playbook, with a world map to run around on, various dungeons and towns to explore, and companions to recruit to join the fight.

Dragon Takers Review 2 — Usual KEMCO gaming

It’s similar in terms of the audio too, with stirring battle music, gentle ambient music and various spell and sword style noises to report. The story is presented in the manner of static cut scenes, with a picture of the protagonist shown so we know who is having a chat. All in all, everything is as expected; nothing new or shocking, but no complaints either.

Skill-Stealing Action

It is all pretty much business as usual in terms of the gameplay as well. As we wander around, following prompts from the story, a bunch of random fights pop up, seemingly every three steps or so, and while this is a necessary evil in order to not only level up but also to gain new skills, it does get tedious after a while. Grinding levels has always – and probably will always be – a feature of KEMCO games, but this one is on a different level. However, as it is mixed into the clever new mechanic of skill taking, fighting new monsters is always a good idea.

Obviously, having all these new skills means there is always a choice as to what to use at any one time, as we have a limited arsenal that we can call on in battle. Of course, different monsters have different weaknesses, so part of the skill of the game is in learning what powers work on which monsters. This learning curve is strong enough to keep you engaged, working well in itself.

Dragon Takers Review 3 — Missing a bit of polish

A Middling RPG with a Unique Twist, But Some Familiar Issues

Dragon Takers is quite a large game, with a lot of things to do, as with all good RPGs. But I can’t help feel that the story is elongated unnecessarily – there seems to be a bit too much filler content. Add in the traditional KEMCO control quirks, where lining up a narrow gap to walk through is a crapshoot, and the obligatory getting hung up on the scenery and thus taking more steps than you strictly should, and it all leads to taking in more fights than you perhaps need to. Dragon Takers therefore feels like it is missing that final bit of polish, that final tickle over that would have made it a great game.

As it is, Dragon Takers runs out of gas in the very middle of the road. This isn’t the worst KEMCO game I’ve played, but it is a long way off the best.