Battle of Giants: Dragons Review

Battle of Giants: Dragons is the second game in the series following last year's Battle of Giants: Dinosaurs. The game revolves around the story of dragons that have created their own world out of fear of extinction. Once they've created this new world, though, one of the races of dragons, the Salmu, seeks the power for themselves and attempt to take over the four different parts of that world. It's up to you to burn crystals, and slay the Salmu in order to bring peace to the dragon race.

Battle of Giants: Dragons opens up with a very well animated medieval style storybook cutscene depicting the creation of the world, that is never really explored again. The story is narrated by a dragon that sounds a bit like William Shatner speaking Klingon. Needless to say it is very poorly done. You explore the extremely barren world of the dragons with the stylus, much like you do in Ninja Gaiden or Phantom Hourglass. You may find, though, that your hand gets in the way of the screen while you're attempting to navigate the world and it becomes very hard to see what you're doing and where you're going. You can traverse the land by either walking, which is very slow, or flying, considerably faster than walking. To take to the skies you double tap your dragon, but it is not always clear if you're in an area where you can take off and so you'll have to move around to a few different spots before your dragon will take flight.

Scattered throughout the different lands are your objectives in helping to restore peace in the form of crystals that need to be burned to unlock new areas of the map. There are also a few dragons inhabiting the land and if you encounter one of them a battle takes place. This is where the bulk of your dragon action will be taking place. Battles are fought between two dragons who are standing in their own seperate combat circles. You can drag the stylus to one of six areas inside that circle and depending on where you are you will attack with a different part of the dragon's body. To attack you simply swipe the stylus towards your opponent, and it is quite responsive. You won't have to make multiple swipes very often to attack. Once you've successfully attacked your opponent you will be given a pattern of dots to trace and depending on how many of those dots you connect you will do more, or less damage. You will find very quickly, through a bit of trial and error that there is one attack that does considerably more damage than the others and you will use it all the time. This will make the battles very repetitive very quickly. There is also not much fear of losing a battle because the AI dragons do not fight back nearly as fast as you do so you will be continously getting the upper hand. If you desire you can choose not to damage opponents but collect orbs that can be used for a special attack, but I found it did not do much more damage than your normal attacks so it's better to just choose to damage your opponent.

The dragons themselves animate very nicely and are incredibly detailed. You can, throughout the adventure, unlock new parts that can be used to customize your dragon and give him or her new colors. It's very easy to tell that more time was spent on the dragons than the landscapes because they are incredibly barren with only a few dead trees and rocks placed conservatively througout. The voice acting, as mentioned before is incredibly bad, and extremely repetitive. The music is just as forgettable.

You do have the option of competing in multiplayer battles either through single cart or multi-cart play. If only one person has the game you can share with a friend who will be given a generic dragon with a few abilities. If both players have the game they can take their favorite dragon into the fight. There is actually a bit of fun to be had here. The only thing you can do is the battles, but they are much more entertaining than fighting the AI opponents as humans generally think about their strategies a little bit.

Between the incredibly ridiculous objectives that you accomplish to bring peace to the world, the overly repetitive battles and the barren landscapes, there is not much fun to be had in Battle of Giants; Dragons. Multi-player is good for a short car ride or a few minutes before school in the morning, but other than that I think it would be best to pass on this title.

Final Score: 2/5 Below Average

Review copy of the game provided by Ubisoft Quebec.