Dragon's Crown is developed by the same people as Muramasa, so needless to say, the art direction is unique and from the very first glance, stunning. While not as artwork worthy as Muramasa, it is great in its own right and looks amazing. You will spend time traversing through levels, stopping every so often just to appreciate the beauty of the environments. Described as an action RPG, Dragon's Crown features side scrolling action but you can move up and down the screen instead of only horizontally. This can cause some confusion when you try to attack a monster and realize that you attack didn't connect. The battle system is simple with the normal attack mapped to the Square button.
By combining the Square button with various combinations of the left stick, you get different attacks. The Circle button does a powerful move and you can evade using the R button. It's not exactly groundbreaking or innovative but it's instantly familiar and easy enough to get the hang of, while deep enough to discover new things when you're hours into the game. The RPG elements come from gaining experience and then leveling up. You can tell Dragon's Crown focused more upon the combat than the RPG elements. The leveling up system isn't sophisticated and comes off as shallow; you automatically gain stats as you level up while the Skills tree is more involved. Skills can be passive abilities or new moves; it presents a lot of freedom in which skill to learn first.
You gain skill points as you complete sidequests or level up and you can spend them as you wish on what skills you want, as long as you meet the prerequisites (minimum level etc). Up to four players can battle at once. If you're only playing by yourself though, you will have up to three AI companions. They are more like mercenaries, no essential or even mentioned in the plot. They are interchangeable as they do not level up with you. You recruit more powerful party members as you progress through the game, constantly replacing and juggling your party members. This kinda sucks as there is no attachment to those members, you can't see them level up with you or experience the journey with the main character.
During battle, it gets really chaotic with four characters fighting at once and special effects blasting everywhere. You can easily lose sight of where you character is and it gets tempting to just button mash. In this aspect, it might be better to play this game on the big screen via the PS3 version just so it's easier to see what is happening. Sadly, the game isn't cross-buy so you have to make the decision upfront on which platform to play it on. With that said, it still runs very smoothly on the Vita and I didn't run into any sort of problems. The game can feel overwhelming when you first boot it up and you're thrust into the deep end. After a brief tutorial which shows you your basic moves and explains where some things are, you're left to exploring and discovering what all those menu functions do.
You will learn how the equipment works, how the loot and leveling up system is and generally the structure of the game. An interesting thing is that you only gain experience once you've completed areas, you don't get it straight after defeating monsters. It's a different system for sure. The game's structure is repetitive and predictable. You will need to go to one of the town's areas, get a quest, go to the dungeon and clear the boss before coming back and repeating the whole process. In this aspect, the game is linear and you can't deviate from the path. There are side quests after each dungeon in which you will basically have to repeat the dungeon you just defeated. Most of the side quests will require you to backtrack and redo the dungeons.
In fact, there are "only" nine settings for the dungeons. After you've cleared the first nine, the plot device forces you to repeat those nine dungeons with an "alternative" route. In some of them, this just means redoing it, in others, it means some new environmental backdrops. However, you will get to face a new and tougher boss. Once you've cleared the game, the next difficulty unlocks so that you can play through the same dungeons all over again, then repeat for the next difficulty. By the time you've cleared the first set of nine and completed some side quests, it's actually quite sickening to keep going to those same places. It gets repetitive if you end up using the same character to complete the Hard and Infernal difficulties, yet you will have to otherwise you will get wiped out easily.
The difference in the higher difficulties is that enemies are harder, the level cap is increased and the reason for trekking through the same dungeons again is explained that two other dragon's have awakened and you have to defeat them. Also, several levels have special gimmicky sections in which you do something different like riding on a flying carpet dodging lava or on a boat lighting cannons to fire at the kraken's tentacles. Sounds fun? Not really, since they usually take a bit of time and the action isn't that intense, it gets boring when you do it for the 20,000th time. At the beginning, the story has potential and that it will unfold into a grand tale. You're an adventurer who will eventually save the kingdom by finding the Dragon's Crown, killing some monsters along the way and other problems. What you actually get is a really weak series of events strung together.
It doesn't convey the epic scale the story could have taken and you can't invest into the characters because... there is no character development and no reason for you to care about them. This was the biggest disappointment of the game, everything else was great, from graphics to music to gameplay. There are six distinct character classes to play as and each have their own unique playing style as well as advantages and disadvantages. While it somewhat freshens up the experience, the fact that you're still playing the same nine stages hits home the fact that the game is repetitive. In essence, Dragon's Crown has a lot of content but achieving that long play time only artificial as you are playing the same few areas and listening to the exact same words from the narrator in each stage. Dragon's Crown is great to play through on a fresh playthrough but whether you want to keep grinding onwards after that... it's another story.
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