The Dragon Teases us
The original Garshasp, an indie hack-and-slash in the style of god of war, certainly had a significant amount of chutzpah about it. Developed by the small development team called Dead Mage in Iran, Garshasp was made mostly with free software, such as the OGRE engine. While the game they were able to release hardly measures up to its aspirations (God of War), it was still a surprisingly solid product- if a bit short, being easily completable in 3-4 hours.
The original managed to garner enough attention to be seen as worthy of at least an expansion of sorts. And that is exactly what Dead Mage did in 2012 with Temple of the Dragon. Being supposedly based on much of the same tech and assets Dead Mage used for the original, you'd think the only direction an Expansion could've gone with an already solid base was up. Unfortunately, Temple of the Dragon manages to be a complete tease in more ways than one.
Set as a prequel to the original, Temple of the Dragon sets about the simple task of explaining where the mace Garshasp's brother died defending in the original came from. Specifically, it came from the titular temple, and Garshasp has set out to reclaim it. Overall, there's just about as much story here as there was in the original, if not slightly more due to Temple of the Dragon's shift from narrated camera pans to voice-acted cutscenes. Although the narrator does seem to have returned to voice the various parchments you can find throughout the game, the majority of the voice acting is laughably bad. Thankfully- there's not too much of it.
The core gameplay moveset and structure of Temple of the Dragon is unsurprisingly similar to the original. The focus is on melee combat and chaining combos against either elite enemies who might block your attacks, or hordes who will try to swarm and surround you. Despite being stand-alone though, Temple of the Dragon definitely assumes you've played the original- as it introduces new enemies and trickier encounters at a much faster pace than the original, and also has some more difficult elements than the original.
This all stems from how Temple of the Dragon is noticably balanced differently than the original. Many of the enemies from the original return- but some of them seem to have had their AI, move sets, or animations ever so subtly re-balanced to make them seem slightly more dangerous. Enemy AI in general in Temple of the Dragon feels slightly more aggressive than the original- with some enemies often diving straight into attacks instead of bothering to copiously strafe around you like in the original.
The level design has also been re-balanced in favor of puzzles and platforming compared to the original. The puzzles of the game are decent fun and are generally never hard enough to become complete road blocks. However, there are one or two segments of platforming in the game that can serve as roadblocks for some players. Also, just like in the original, the fixed camera angles will occasionally make the path forward unclear.
Unfortunately, not all of the re-balancing has been good, or even logical. For some reason, Temple of the Dragon is much less optimized than the original- chugging heavily at certain camera angles or when it zooms out for the occasional vista shot. The original had similar levels of view that generally didn't chug, so it is baffling what Temple of the Dragon does differently from the original to make it chug so badly (The only potential explanation I can think of is that Temple has a lot more fauna than the original did).
Frame rate is not the only technical area Temple of the Dragon falters in. The hit detection is also notably worse than the original- where it was already occasionally shoddy at spots. In Temple, poor hit detection is even more rampant for both Garshasp and enemies.
And in some ways, Temple is just simply poorly designed compared to the original. The Final Boss is an especially egregious offender, due to a combination of no checkpoints, luck-based AI behavior, obnoxious spike floor usage, and questionable hit detection (The boss can often ignore the spike floors when you'd think he'd get hit by them).
The final knocker against the game is definitely one of value. With all the problems the game has, it's length is under 2 hours- and that's with around 20+ reloads against the final boss considered.
It's a shame that what should have been a pleasant followup to the original ends up teasing us with simply what could have been. Temple of the Dragon suffers from far too many technical issues and incredibly short length to be recommendable even at its low price point of $5. These are flaws than even those who absolutely adored the original may have a hard time forgiving.
