I'm headed to a mountain resort for the next 5 days or so, and along came my Vita and 3DS, naturally. I'm going to try and focus on 5 games or less so that I can hopefully make some progress, or even finish a few of them. Some of the games on the list I had started prior to my vacation (Shovel Knight, Kirby: Triple Deluxe, Persona 4 Golden), while some I'm starting fresh (Proteus, Dragon's Crown). Of course I don't expect to finish Persona 4, but I have high hopes that I can make it through Proteus (if I'm not mistaken it's only a couple of hours long), Shovel Knight (I'm almost finished), Kirby: Triple Deluxe (about halfway through) and Dragon's Crown (I've played a little bit and it seems like it's going to hook me). I'm not going to be able to play games until about 5 or 6 PM each day, because I'll be out doing other stuff, but even as a side activity at the end of a day, I could probably make some progress. Below I will include thoughts on Dragon's Crown, which I started recently.

Dragon's Crown:

This one is freshest in my mind as I played the first half an hour this morning. I had previously only played one other Vanillaware game: Muramasa, which I found extremely dull due to very repetitive level design. Luckily, within the first 15 minutes of Dragon's Crown I found that the same was not true. Dragon's Crown, like Vanillaware's previous games, is a side-scrolling action RPG. In comparison to Muramasa, Dragon's Crown seems less focused on combo-based combat and more built around finding better loot and outfitting your character. This is a big plus for me, as I find looting to be much more enjoyable than pulling of intricate combos, but that's just personal preference. The game's art-style is simultaneously over-the-top, and beautiful, with detailed environments and some great animations on the characters. The combat, as simple as it is, wouldn't feel half as good if it wasn't for the fluidity of the combat animations, which go a long way to make the experience more appealing to the eyes. The game utilizes a hub world, complete with quest givers and item shops. The player can leave this hub to complete quests and gain experience, although I don't have much experience with the game yet so I can't offer opinions on quest variety. As soon as I acquired the spoils of my first quest however, the feeling matched that found in Borderlands or Diablo. I'm really enjoying Dragon's Crown so far, and hope to post more thoughts soon.