I finally bought a PS3 this weekend during the Black Friday sales to play 2 games: Dragon's Crown and Disgaea 4. I'm a fan of both Vanillaware and Disgaea from my PS2 days, but missed their PS3-era games because I switched to the Xbox 360. I've been waiting for a cheap used PS3 to finally play them, so I bit when Gamestop was offering one for $110. This started a 3-day trial to get it completely up & running, which started with me realizing my console TV didn't have any of the inputs the PS3 supported (but my computer monitor did) and ended with me cobbling together 3 different converters so I could listen to game audio on my headphones (since my monitor doesn't have an audio output). All this just to play 2 games... well, one game so far.

Dragon's Crown is pretty good. I know most of the discussion about that game was over the female character models, and frankly I chose to play the Sorceress because I like her character model (and playing magic-users in general), so let's just get that out of the way first so we can get to the nitty-gritty about how the game actually plays. At first I felt a bit uneasy about how blatant her assets were in her character animations, but then I watched the Dwarf character piledrive an owlbear into the ground and decided I was taking the game far too seriously. Everything about the game seems stylized to the point of fantastic absurdity, from the barechested pygmy wrestler Dwarf to the giant Fighter whose legs clearly are too tiny for his massive upper-body. More importantly, it's never really emphasized outside of animations. There's no extra fanservice, no alternate skimpy costumes, no sexy dialogue pointing out her assets or making her into a seductress that crosses into uncomfortable "hey look at the sexy" territory. She isn't put in a skimpy swimsuit like Lara Croft or the Dead or Alive gals or poledancing like Bloodrayne or getting into arguments about measurements like way too many anime games; she's treated more like Chun Li or Cammy in Street Fighter 2, where the sexiness just exists and is secondary to the actual ass-kicking.

That comparison seems fitting when you realize Dragon's Crown is basically an unofficial sequel (and loving homage) to D&D: Tower of Doom, a side-scrolling brawler released in 1993 by Capcom that is, in my opinion, the best side-scrolling brawler of the 90s. Seriously, if you haven't played it yet, go do so; Iron Galaxy released a faithful, cheap port of it to Steam that'll probably be discounted to $5 during the Christmas sale. That's worth playing one of the forgotten gems of the 90s arcade era. The director of Dragon's Crown started his gaming career working on D&D: Tower of Doom, and anyone who has played it will get several moments of deja vu in Dragon's Crown, from the particular way Dragon's Crown lizardmen spin their spears like Tower of Doom troglodytes to several boss fights (including the titular dragon) whose mechanics seem ripped straight from Tower of Doom.

So how do the gameplay compare with its unofficial predecessor? Really good. Movement and attacks feel fluid, the control layouts make sense and become second nature after an hour or two, and special attacks & evasions are common and vital parts of surviving. You fight across 9 different locations, each with their own feel (from an undead-infested manor to ancient ruins swarming with demons and cultists) that encourages subtle changes in tactics and equipment loadouts. The most variance comes from the bosses themselves: you'll fight a tiny, lightning-quick Killer Rabbit in one stage, face a giant stationary Kraken on a time limit in the next stage, and top it all off by protecting a cannon from a horde of orcs to destroy a living gate. Time limits, escorts, solitary giant monsters or massive swarms of mooks, big bruisers and teleporting casters, Dragon's Crown hits nearly every type of fantasy fight you can think of and is all the better for it.

Once you successfully complete a level, you return to town to identify (and divvy) the loot, which is various weapons and armor you can equip to improve your characters' stats ala Diablo, as well as level up and turn in quests to gain more skill points to put in various powers. This part of the game is weak: your equipments' stat increases are too subtle to really notice in the gameplay itself, as are the passive bonuses you can invest skill points in, and any spells you learn have to take up an inventory slot so you will probably only invest in 3-4 active spells. I often wondered how much of an effect my passive stat bonuses had, but the gameplay was too much (mindless) fun for it to really become an issue. I wish it had an advanced stat screen where you could see your total bonuses, though, including a breakdown of the numerical effects of your stats. (This game commits the all-too-common sin of giving you stats with only the vaguest description of what they do.)

I was originally also going to complain about some of the stranger design choices here (such as making players pay gold to choose a specific stage, or not being able to use the same equipment across multiple loadouts), but as the game opened up and revealed more game modes, it made sense. At the start of the game, things are straightforward: you get a new stage to beat, you defeat it and go on to the next stage, just like every other beat-em-up. But once you beat all nine stages, you have to go through them all again and beat a more difficult branch with different, harder bosses. When you choose which branch to tackle, you can also choose which loadout you use. But I can already hear you asking, why not decide that in town before you head out? Because at the same time, the game also gives you the option of chaining random stages together for increased rewards, which is the craziest idea I've ever seen in a side-scrolling beat 'em up.

Here's how the whole cycle works: after you beat a level, you're given the option to continue on to a random level or call it a day and head back to town. If you continue, you get a % increase to your gold, experience points, and loot quality, but you don't restore any lives, consumable spells/items, or equipment durability. You're basically fighting a war of attrition to see how far you can go before you run out of potions/spells/lives or your equipment breaks down and you need to return to town to get it repaired. However, if you switch to a new loadout in the next level, you get a fresh stock of items, spells, and equipment. So you naturally begin making extra loadouts filled with your 2nd-best equipment so you can keep going once your primary equipment is exhausted, or loadouts geared towards fighting through specific levels like the undead-heavy Keep of the Dead. You can technically make up to 9 loadouts, and you gain extra lives once you earn enough points in a run, so a dedicated player could make a run last multiple hours and earn a ton of experience points, gold, and loot in the process. It's a crazy, interesting idea that could only work in a beat-em-up with heavy RPG elements, and makes me genuinely interested to see how much longevity I can squeeze out of it.

What depresses me is Dragon's Crown's attempts to make the most interesting, long-lasting beat-em-up in years was overshadowed by a controversy over its art's sexuality the game itself really doesn't exploit or pay attention to. It's perfectly happy focusing instead on the giant freaking dragon attempting to burn you to a crisp, and how it can make slaughtering your way across a fantasy land a compelling experience. My nagging complaints about the game's interface and how it handles equipment can't deny I've sunk a good 20 hours into it just beating the first difficulty level (out of 3) and I still want to see how far I can make it through it before I ultimately get bored. This is the best game Vanillaware's created and deserves to be known for more than just how large the sorceress's breasts are.