Dragon’s Crown is beautiful.  If we were still in the practice of rating a game based on graphics as well as other facets it would get something along the lines of 30 stars out of five, or at the very least something that would equally break the scale and make it seem as worthless as asking Conan O’Brian for game purchasing advice.  The game is simply stunning, and every moment looks like it was hand painted by some crazy perfectionist that was in desperate need to make his favorite D&D campaign come to life.  Happily, for those of us out there that picked up the game as well, there is also a rather rewarding and enjoyable JRPG type brawler behind all of the shockingly striking imagery.

Last year saw the addition of the amazingly wonderful game Code of Princess, aside from that this genre has been languishing by the wayside since roughly around the launch of the PS2.  Every now and then there would be an independent release, such as the Scott Pilgrim game, but nothing as fully fleshed out and nearly as well realized as this title.  The land that the world takes place in is tightly knit together, and feels as if there has been layers of history dusted liberally throughout.

The major problem of rises from this attempt at creating history, as the game seems to believe that the kingdom of Hydeland is basically founded on the remains of, from what I gather, no less than three other—possibly ancient and oddly advanced—civilizations.  The game is constantly talking about how this city or this empire fell because of something random, and now adventurers and monster are free to just wander around do whatever it is that they do when a Player Character isn’t controlling them.  I understand that this game is basically a love letter to all things pen and paper, tropes included, but at some point the concept starts sounding more like a mad lib and less like real writing.

Check out the myGamer live stream of this game below:

At one point in the game the player fights a gaggle of pirates, one of which has a magical lamp which houses a genie.  While fighting the enemies the characters can disarm the pirates, pick up the genie, and have him start attacking his former owners. The games narrator seems to be more of a dungeon master running the campaign instead of a magical Magoffin, the small fairy comrade bathes in ale and holds a giant cherry—because wouldn’t you? It isn’t the large sweeping motions that the game makes, such as the plot, it is the small moment to moment movements it has that cause it to stand out.

When it comes to the end of the year and people start discussing what game won over every other, I can promise you that this one will surely be forgotten; mainly because at points it really is a beautiful yet flawed game.  The one thing that no one will remember though, is that this is probably the one game that they had the most fun playing this year; because I most certainly did.  I am sure that people can go off a tangent about this game and something about “meaning”, but what they are really missing is a straight out amazingly great time akin to something they haven’t seen in over a decade.