Draglade

December 3,2007 - With so many pony and dog related games coming out for the Nintendo DS, shouldn’t there be a bit more ass kicking? Atlus Software seems to think so. After the recent releases of Bleach: The Blade of Fate and Mortal Kombat, Atlus brings forth Draglade, a music-themed fighting game. While the premise of fighting according to a rhythm is interesting, the fighter doesn’t quite live up to the quality of something like Mortal Kombat.

In Draglade, you have the opportunity to take part in the stories of four different characters. Their stories are unique to each other but they’ll have you doing essentially the same thing with different methods. You can choose either a fire, water, Earth, or lightning hero and customize the name to your liking. The fire hero’s story revolves around wanting to become the greatest Major Grapper of all time. Lightning’s, on the other hand, tries to shake off a dark past and regain peace of mind. The others have their respective stories but no matter which route you take, you will end up taking the grapper exams to become a Major Grapper.

But what’s this grapping? It’s a fighting form, in its simplest sense, that centers itself around a beat. Grappers are heavily respected within the towns you’ll be visiting. Grappers use a device called a Glade, which comes from their G-Con (glade converter). G-cons take the matter that floats around in the air and converts it into a user-specific powerful glade. For example, the fire hero’s glade is a sword made of fire. Your enemies, though, use Dark G-Cons that convert Dark Matter. This dark matter makes them stronger, but the use of Dark G-Cons slowly turns the user insane. G-Cons also use devices called bullets. It’s a power up that supplements your fighting skills. Bullet powers range from launching fire balls to releasing walking bombs. The bullets can be bought, given, or picked up from enemies or boxes. However, you can only use bullets so many times in an instance. You have a bullet points meter that decreases as you use it but replenishes itself constantly.

After you get past the game’s overtly cheesy plots and dialogue (“You can’t beat this heat!!!”), you can find a pretty decent fighter with RPG elements mixed in. The more you fight, the more experience you gain. Leveling up will give you more bullet points and larger health bars. It’s crucial to succeeding in the game, but you don’t really have much of a choice when it comes to fighting. Your bullet point meter will also increase to accommodate the better bullets you’ll gain (the better they are, the more BP they use). Fending off enemies will be easy when facing thugs and mutated animals, but main enemies can be pretty damn tough. That’s where fighting to a beat comes in. After successfully landing hits and having enough BP, pressing the L button will start up music and make you tap Y to the beat. You can customize the beat to your liking in the menu, otherwise it’s the Dragonglade beat. During this mini-session, you only need the Y button. Bullets are also customizable in the game. You’ll have three main ones to work from with another three waiting in the stock menu. Accessing these is as simple as tapping them with the stylus. Speaking of the stylus, the game doesn’t really take the touch pad features into account. You can change your bullets and choose what areas to go to (it’s a map when you aren’t fighting), but that’s about it. Then again, there doesn’t seem to be too much room for the big DS features.

Draglade also has online capabilities for your enjoyment should the single player start to bore you. Matches work similar to how the grap exams work. You choose a Grap Hall, choose whether or not there are traps (makes fighting more difficult), and options to gain bonus credits from fighting. It works well enough but doesn’t stay interesting for too long. Still, it’s a good way to test your skills/bullets against others around the country. If your bullets aren’t good enough you’ll be able to trade them online as well. But if you don’t want to associate with random people, you can always play against a friend or go into co-op mode.

On the technical side of things, Draglade doesn’t impress too much but doesn’t completely fail either. The music is heavily stereotypical and if you’re a South Park fan, you’ll draw comparisons between the game’s opening song and South Park’s anime theme from “Good Times with Weapons.” Graphics are ok and thankfully, there is no voice acting. If there was, it would be some of the cheesiest voice acting ever. There’s not too much else to say about the game considering how average it is.

So if you have some spare time on your hands, Draglade is worth picking up to get your fighting fix. Fighting based around beats is interesting but not enough to carry the game the way it’s supposed to. Mortal Kombat will probably be able to suit your fighting needs better, but Draglade is a decent addition to the DS’s fighting catalog.

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