Whether it’s attacking a zombie-filled village or raiding a labyrinthine tomb, taking out monsters with my friends is always fun. So, when I heard about Fight The Dragon, of course I was interested. Fight The Dragon is designed to let you not only play with your friends, but then make your own dungeons and raid them. How cool! The game gives you a couple options after loading it up, picking between four different classes – Fighter, Ice Wizard, Fire Lord and Black Rogue. After you decide who you want to be, you get to choose if you want to play a map made by a user like yourself or if you want to create your own instead.
I do want to say the game is still in the alpha stage of development. All four classes have missing weapons, and, while the game looks very nice, the controls and tutorial levels need a bit more polish. Despite there being a tutorial, nothing is properly explained, and I spent most of my first couple of dungeons trying to figure out how to rotate my camera. The game gives two potions in the form of loot, as well, but doesn’t explain what the ‘Rage’ potion even does and never shows off how to fully use your personal character. I’m not sure if these features will be explained better before the game is officially released, but one would hope so.
The first couple of dungeons I ventured through were made by the developers of the game, so, when I got a chance, I tried some user-created dungeons. Since the game is purposely designed so you’re limited to dungeons that can be completed within 10-15 minutes, all the levels are rather small. Anything more and you will have rambling messes of massive levels. Considering some of the confusing dungeons I’ve seen even with the restriction, I’m very glad there is indeed a limit in place.
The game has two physical classes, the Fighter and the Black Rogue, and two magical ones, Fire Lord and Ice Wizard. I noticed that, while playing with the Ice Wizard, standing in water heals you. It’s a very cool feature and a nice level of depth that I wasn’t expecting for a game like this.
After goofing about in a couple of dungeons, I realized my inventory was becoming quite full, so I ventured over to the Loot Shrine in the beginning hub. The Loot Shrine lets you donate your money and loot for the chance of getting one of three better items. I think this is a fun way to handle loot, and it really helps you get more powerful items to take on The Dragon.
Speaking of The Dragon, after hitting up a couple of dungeons with friends and getting a lot of great loot, my friends and I decided to take down The Dragon head on. The Dragon has 1 million health, and you have three lives to try and kill him. However, if you fail, all damage you dealt stays on him, so you can go back and finish him off as long as you have a Dragon Scroll. When I headed over to The Dragon’s Arena with my friends, however, we found out you can only challenge it in single player mode, which seems odd to me. The game made everything else multiplayer (to the point that it supports cross-platform play) and a lot of the dungeons are built so that going alone is terrible, while going with friends is the only way you can make it though without dying easily, especially for the rogue class. However, fighting The Dragon is completely single player. I can see why they did it that way, so that you can really say it was you matching your strength against The Dragon. As a gamer, though, I find this feature confusing and rather disappointing.
This is a great game to play in small bursts with friends, but not being able to fight The Dragon together really makes the game feel like it’s missing something huge. It’s not a game I can see myself or my friends playing for the long term. It’s fun and delightful while playing, but there is no draw to get together with my friends and play it as it is currently. Ill be keeping an eye on this one, however, since I can’t wait to see what else is going to happen with it. For now, considering the price, $14.99 on Steam, you might want to wait till there’s a bit more meat to it.
