Less than a week ago I met with D3 Publisher to check out their new digs, including Dragon Blade: Wrath of Fire, a brand new title for the Nintendo Wii. Team Land Ho, which was formed with some of the Panzer Dragoon team and later pushed out Pen Pen TriIcelon for the Dreamcast is developing the game. The demo started introducing a warrior brandishing a sword with imbued with dragon powers. Sounds familiar right? What makes Dragon Blade: Wrath of Fire stand out is its visceral control set up where you swing the hero’s sword with the Wii remote.
As the warrior moves through the game he gains dragon powers, like a pair of dragon claws which requires the player to attack with both the nunchuck and remote. Later the hero gains a sword whip called a dragon tail, a fire breathing dragon head and wings to fly around with. Each of these attacks are motion controlled, the dragon head shoots fireballs depending where you point the remote and you can do “ground pounds” with both hands when using the claws. While the warrior can use dragon powers, he is limited by an energy meter on the top left hand corner of the screen. Enemies drop power-ups to fill up the dragon energy meter so players can continue to swing around the fiery sword whip.
Hang on I think I’m getting ahead of myself because before you get any of these special powers you have to earn them by beating a dragon boss at the end of the level. I watched as a player fought a three headed dragon by running behind it and then waggling the remote to do some sword strikes. After a few minutes the dragon was damaged enough and one of the heads disappeared. Each boss battle in Dragon Blade: Wrath of Fire has three stages of action and break points where their attack pattern changes.
Dragon Blade: Wrath of Fire looks kind of neat, but it was not playable. So there was no way to test out how accurate the Wii remote control is or if you get tired from constantly waving your arms around. During a chat with the presenter it was emphasized that there were not any minigames or side quests in Dragon Blade: Wrath of Fire. The game was really about literally swinging a weapon around and kicking ass. There aren’t even any combos to memorize, which makes it sound rather simplistic. The more I think about Dragon Blade: Wrath of Fire it reminds me of an elementary version of Ninety Nine Nights with waggle control and less enemies on the screen. Dragon Blade: Wrath of Fire is really relying on the control scheme to carry the game and hopefully before it comes out in September I’ll get a chance to test it out.
