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It seems the worst thing to be in Dragon Takers is ‘Skill-less’. Problem is, skills don’t seem that well defined. Sword techniques and magic are obviously skills, but there are farmers and merchants with skills too. I make a pretty decent cup of tea, does that give me enough of an edge to avoid being labelled? What about my ability to immediately lose any pen that I set down? If I were in this world, I’d be frantically gathering together everything I’m good at to try and avoid being ostracised because I can’t conjure fire out of my hands.
Still, the world of Dragon Takers doesn’t seem a particularly pleasant place to be. Most of it is on fire from repeated dragon army attacks, after all. More than that though, it’s a world that feels rather cold and empty. Dragon Taker has a bit of an issue when it comes to the ‘Role Playing’ part of Role Playing Game. While it serves up a dramatic storyline, full of exciting music, the actual experience is brutally linear.
Take On Me
You may be looking at the title of Dragon Takers and wondering what a dragon taker actually is. Well, it harks back to that ‘skill’ thing I was blathering about earlier. See, most people hone skills by training or exposing natural talent. But there exists an ability, creatively named ‘Skill Taker’, that can take skills from people. This skill is possessed by Helio, a young chap from a nowhere village. He’s driven into action when an army of dragon warriors, commanded by the Drake Emperor Tiberius, steamrolls through his village.
Helio sets off on a quest to send Tiberius packing, and rescue his childhood friend, Liana, who’s been kidnapped. The key twist is that Helio’s skill taker makes him the perfect everyman. Having no skills from birth, he’s able to borrow other people’s skills, giving him an infinite set. It’s an interesting premise and, while the gameplay doesn’t quite put it to good use, it has a nice effect on the story. Dragon Takers is one of those big dramatic fantasy tales, where ancient spirits are rubbing shoulders with ancient dragons.
True, it does get a little hammy at times. A lot of it is men in giant suits of armour all patting each other on the back and talking about amazing legends, but the writing isn’t too bad. It makes the smart decision to keep the focus on a core group of characters. There are only five in our party, for one: Helio; Louise, a warrior princess; Monica, a noble healer; Milena, a skilled mage; and Liana, the childhood friend. They have some nice dialogue with each other and feel quite distinct. It does delve into soppy, ‘friendship beats all’ territory at times, but I enjoyed their banter.
Dungeons & Lots Of Dragons
Unfortunately, the gameplay lets it down on almost every account. Let’s run down the list of grievances, beginning with the combat. I have a rule of thumb, you see. If a game has an ‘auto-attack’ button, then it is tacitly admitting that its combat is boring. I was once again proven right. It’s your bog-standard turn-based combat, with no real twists. Characters level up, and gain skills, on their own, so it’s just a case of using spells that an enemy is weak to and healing each turn. I swept through every boss just repeating the same handful of skills each turn. There’s no challenge; no thought required.
Helio had the potential to change things up with his ‘Skill Taker’ ability, but to steal a skill you just attack. You can then slot in a full set of elemental skills and job done. It’s one of a few parts of Dragon Takers that feel quite shallow. There’s no economy, for instance. All items are grabbed from set chests and swapped out for your current gear. The menu for doing so is incredibly irritating, too. It takes about five or six button presses just to equip anything.
The biggest problem of all, though, is that Dragon Takers is aggressively linear. You’re just whisked on a sight-seeing tour from town to town. There are no sidequests at all. In fact, there’s no reason to talk to any NPCs beyond a few lines of flavour text. You might think the large world map might have something in it, but no. It’s completely empty. Devoid of anything except random battles. You can’t escape fights, by the way, to add to the annoyance. Dragon Takers feels like a visual novel that someone has inexpertly stitched RPG elements to.
Dragon Takers – Dramatic But Shallow
It’s frustrating because I did find myself getting into the story. Like I said, it keeps the focus on the core characters and even manages to have a nice ending. There’s also decent art here, if you don’t mind a bit of RPG Maker roughness here and there. Music’s nice too, being suitably over-the-top in the fights. It just feels much too empty to really feel like a satisfying experience. In fact, it feels like it doesn’t really want us there at all. We make no choices and do nothing to the characters beyond swapping out their gear.
These issues resulted in a strange moment right at the end. Dragon Takers pulled the old bait’n’switch to introduce the true villain and the dialogue and music got me pumped up. Then the battle started and the illusion completely shattered. All four of my guys just stacked up the same skills over and over until the fight was done. Dragon Takers was so intent on telling an epic fantasy tale, that it seemed to forget that it was trying to be a video game at the same time.
