The Dragons are back in a new game! During my time at Gamescom 2022, I had the opportunity to check out Dreamworks Dragons: Legends of the Nine Realm for a couple of minutes. Will it be worth playing? Let’s find out!
Dreamworks Dragons: Legends of the Nine Realm
When I first got my hands on the game, I was impressed by its presentation. The previous game Dreamworks Dragons Dawn of New Riders took us by surprise as it was one of the best games for young and old. Dawn of New Riders took a lot of inspiration from The Legend of Zelda franchise but added more than enough of its own ideas to keep it fresh. Fans of the Zelda franchise loved it and fans of the Dragons franchise got their hands on one of the better games available. Fast-Forward to Legends of the Nine Realm, a different upcoming Dragons game that does things a bit differently without even losing the Dragons vibe.
This one doesn’t lean as much on the Zelda mechanics as the previous one, instead, it focuses on puzzle solving and intense combat. If you want to compare it to a more mature game, I would see it probably comes closer to the Diablo franchise than the Zelda franchise. In my session, I had the opportunity to play with a couple of dragons, Thunder being the main star and some others, all with their own strengths and weaknesses. If you’re facing off with an enemy, it’s important to check out his weaknesses and pick the right type of dragon to take it down. Thunder had powerful electric attacks that could even trigger some interesting environmental traps while other dragons had fire or water attacks, inflicting massive damage to certain types of dragons. Experimenten with the different characters and using their strengths to your own advantage offers the main portion of the gameplay and worked well. It’s all created in a side top-down view in 3D environments which works perfectly fine for a game like this.
Puzzles and bosses
Besides the regular combat gameplay, I also tested some of the game’s environmental puzzles and boss fights. I won’t go into spoiler territory by explaining those in full detail but I can say that both offer some unique gameplay mechanics. By using the powers of your dragon, you can trigger certain mechanics in the game which will allow you to make platforms move or hit the boss where it really hurts. Discovering which dragon you have to use in order to trigger a specific mechanic is part of the puzzling fun. Keep in mind that this still is a game targeted at a younger audience so the puzzles aren’t always that hard to solve and the bosses offer a decent challenge without ever becoming unbeatable. I’m pretty sure the kids will love the variation in the regular combat and it also helps a lot of course that the game really looks pretty impressive.
Early Conclusion:
Dreamworks Dragons: Legends of the Nine Realm is shaping up to be another fun game for the kids as it offers a wide variety of gameplay mechanics to keep things entertaining.
