Overall, Dragon Marked for Death isn’t a perfect title, but damn it’s fun. It has all the right elements of a simple action platformer, but RPG attributes to make the experience deeper and more engaging.
Dragon Marked for Death is exactly what I thought it might be; difficult, yet good. It’s one of those side-scrolling platformers that was nice and pretty on the outside, but deceivingly deep and ‘Dark Souls’-esque on the inside. That said, let’s dig right into it.
Upon loading up the game for the first time, it took me to a player select screen. A bit of a shoutout to the old school arcade experience for an action platformer, where you choose your favorite character, and their specific attributes, then move right into the action itself (after you name your character). Picking a character was sorta like picking a character in the game Golden Axe — you have a rogue (do it all), a brute, a warrior, and a magician. Each bringing to the table their own attributes and playstyle. For me, I like going that rogue route, where you can have the best of both brute and warrior. The first character, which is part of a hated group known as the Dragonblood, came armed with a fiery dragon fist on one arm, and a sword-swinging hack’n slash on the other. In between, there was a tinge of bionic commando for swinging purposes and a giant whack-a-enemy sword for good measure.
Jumping right into the game, the first mission/contract puts you against a series of small baddies/monsters, ranging from simple to medium in difficulty. The opening act of the story shows you the ropes with a series of small tutorials of how your selected character can do things — very typical for this type of game (or any game these days). While I do hate tutorials with a passion, as I truly believe well-designed games don’t need handholding, Dragon Marked for Death just did enough to make sure you were comfortable with the playstyle. Nothing too intruding, but enough to get you going.
While your eyes might be taking in the visuals, your hands will be in true heaven. The very first thing you will notice about the game is how simple the controls can be, as they are intuitive in design and methodical in intention. The basics of swinging a sword is easy enough, but combining that with setting characters ablaze and swinging a GIANT sword using the R button on the switch made for a violently good time when it came to disposing of enemies. For me, the simplicity of the controls and the violent options you get during gameplay helped make the game an enjoyable experience. Your head doesn’t need to get in the way of the fun, as the controls just seemed to work well without much fiddling around. This is the type of thing that made games like Castlevania and Dead Cells so damn entertaining, and so it goes with Dragon Marked for Death. Moving, hacking/slashing your way through piles of enemies is what you want in a traditionally good action platformer game, without thinking about the controls that are getting you through. It’s just that easy.
Beyond just the controls, the second area that makes the gameplay deep is the ability to collect weapons and upgrade your attacks. Back in ye olden days, this is what games like Castlevania: Symphony of the Night thrived on. You would pick up items that would offer up better ways to dispose of enemies. Each item came with its own set of positives, which made you want to go back and try previously beaten levels, or enemies. Getting back to SOTN as it relates to Dragon Marked for Death, as you progress, you would get stronger and stronger, which created motivation for you to keep exploring and keep challenging yourself to find more places and locate more new items. Again, much like the controls, it sounds simple, and it is, but most games in this genre tend to either overcomplicate this portion of the gameplay or just flat out forget to design it this way. Motivating your players to explore, and even replay your game through item discovery and acquisition is a vital key to success in this type of game. Once my character got a taste of weapon upgrades through victories, and those upgrades visually reflected onscreen (it’s the tiny details that make a game special), as well as attacks, there was nothing but motivation to keep discovering and acquiring new things. The game is built to encourage you to do this, which helps in its successful design, and more importantly, increasing its entertainment value.
Speaking of design, the only real downfall to the title revolves around the minor enemies you encounter, at least at the beginning. As you get going in the game, you will find yourself running into the same type of enemies through a few maps. The repetition is obvious, though occasionally, and you’ll find this when you hit the third contract on a sea ship, the game tries to throw some new enemies in there to help sprinkle in some variety. It’s not a fast-moving process of new enemy introduction, so expect the same type of small-to-medium enemies as permanent residents in the game. This isn’t a dealbreaker, but you’re not going to get that variety of baddies like what you find in games like SOTN or Dead Cells — again, not immediately. The game will eventually bring in new beings, but just not right away. This was a bit of a bore for me here and there, but the bosses made up for it.
The bosses and even the mini-bosses are unique varieties of frightening imagination brought to life on the screen. You can see, much like how the game is advertised, that some real creativity and focus laid on the bosses. This includes things like giant ogres that have some ‘Master Blaster’ mini-baddy on their back. It also includes a giant squid that has four tentacles, where each tentacle present very different attacks. Going even further, there is a boss that is a plant monster on the top but is driven by an underground skull that only appears after defeating the top-soil monster. Regardless of boss, you will find some difficult and creative creatures in this area of the game. It’s what you strive to see and fight, as they are the goals of the contracts you take up in the game. It’s a good payoff for a lot of effort from contract to contract.
Staying with contracts, each mission is a contract in the game. Each contract is given to you in town in a John Wick-like bar that allows you different modes of play before you dive in. Being that I’ve got one copy of the game, and I like going rogue, I played this game and every contract as a single player experience. The other options of play are four-player local, something Nintendo loves doing with their Switch and with their 3DS systems, as well as online multiplayer. Again, I like going solo, so my reviewing experience is purely single player. It’s neat to have the separate options, and for people who enjoy the hell out of this genre, it’s probably going to be neat to bring friends along for the adventure.
Anyway, once you choose the mode, you pick the contract, which features a numerical level of difficulty. As you can imagine, the difficulty increases as you move through the contracts. The bigger the fight, the tougher the fight. This is the portion of the game that reminds me heavily of Dark Souls, as I can see Eric Layman diving headfirst into this shit without blinking an eye. Thankfully, at least at the beginning, the contracts are set in a difficulty range with only one number for difficulty (the rest are question marks), but as you progress and unlock features, you will be rewarded with greater levels of difficulty. That’s some motivation as well, which speaks volumes about the replay value of the game.
On the difficulty arc, it’s fair. The difficulty seems to ramp up as you progress and acquire new items of destruction. I never felt like I was in a level where I didn’t belong with regard to my power versus the level’s enemy level. It never felt ‘impossible’ during gameplay to beat a contract. That’s not to say that you can’t put yourself in that situation, but the game doesn’t force you there. It always seemed on par from contract to contract with my power level. I appreciate that type of design, but I also appreciate the safety net the game provides you as you progress.
The safety net of the game is both positive (more so) and negative. The positive side of the net is comprised of gathering XP and adding them to your character, even if you end up failing the contract. For example, if you play three-fourths of the contract, die, then all that XP is actually given to you regardless of your shortcomings. You’re literally rewarded for your failure, which could equal out to leveling your character up. I think that the devs knew that the game would eventually hit a part where it was difficult for the player to pass without help, so they provided said help through XP acquisition regardless of success or failure of contract. That makes me happy knowing that my 30+ minutes of fighting is not wasted.
That said, you should be warned that the ‘Dark Souls’ portion of this game is the fact that you could die at any given moment during the contract, and there are no save points once the contract starts. If you fail, then you start ALL the way back over. For example, the third mission of the game was a pain in the ass for me, as I had to fight baddies on a ship, destroy a four-armed giant squid, then explore the squid (once dead) to find a statue inside of its body — that last part has a whole new set of enemies to fight. The third act in this contract kicked my ass at the end with an unexpected boss fight, which led me to fail the contract. You only get 3-4 chances before you fail, so strategically figure things out while you can. Bosses do have patterns to them, as do their minions. Anyway, if you fail, as I did in this particular contract, you will be sent back to the beginning to start over. This means you have to take out all of the enemies once again. This challenging ‘no save point’ structure will probably frustrate the hell out of people, but it’s also another cog in this game’s gameplay design machine.
Sticking with the ship contract, once I finally powered myself through it, the game structure changed just slightly. Dragon Marked for Death isn’t completely set on one type of structure. Side-scrolling action platformer is not at all the mold it stays within during its gameplay journey. For example, the fourth contract in the game sends you back to the ship you were on during the third contract, but instead of simply hacking/slashing through the new contract, you are playing the first part of the contract by simply jumping back and forth protecting the crew of the ship from enemy bombardment. While at its core this mission is hacking/slashing, but the dynamic of jumping back and forth and juggling the protection of several NPCs is a fascinating turn in the gameplay design. It’s refreshing, though I could have just been happy with hack/slash gameplay. This turn helped to make the experience deeper.
Now, staying with deeper, the game does have an RPG backbone to it. As you gather XP, you will level up. In traditional Skyrim-like leveling categories, you get to choose where those achieved points go in a particular attribute of the player. This means you could make them stronger, live longer, or choose another attribute that somehow enhances your character. It’s yet another factor in motivating your player to keep fighting. You want to max out your character and be invincible, as that is the goal in the game. Other traditional RPG elements crop up as well, including purchasing equipment in town that is stronger, and/or trading items for unique equipment.
In addition to all of the above, the game is presented in a fun and unique pixel-driven style that harkens back to a simpler time period where action platformers ruled the earth. The style is fun, pretty, and very much appropriate for this type of game (as you can see in the pics).
Overall, Dragon Marked for Death isn’t a perfect title, but damn it’s fun. It has all the right elements of a simple action platformer, but RPG attributes to make the experience deeper and more engaging.
Available at North American retailers.
