Developer: Westwood Publisher: FCI Release: 07/92 Genre: Shooter
This has to be one of the strangest Dungeons & Dragons titles ever made. There are many AD&D games for the NES, some of them even exclusive to Japan. Unfortunately most of them are badly butchered ports of computer RPGs. As a fan of the Dragonlance books growing up the tragic state of these NES games hurt my soul. Thank god for game magazines that helped me avoid tragic titles that are just as bad if not worse than Conan. DragonStrike is also a port but more of a remake of its PC counterpart. And the game is better for it; there is no way the little grey box could ever approximate the original. If you can master the controls this can be an enjoyable yet difficult shooter. But most will not bother and I do not blame them.
The elaborate plot of the PC game is more or less gone in this version. In that version you were an aspiring knight of Solamnia climbing the ranks with successful missions and earning new dragons to ride. Now you are an unmanned dragon helping humanity fight the forces of the Queen of Darkness for…..reasons. Well whatever, while it was nice for those of us who were fans of the Dragonlance novels it is not important in a shooter.
On the PC DragonStrike was a first person flight simulator. It was a pretty good game, with early polygonal graphics and mechanics. The other computer formats of the time tried to replicate the experience but the framerates were terrible, mostly running in the single digits. Bless their hearts they tried. On Nintendo DragonStrike is a top down shooter. Although it bears a passing resemblance to Dragon Spirit it could not be any more different than that game. This is not a traditional vertical shooter but a mission focused free roaming adventure.
Rather than controlling a procession of increasingly powerful dragons you can choose from three at the start. Each dragon (Bronze, Silver, Gold) differs in terms of speed, armor, breath power, and health. They also have two unique breath powers. The bronze and silver dragons can stun enemies with their secondary options for instance while gold is all about power. The power of your attacks decreases as your health drops which is unfortunate as the game is difficult as is and is something to consider. There are a plethora of items to shore up some of these weaknesses but depending on the difficulty you select one might be better than the other.
The controls will take some immediate adjustment. Your dragon is always in motion and the best way to describe it is that you are steering them rather than controlling. Turning is not immediate and depending on the dragon’s speed has a wide arc. The game takes place on a high and low plane you can switch between at any time. This is both the most distinct aspect of the game but also its most frustrating. It does not do a good job of distinguishing what should be distant objects in the background. Most shooters with dual planes make distant targets and such smaller so it is obvious but not so here. There are levels where you can safely fly over some trees and buildings and parts where you take damage. The inconsistency is annoying and what will cause you the most damage and unfortunately is an issue until the conclusion.
Each of DragonStrike’s fourteen levels has an objective. These are varied, from destroying a set number of targets to simple search and destroy or killing a particular enemy on the map. There are plenty of fodder enemies to build up your resources and power-ups so you can survive until the end or to prepare for the end level boss. Not every level has a boss but the ones that do allow the game to strut its stuff. The bosses are big and impressive although the hit detection and small arenas make them infuriating to deal with. There is a lot to like in DragonStrike but between the aforementioned visual readability issues and hit detection you have to tolerate a lot of jank to partake. The sky high difficulty does not help either.
DragonStrike is not an easy game for a variety of reasons. Depending on your choice of dragon your life bar and armor will be incredibly small. The silver dragon cannot take many hits before death and between the controls and ramming into buildings death comes swiftly. Unfortunately there are no checkpoints and you restart the entire level which is brutal. Some of the bosses are a trying experience; the first you encounter is the Kraken and it is a nightmare. The moments when things come together it can be fun but those are few and far. With some better balancing and tweaking DragonStrike could have been a solid adventure as it is pretty unique in the genre on NES. But that will only get you so far.
Closing Thoughts
AD&D: DragonStrike is an above average shooter and can be enjoyable once you adjust to the controls. Its mission structure is unique and fun in an otherwise routine genre. But it does have frustrating problems that are hard to overlook. Even though I came to like it overall in the end it is a hard one to recommend. The developers did a good job crafting an experience better suited to the NES but it could have been better.
