A Trip Down “Retro” RPG Lane With Dragon Fantasy: The Black Tome of Ice

I’m currently playing Dragon Fantasy: The Black Tome of Ice for review. I received a review copy of the game last week. I’m not ready to do a review of the game yet though. Dragon Fantasy is an rpg and it may take awhile to play through and write a proper review. The following is a preview of Dragon Fantasy: The Black Tome of Ice for 3DS.

Dragon Fantasy: The Black Tome of Ice is a turn-based rpg but, unlike most games of this genre, it doesn’t have any random battles. You see the enemy wandering around in dungeons and can sometimes avoid them. There are no battles at all on the world map. I’m a fan of random battles, though it is nice to see an rpg without them too. Of course, some fans of the genre might find no random battles odd (or a relief!), but Dragon Fantasy isn’t the first game to take this approach. The first game I remember playing that was like this was Chrono Trigger. Dragon Fantasy has something else in common with that game too.

Dragon Fantasy’s battle system is a lot like Chrono Triggers. You wander over to the enemy and go right into battle without a load screen. There is no time bar in Dragon Fantasy’s battle system though. Each character quickly takes their turn, so the battle system does feel a bit faster than Chrono Triggers. Also, Dragon Fantasy has a very unique sense humor and it keeps that humor within its battle system. So, when you defeat an enemy, the description of the enemy defeat might say something like “He decided to let you go”. While Dragon Fantasy has a lot in common with Chrono Trigger, I wouldn’t say that was the only retro game its inspired by.

In Dragon Fantasy, you’ll run into a lot of enemies that look like the slimes from Dragon Quest. These enemies are called Rocks. I even saw a rock that looked a bit like Mega Man! Well, it was wearing a helmet that looked like Mega Mans! Despite all of these inspirations, Dragon Fantasy doesn’t feel like its ripping off these classic games. Instead, it feels like it was inspired by them and that its paying homage to them. Dragon Fantasy wants to remind you of those older games, but it also wants to present you with a new adventure! Does it fully succeed in that? Well, you’ll have to wait for my full review!

There’s so much more to talk about with Dragon Fantasy: The Black Tome of Ice. For instance, I haven’t talked about how long the game is (I don’t know yet), whether the game’s story is good (still not sure), nor talked about the game’s flaws (it has a few). All of that will have to wait!

My full review will dive into everything mentioned above and more! I hope you’ll look forward to my review.