We had a chance to get some hands on time with Vanillaware's Dragon's Crown, bearing the signature art style of George Kamitani (Odin's Sphere), and came out of the experience even more excited, knowing that this game will be excellent. While we initially thought that the title would be a more straightforward beat em up, our hands on time revealed an incredible amount of depth to the gameplay experience, including dungeons with multiple paths, loot appraising, mounts, customizable weapons and armor and more.
Trailers, and especially screenshots of this game do not do it justice..The game is an absolutely beautiful painting in motion, channeling the watercolor aesthetic that Kamitani has established as the Vanillaware house style. I tried out the Fighter class, and found the gameplay to be tightly polished and responsive in a 4 player coop match through a dungeon crawl to take out a wyvern. One of the coolest aspect came in the form of a thief who accompanies throughout your quests and gathers up unappraised (Unidentified loot like in Diablo) and upon finishing your mission offers you a chance to appraise these items for a fee, with the chance of unlocking some truly rare items. While interviewing Atlus employees we also asked about the familiar sounding score, and were amazed to find out that the composers: Most notably Hitoshi Sakimoto and Masaharu Iwata were the same composers behind the beautiful scores of games like Final Fantasy Tactics, Vagrant Story and Final Fantasy XII before resigning from Square. Check out a full breakdown of the classes, story and features after the break.
