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I'm going to take a little detour in my reviewing style..

I've had this game for quite awhile (since early this year), but I was waiting before reviewing it because I wanted to get a complete feel for it.

Dragon Force is a strategy RPG from Working Designs. Not a traditional RPG like I would have preferred, but still, an RPG nonetheless. And with the Saturn, any RPG is in short supply and high demand.

The game takes place on the island continent of Legendra (read: whimsical version of Australia ^_^). You can choose between eight kingdoms. They include Fandaria, ruled by the "Crazy Lion" Goldark. Highland, under the just eyes of Wein. Palmoon, ruled by the charming and somewhat timid elf queen Teiris. Izumo, with it's honorable lord samurai Mikhal. The Jungle country of Bozack with it's beast king Gongos. Topaz, with it's kung fu traditionalist Leon. The magical kingdom of Topaz with it's king Reinhart, who holds a key secret. And finally, the dictatorship of Tristan, with it's ruler Junon, the so-called "Black mask of Death". Each general's storyline is different, but they all share one common goal. They must conquer the land, and band together with the others in order to fight the dark god Madruk.

Each character starts off with four comrades in arms. These four generals are very close to you character, and are prized by any enemy that happens to capture them. You also start off occupying one or two castles in your territory, but you must quickly rally your troops and attack neighboring countries if you want to succeed. The game plan is as follows:

I. Administration
II. Map
III. Battle

The Map segment is timed. After a certain amount of time, you proceed to the Administration segment.

In the administration segment, you control the diplomatic affairs of the game. You can bestow awards upon those generals who have won victories for your kingdom. View any all special items that you have acquired. Request an audience with you generals and any prisoners you have taken. View the stat sheets for the hundreds of generals you can add to your army. Or search or fortify any castles you are currently occupying.

Awards not only control the moral of your generals, but also how many troops they can use. Awards (in the form of medals) are earned after every successful battle. At the end of the map/battle mode, your chancellor will inform you what generals have performed well. If you don't bestow awards upon these generals, moral will usually decrease. Generals can have a maximum of 10 medals. Each medal allows for 10 troops. There are 10 types of troops in the game. The range from soldiers to dragons, to mages, and zombies. Each have their own strengths and weaknesses, with dragons generally being the best.

Items are acquired by searching castles. Only certain types of generals (those with Intelligence skills that meet or exceed 70) can search or fortify castles. However, sometimes a search will come up empty. There are also many different items in the game. Weapons for instance will usually raise a generals attacking power, while armor and shields will do the same for defense. Crests allow generals to switch to another class of troops. For example a "Dragon Crest" is usually very coveted because it will allow you to control dragons. There are also other miscellaneous items like loyalty coins that will nullify the moral factor, so that a general with always remain loyal to you. The unfortunate aspect of items, is that generals can only use one at a time (there are certain exceptions on items that are used only once).

Through the administration mode you can also fortify a castle. Fortifying makes a castle more impervious to invasion. Each time you successfully fortify a caste, it's level is raised by one. After an enemy attack, it will usually drop a level. A castle will also rise in level simply if you occupy it for an extended amount of time. A castle that is higher in level is easier to defend and harder to attack. Like searching a castle, fortification will not always be successful.

The Graphics is the administration mode are very clean. The menu layout is intuitive, and easy to navigate. Great use of coloration. Sometimes you'll be presented with a still picture accompanied by some text. The graphic quality of these pictures are astounding. Very beautiful. They demonstrate the Saturn's "high color" pallet nicely. There are only one or two buttons that are used throughout the administration mode, so you can master it easily.

In the map segment, you are presented with a map of the entire continent. It is though this aspect that you control troop movements. You basically rally your troops together to storm enemy castles. Each "unit" has a leader, and four other generals that are subordinate to him/her. You can recruit troops for each general at castles that you are currently occupying. Troop reserves at castles only build if you are currently occupying one. There are set paths and forks in the road that you troops have to follow. This ads a certain amount of linearity, and makes it easy for an intelligent opponent to catch you in pincer attack. The AI in the game is very good. The CPU is often able to calculate your next move, and special enemies like the "Skull Children" actually make a beeline for your monarch. Aside from the usual castles, there are towns in which serve as a place for your armies to idle until you plot your next move, and special areas, like towers that contain hidden characters, or advance the story line of the game. You can also engage enemy units outside of their castles. The terrain on the map is reflected in the battle scenes and is furthermore used to gauge the defensive and offensive capabilities of each army. Hilly terrain for instance will be harder to fight on.

The graphics in the map mode, are pretty standard for a strategy game. You have a perspective similar to Ogre Battle. Nice use of colors with some pseudo geological effects (mountains, rivers, ect.). But it looks rather bland. Some clouds that cast shadows would have been nice. But I guess we can't really be too harsh. Nothing is distracting, and as with everything else in this game, it looks very clean.

The battle aspects, are the real meat of the game. Every time your general clashes with another general on the map, the two will engage in battle. Sometimes you can talk your way out of fight, but usually you'll end up fighting whether you like it or not. Before battle both generals will taunt each other. Some taunts are often childish (one could say sophomoric), or modernized in nature (which seems to be on par with WD's past releases.) You can select which general you can send in to do the fighting before every engagement. A wise commander will weigh the strength of an opposing general's forces against his own. You'll then go straight to the battlefield and have 99 seconds to basically beat the crap out of each other. If that time expires before either of you are slain, a draw will be declared and both generals will be disqualified from further combat in the current battle. Now..up in the upper hand corners of the screen each general has a life bar. Both magical spells and troops can strike generals and deplete that life bar. The overall objective isn't necessarily to kill all the troops, but to attack the generals. If you kill or incapacitate an enemy general, regardless of how many troops he/she have left, you'll win the battle. Magic spells are acquired as you gain levels. Some magic spells are aimed specifically at you, or your troops. You have a finite number of magic points, and can't just cast spells on a whim. You have to wait for you magic bar to fill up on the bottom of the screen.

If both general's troops are completely decimated, both will duel. Dueling is the most dry aspect of the game. There is absolutely no user input to determine the outcome. I found this awkward and unappealing. Particularly since at any given time, a general might unleash what I could only call a "super attack" and whittle your life bar down to almost nothing. Of course, it would only stand to reason that fighters and knights will prevail in combat and be more resistant to damage then a mage. So you could always retreat from a duel (or battle). However, forfeiting will be counted as a victory for the opposing force. Your monarch can also engage in battle, but if he or she is slain, it's game over. Not all generals are killed when the are knocked out. Some are either captured, or simply injured and have to be put on hiatus from the war. Thus you get the sense of playing god, and gambling with people's lives.

The battle graphics are surpassed only by the breathtaking portraits of the story line. You play on a large scrollable battle field and can control a camera to pan and scroll from point to point. You could also have the camera to take over and follow the more intense aspects for you. You see the curvature of the earth in the background, and some backgrounds and have a minute amount of parallax scrolling. There are several different types of battlefields. You can fight in forests, deserts with howling and blowing wind, swamps with the serenading sound of nasty little creatures, or in palace courtyards. All of them look very good. Nice colors and shading, and absolutely no slowdown. About the only complaint I can come up with is that characters will get a little pixilated if you zoom up close, but that holds true for almost all sprite based games, and so as to not sound redundant or unfair, I have no qualms with that, and it doesn't hurt the score any.

Sound throughout the game is clear. Stored in Apple AIFF. Cheers and boos of the troops and your subjects are recycled over and over again, and you can get a little bored of them after time. Some extra battle cries would have been nice.

Music is very nice, and suits the game well. It's all PCM (You'll get a rather amusing audio warning if you try to play the disc in a CD player). I like Teiris's slow paced music in particular. Each monarch has his own music. The music of Izumo nation sounds like traditional Japanese music. Bozack has a jungle fare, and Highland has majestic music perfect for a collection of knights (which is fitting since that's exactly what Highland is ^_^).

You can only save your game in the administration mode if you lack a memory cart, but can save it on the map screen if you do have one. 284 blocks of Saturn memory take up a prime chunk of RAM real estate O_O!!!

The story in this game flows at a slow pace, and seems to take a back seat to the overwhelming number of battles you must face. This can be both subversive or helpful. You feel like you're playing a smaller role in an overall much larger conception by the authors. At the same time it can also encourage a heightened sense of monotony amongst the more impatient players. Take this into account when you are deciding whether or not Dragon Force is your cup of tea. I myself found I had to be in the right mood before popping this game into my Saturn.

In closing, I'd like to say that it may have seemed that I was a little hard on this game at points (the overworld map and dueling for instance). I beg to differ, and offer the theory that Dragonforce just doesn't have a profusely large amount of gaming magic. It's too slow paced and monotonous to offer any real value to the action or action RPG gamer, but doesn't have the depth to appeal to die hard strategy freaks such as those that frequently play games by Koei. But blemishes aside, I enjoyed Dragon Force, make no mistake of that (especially the art and character designs). I think a large amount of the Saturn gaming public will as well. I believe it was worth the $60 or so dollars I paid for it. I just didn't get into it quite as deeply as I thought I would. The first two days I had the game, I played nonstop, and now I've slowed to the pace that I only play it when I have the itching for a little conquest and glory ^_^. If, in the future, if this game falls in price, I highly recommend you pick it up and ad it to your Saturn library.

Results
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Features, Funfactor, and Replayability: 7.5

Graphics: 8.0
Sound: 8.0
Music: 8.5
Control: 9.0 (It's simple. But that's the right idea anyway.)

Overall: 8.2