QCF: Dragonborne

t isn’t too often that you see a brand new Gameboy game released, let alone in the same year that we see next-generation hardware launch but that just goes to show just how powerful the how well Nintendo’s trademark handheld still holds up.

Despite the strength of the Game Boy’s legacy though, some novel ideas, as unique as they may be, can still find a way to disappoint even the most open-minded of players—that’s Spacebot Interactive’s Dragonborne.

While this new top-down RPG adventure does an admirable job of paying tribute to the Game  Boy classics that came before it, Dragonborne’s individual spin on these familiar tropes ends up being nothing short of tedious at best, and just plain boring at worst.

Rolling downhill on a mountain of clichés, you awaken as Kris, a young boy who has been adopted the village hero, Kurtis, and quickly learns that his father has gone missing. As the adventure progresses, you learn that the disappearance of your father may be linked to the reemerging dragons with whom you share a deep-rooted connection. The plot direction and subsequent writing is a little pedestrian by today’s standards, but Dragonborne more than makes up for its narrative shortcomings with an incredible presentation that defies expectations of the aging handheld

Spacebot Interactive delivers an impressive visual design that fully optimizes the capabilities of Gameboy hardware, delivering beautiful sprite work and environmental effects that scream Triple-A production value. There are plenty of reverent nuances like characters jogging into place and victory chimes to be found, but the presentation admittedly goes the extra mile to animate a unique landscape with a sense of personality that recoups much of the textbook tediums of the game’s plot. The soundtrack is on an entirely different level, delivering banger after banger that stretched every sound channel to its limit with a rich synthesized score of effervescent keys and chirps that effortlessly set the mood for whatever setting you’re in. I cannot empathize just how engaging the music and sound design was to the action on screen, deploying a composition that worked to resonate at any pace that was applied to the game, while still driving that epic sense of adventure that Dragonborne was trying to sell. To its credit, the music of Dragonborne definitely fueled my desire to go as far as I could with the campaign…but at some point, I just couldn’t do it.

Beneath all of the ear and eye candy, laid an experience that steadily boiled down into nothing short of a long-winded chore.

The melting pot approach is hardly new in the retro-inspired indie scene, but it’s a mantra that’s proven successful with games that take the best of multiple ideas like Shovel Knight and Hyper Light Drifter. Spacebot’s plan of attack is sound at first, as Dragonborne possesses several elements from portable classics like Link’s Awakening and Pokémon, but the execution of these elements is where it starts to go wrong. In the first two hours of the adventure, Kris will be flung into a battle against the Dragontooth gang, and players will be introduced to the game’s turn-based battle system in a perspective much like Nintendo’s monster-training series. In the early goings of the quest, the hero only has access to two of the four actions on screen, “Attack” and “Items”, trading off turns between choosing whether or not to launch a strike against the foe, or to use an item for support in the battle. The simplicity of the combat may seem inoffensive at first as it’s only the first hour of the game, but after the fourth or fifth encounter, it quickly becomes apparent that this is the “depth” of the combat system. There are no characters stats to level up for Kris whatsoever; no strength, defense, or agility—just a cryptic life bar that goes up, or down—that’s it.

The most strategic thing a player can do is to manage what little potions they can find or earn to regenerate their health back to a fighting spirit for the next skirmish. Potions can be found or purchased, but income isn’t all that plentiful wither as there are random battles in the game, but static field encounters instead that are only there for that one single clash before they disappear from the map for the rest of adventure. The only incentive to confront enemies any time they appear is to simply advance whatever puzzle or segment a player is on to the next, with no real growth to reap from the trouble than a few coins to get you through the next fight. Eventually, Kris will get the opportunity to equip stronger weapons, and learn magic spells, but there’s no discernable rhyme or reason behind these new abilities—they’re just as oblique as the basic offensive maneuvers at the start of the adventure. It’s maddening to see a critical strike happen in battle, and have absolutely no idea what influenced the chance for it because there no real numbers or systems to any of the combat.

Now while lame combat is certainly a bummer, one other big question remains—what about the adventure element of the gameplay? Well, it’s also half-baked.

Truth be told that I only got as far as the second major dungeon before I threw in the towel because much of Dragonborne’s campaign progress between dungeons is predicated on fetch-quests. Each dungeon entry requires the collection of however many Dragon Scales you collect to open the door, and yes, akin to the Hylian’s famous island vacation, a lot of these scales are at the end of a grocery list of tasks and items that tie into the next objective. To be clear, my gripe isn’t with the mechanic, but in how it’s done as there’s hardly any telegraph to what’s done next—which leads to a lot of meaningless meandering. Looking for mushrooms for a cabal of witches may lead you to a man who’s hungry for a sandwich that you may have happened upon in your travels, which will then lead to a piece of wood of exchange. The wood doesn’t make much sense at the moment because you were too busy looking for a lost cat in hopes getting to a clue to the next bread crumb, all while trying to determine which task is the fool’s errand in the grand scheme of the quest—it’s just so messy. The fetch quest mechanic worked as well as it did in Link’s Awakening because it was paced as a side excursion that players could distract themselves from the main quest any time they wanted to, much like the serving of garnish to a main course at the dinner table. The mechanic on its own however quickly falls into nothing more than empty calories that do nothing to fill you up, leaving you hungry for more, or in this case, a hasty request for the check.

Listen, I don’t want to shit on anything as cool as a new Gameboy title being released in the year 2020, but I’d be lying if I said that I wasn’t dreading my time with Dragonborne after three hours into what felt like the most trying game of rinse and repeat. Even when the adventure seems like it's going somewhere, the sense of adrenaline that brings you instantly evaporates the moment the meaninglessness of its combat and banality of the exploration sets back in.  While Dragonborne is amazing to look at and listen to, there’s not a whole else to keep you coming back for more—hopefully the next release from Spacebot Interactive is more than style over substance because this release is anything but.