Dragon Crystal

The Good
As you explore your surroundings, each area must be uncovered by your character as you walk. Even though this feature is not one of a kind, I can still mildly appreciate what SEGA was attempting here.

The Bad
The music isn't too bad, but it continuously repeats throughout the game, only changing a total of two or three times. The battle controls are horrible and awkward. To attack your opponents, you must use the directional pad. There is no strategy or skill involved. None. Also, this is supposed to be a cross between the RPG and adventure genres, but falls painfully short of both. The few RPG elements that exist are so vague and incomplete that they might as well not be part of the game at all. There is absolutely no storyline whatsoever. In addition, there is this egg that follows you around, which then becomes a dragon, does absolutely nothing, and continues to follow you. What is the use of this? Worthless.

The Bottom Line
Dragon Crystal is cheap, in every way. It is extremely obvious that the developers spent no more than two or three weeks creating it.

The Good
To like Dragon Crystal, you have to love Rogue-likes. I mean you have to seriously LOVE them. If you don't wake up in the middle of the night from having dreams of Rogue-like adventure games, then don't even think about buying this game.

The best thing that I can say about the game is that it changes every time you play it. The maze, enemy and item layout are different each and every time you start a new game. Not only that but the effects of potions changes. There are several different colored potions that you collect and you'll never know what effect they have until you use them.

This game can be oddly addicting, especially to anyone that likes this kind of gaming experience. I found myself playing this game almost against my will at times. I'd die and vow never again! And then I'd start up a new game.

Notice how short the "good" section is? That's because I'm having a very hard time thinking of anything good to say. So on to the bad stuff...

The Bad
I'm not a big fan of Rogue-like adventure games. This game is basically a sequel of sorts to Fatal Labyrinth, the first Sega Genesis game I ever owned, and the bane of my young existence. Just like that other lousy game, Dragon Crystal features the same enemies, the same potions and equipment and the same need to chomp down on whatever pieces of meat stuck to a bone you happen to find lying around. I hated this game back when it was called Fatal Labyrinth, and I hate it even more as Dragon Crystal.

The biggest problem is that they took a very simple game and made it even simpler. There's no storyline to speak of, not even the brief one that FL had. There's no town, as useless as FL's town was. And your hunger meter is gone as well. You don't even slash your sword in this game, you just run into the enemy and poke it.

There is absolutely no motivation for playing this game. Normally, things like a storyline, a sense of adventure, a desire to see what the next location looks like, or even just to get better equipment would be enough to drive the player onward. There is almost none of that in this game. The graphics for a level repeat themselves over and over again, and they aren't that great to begin with. One level has giant flowers and you have to find a path through the flowers. Eventually it changes to Easter Island head statues. There is a very small number of different equipment, and it's generally better if you don't even change what you have because, in a huge stroke of genius, the designers thought it would be fun to make every fourth item cursed. Wheee! Are we having fun yet?

There is nothing truly compelling about this game, beyond the sick addiction us gamers have to wanting to finish everything, including (and for some especially) bad games. I really wanted to beat this game not because I enjoyed it, but because I hated it and wanted to HURT it. Beat it, best it, or beat it against the ground, one or the other. It's bad when the reason you're playing a game is because you have a grudge against it.

What's really sad is that it isn't difficult to create a compelling adventure game. First thing you need is a story. It doesn't have to be War and Peace or Gulliver's Travels, it just has to exist. Break the levels up with a town every once in awhile. Have more than five pieces of armor and none of them cursed. That goes double for poisoned potions! And how about some semi-realistic graphics? Trees, not Easter Island heads. See how easy it would have been for the game designers to do a good job instead of a lousy one?

The Bottom Line
It had to have taken a lot of work to create a game this awful, though. A group of people had to have gone out of their way to make a game that isn't poorly executed but purely pathetic. They were able to do a decent job of programming the game, so what gives? No one creates mazes out of one repeating graphic and chooses the dumbest graphic for it they can unless they're trying to win a bet about how bad of a game they can make.

So if you like a game where every fourth item you come across is cursed in some way, where your mode of attack is running into things over and over again, where the amount of different items to be found is countable on one hand, where leveling up is all important but accidentally moving to the next level is shockingly easy, and where the only reason to continue playing is to see what laughably bad idea the designer will have next, then believe me, this game is for. Otherwise, you might want to avoid the pain, frustration and incredulity this game will cause.

The Good
The randomly generated levels doesn't make it too boring to try to complete the game again and again. They have also safeguarded against the possibility of generating levels that will be impossible to complete. The detail that the player character changes appearance depending on what he/she wears is a thing I like and a thing that many games overlook.

The Bad
The randomly generated items in the levels makes it a question of luck if you can complete the game or not. You can get to level 10 without finding a better weapon that your dagger or a better armour than you robe making you an easy prey for the harder enemies. A good game should not depend that much on pure luck. The bad English in the game is another source of annoyance, for example if you read a "blade scroll" you get the message "my weapon became" and what is a "Parradin"?

The Bottom Line
If you are all alone on a deserted island this game might have some entertainment value for you, otherwise stay clear. There are plenty of better games for the Master System.