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Dragon's Lair 3D: Return to the Lair

aka: Dragon's Lair 3D: Special Edition, Dragon´s Lair 3D: Návrat do doupěte
Moby ID: 7798

Windows version

The Dragon's Lair as it has to be done 25 years ago!

The Good
Practically everything is excellent. Graphics are cartoon-like and enchanting, sound right on the spot, gameplay neither easy nor difficult. Controls are fine overall. It looks like being inside a cartoon, and that's the original Dragon's Lair cartoon! I cannot understand all the bad reviews around; 25 years ago the original was not that good, ok it had the cartoon graphics that captured you but what else?? Choose right or left and the game loads the respective sequence, that's all. Showing 'apparent' great graphics and interactivity during those blocky pixels days made everybody love it...but actually it was cheating on you!!! Now that technology allows a great interactive and cartoonish game let's enjoy it and forget that old one!

The Bad
Perhaps the princess voice is a little annoying and the enemies sometimes are a little easier than you would expect, but..hey...it's a cartoon-like game! It must be played as a mindless and straight forward journey not as a brain testing ordeal. That's one of the great part of it! The original was far too frustrating because it was in the arcades and needed coin after coin; now that we can enjoy the ride what's wrong with it? The Windows version of the game was released with some incompatibility for DirectXs different from English/French/German and that was a naughty naughty thing. Thus sometimes it simply doesn't start at all...

The Bottom Line
All in all an absolute great game, misunderstood by many gamers who preferred to stick with the original because nostalgia plays more than effective value of the game. Comparing this with the original is a nonsense; the original was dumb and unfair, but was acceptable for those days and the arcades. This is exactly how that game in the '80s had to be and is wonderful. Forget that old cheating arcade game and enjoy the game as it was intended to be finally; The Real Ride in The Enchanted Castle!

by dan rexx (37) on November 6, 2007

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