Dragon Song

[kaleemmcintyre]

Warning: This game contains mature language, alcohol, homosexual interactions, lewd behavior, violence, and suggestive behavior. If these things are not of your purview, please don't play this game. The author takes no responsibility for distaste found when reviewing the concepts found herein.

Game File: http://www.mediafire.com/download/03lomnnxguxinb9/Dragon+Song.exe%C2 RTP)

265 MB

Synopsis:

Chapter 1: The first chapter deals with a young nobleman known as Roan Whitemore. Living a life of leisure within the small island, Roan wanders around his homeland, unconsciously uncovering information which is leading him towards an unsure fate. Along the way, he is ignorantly driving forward the fates of several others, some human, some not and only the Goddess, the creator of the world, knows what his and the other's fate will be. 

Chapter 2: After helping the humans from chapter one, Demetrius, a long lived golden earth dragon, learns of several interesting facts which will lead him to protecting the future ruler of the world...much to his displeasure. Mysterious cultist, demonic entities, old friends, humans, and even the dragon gods themselves will be pulled into the next chapter of this tale Follow him, and the heir, as they embark upon a journey which will shake the very foundations of the world in which they live. 

Characters:

Roan: A young red headed nobleman who seems to possess a strange destiny that connects him to the ancient dragons of lore, though he doesn't know it just yet.

Oswald: A blonde serf who is actually a spy for the opposing nation for which Roan serves. Currently he and Roan are in a physical relationship, coupling this is an uncertain fate that may drive the world deep into the waters of decadence because of the secrets Oswald is refusing to reveal. Though is it to protect Roan or his nationalism. 

Mina: A young noblewoman who is engaged to Roan by order of her father Jurias Gomez. 

Demetrius (Golden Earth Dragon): A golden dragon who has a connection to Roan.

???: Heir to the planet and Demetrius' new charge.

Thanks to for scripts and sprites and music...etc...:

http://www.mediafire.com/view/uwfouq96jng3yew/Dragon_Song.txt

 

[Zevia]

I gave Melody of the Dragons / Dragon Song a Let's Try over at my Let's Play thread: http://forums.rpgmakerweb.com/index.php?/topic/25194-zevias-lets-play/?p=442013

Clearly a lot of work put into the mapping and custom art - lots of custom facesets, sprites, sprite animations, things of that nature. Looks like a lot of time invested into the dialogue and story, as well. I was pretty impressed. The game reminds me in a large number of ways of Silver Town - the emphasis on custom sprite animations, custom facesets, the particular scripts used for battles and leveling, the sound effects, some of the music, the highlighting of a gay relationship between your two primary party members, the style of banter between them, even the presence of the dragon and bear anthropomorph.

The battle system was ultimately the big detractor on me not finishing the game, though. There are a lot of very large areas that, while well-fleshed out as maps, lead to a lot of random encounters with the same few enemies over and over. Most of the time, the optimal strategy - in fact, the only strategy - is to just spam attack or what is effectively an attack, in the form of a free-to-cast damaging ability. By level 3, I was one-shotting half the enemies in the game with attack-spam, and most battles were only rewarding minimal currency and experience.

I liked that the game has a number of side quests available with rewards that feel useful, but I think for the number of them, you should have a quest log of some sort. It was hard to keep in mind everything I was supposed to be looking for or doing.

Some kind of waypoint or teleportation system would really help a lot of the trekking back and forth, too. It seemed like there were a number of times where the game said, "Go to this corner of the map to talk to this NPC - now walk all the way back to the other corner of the map to talk to this NPC. Now walk all the way back to the first NPC." You could really cut down on the travel time and number of random encounters the player has to deal with by providing some instantaneous travel between those places.

I was actually curious to see who else would join the party and to learn more about the story, but the amount of time spent dealing with random encounters and having to retrace the same paths repeatedly was a bit too much for me to continue.

 

[shayoko]

Random thoughts

Spoiler

i hate that guards location outside your room its a pain.

make the sleep instant. no black screen

the inn design sucks. would you stay there? 2 rooms,each with a double bed and a fire place right in the middle of them?
so much wrong with that

the highlight does not mesh well with the back ground. so when you get choices it does not look good

you can give all the soldier meals to any soldier.

what blind girl is your character talking about??? you meet a doctor in the castle and you ask for help for a character we have not met yet.
when did you hear about this???

a save at the castle would be nice

poor eliza! i am not gonna be happy if something happens to her :/

i really hate that gomaz guy (and every other character in all rpgm with that sprite)

your uncle...gave birth to you?...wtf?...

your seriously fighting the same dam montsers in the tower? this is dull as hell!

wtf...behemoth is with eliza why is he in the prison!? you can find him back hoem before talking to mason and heading to the prison

sleeping on the airship you cannot save?
well because of that you would have to redo alot to get back to the end >.>

max lvl 20! lvl caps ftw!

still have no idea what blind girl your character was talking about

General - 3H 50M+

A lot of repeditive battles (very few different enemies),lots of poor grammar,glitches,triggers that are out of place,lack of save locations....

this game is bad and needs alot of work to even be "ok"

it didnt even have a way to negate random battles.

Overall

i would not recommend this to anyone. it needs a lot of work and its times like these i wish the developers would play thru there game to find many issues which are unmissable.

 

[Proteus]

Overall this was a pretty good game, though I didn't finish for reasons listed below. There are no obvious kinks with the story and it's obvious you've thought about this. (But who is the blind girl...?) I really liked most of the characters, and think you've built up their relationships in a caring way. It's not award winning, but things feel natural, which is harder to achieve than it sounds. For example it's interesting talking to the guards at his home because they see and hear things his parents and tutors don't, which is just an awesome, organic form of characterization; entertaining too. This world feels lived in, which a lot of games don't really achieve, so hats off to you. It's also nice to see a queer-identifying character as the protagonist for a change.

 

I will say you need to script some kind of quest log. There are a lot of neat side quests but it's hard to keep track of them all. The rewards tend to be useful, so it made me want to find more side quests (and thus learn more about the world through exposition, etc.) I also like how there are stat boosts for completing "mini-quests" because it really makes you investigate the world and appreciate it.

 

That said I didn't get a sense of what the main quest was. A quest log to remind me of the tasks for the main quest would be nice. I also didn't see how the main quest tied in with the dragon, or the main theme. (I didn't get far, lol.) What I'm saying is you're taking too long to get to the point with that first major quest. On the other hand some rpg's DO take their time and it pays off, so maybe it's just personal preference.

 

Graphics are nice and the maps have a lot of detail. I wish the portraits were better quality. It's like they were ripped from something and the selection wasn't done well; which is a shame because they're very nice. There are some scattered spelling and grammar errors, not many though in this version, from what I saw. Also on the battle screen some of the longer win quotes are cut off. Be care about the text box. I don't like it when the entire box is full of dialogue. Maybe space it out more or use a different font? Might just be my preference.

 

The music in regular battles is bad ass! Some of the early battles were hard, so maybe there's room for further balancing. Combat is simple and gratifying.

 

One big problem I had was a game breaking glitch in the island town to the north (with all the fractious people.) You can climb down into a secret hideout with some thugs and get some items. While I was getting the items and talking to people one of the NPC's wandered up the rope ladder all the way to the top and got stuck there. I couldn't reach the event to exit the area! And I couldn't finish the game. I had an earlier save, but didn't feel compelled to replay it. Which is a problem in and of itself. That's why I think the plot needs to get to the point a little sooner. There didn't seem to be much at stake - a little too much "slice of life."

 

From what I played I would recommend it, because it's cute and fun, and not overly complicated. What little I played, I'd give 2 out of 5.

 

[kaleemmcintyre]

Hello everyone,

Sorry for the long wait, but for those of you who had been eager for the next installment, I've just uploaded the second chapter for my game.

Special thanks to:

shayoko
for letting me know of the various fixes that I needed to make. 

If there are any bugs or problems, do let me know.