Wonder Boy: The Dragon´s Trap Review

Game: Wonder Boy: The Dragon´s Trap
Developer: LizardCube
Publisher: DotEmu
Price: $19.99
Size: - 1.04 GB
Release Date: April 18th 2017
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Duration

Originally, Wonder Boy III: The Dragon's Trap was the direct continuation of the previous game, Wonder Boy in Monster Land, with the hero facing the Meka Dragon. With his last rattle, the dragon launches a curse that makes him a lizard. From there we embark on an adventure in which we have to travel deserts, seabed and dungeons to find and kill 5 dragons. Every time we kill one, we will be transformed into a new animal. For this reason, the duration of the game would be a little shortly and only depends of the player.

Gameplay

Although the development of Wonder Boy The Dragon's Trap, mainly mixes jumps and swords, there are certain touches of RPG. Thus, we must buy armor and shields that improve our resistance, as well as swords that cause more damage. Normally it´s enough to select the objects with the best statistics, but there are some with special effects. For example, an armor, makes us invulnerable to the lava wells.

The gameplay has its pros and cons. It works reasonably accurately in jumps, but has the problem that our character doesn´t move while we take a swing. That causes a certain feeling that we are "petrified" by an imminent attack of the monsters and can leave us sold in more than one occasion. What is interesting is the use of the shield. Whenever we face an enemy face and are not attacking or flying, our shield will stop the projectiles that launch us. In this way, we have to master a kind of choreography when attacking, covering and moving.

All this leads us to a caveat: however friendly it may seem, Wonder Boy: The Dragon's Trap is not for everyone. It requires patience, strategy and a certain skill. If you are one of those who grow up against such challenges, you will be in your sauce. If not, you can always use the easy mode (there are 3 levels of difficulty) for a more bearable experience.

Graphics & Design

Most of these elements were already in the game of Master System, but the great novelty is in the work of update that has carried out LizardCube. The most obvious change is the visual: while the limited possibilities of the endearing Master System presented us, with a few pixels that required quite imagination on our part, the artists of the new generation given us, the lime with his designs and animations: spectacular and colorful Scenarios are merged with a few sprites that seem to have escaped the best Franco-Belgian comic. It´s all as we remembered, but corrected and increased. So the original village, which barely consisted of 4 houses, here shows a moving mill or pecking birds.

In the background you feel that you had always imagined the game as well and at last someone has shaped it in all its splendor. The players who will spend Wonder Boy III in Master System will find much of their enjoyment in seeing how they have decked out the scenarios they visited a thousand times.

The same thing happens with music: the original had several memorable melodies, which here have been improved in two ways: on the one hand, it is now "real" music, recorded in studio with instruments such as violins, flutes or even some shamisen. On the other hand, to mitigate the occasions in which the melodies were repeated in different scenarios, has chosen to include different remixes depending on the zone. Thus, the theme of "dungeon" was the same in the sunken ship or in the Japanese temple, but in the new version has a more lugubrious tone in the first and Asian influences in the second. To us, of course, we have wanted to put the new songs in loop.

Conclusion

In short, Wonder Boy The Dragon's Trap, is a dream come true, for those who lived their childhood in 8 bits, although it´s not exempt of certain problems, inherent to the original game of which it comes: the control is improved, the difficulty has some peaks, unfair and its duration is something behind other adventures.

If you go, and know what to do, you can finish it in about 6 hours (the novices in the game will take a lot more), reason why its price may seem a bit high for some users.

In addition, there are small graphical errors when we move from the modern to the classic mode: the tiling of the scenes blinks for a couple of seconds, although it does not always happen and barely notice.