Review: Dragon Takers Is an Inoffensive Turn-Based RPG

Dragon Takers is an RPG that is aggressively okay. The story is serviceable, but offers no surprises or interesting twists. The characters all feel like empty vessels that ramble on to one another as the story chugs along. The combat is acceptable and the ability-copying system, Skill Taker, doesn’t really add anything other than a magic spell system with a bit of legwork involved. The art is nice but doesn’t capture the imagination, and the music conveys the mood without impressing any hint of creativity upon the listener. If you need an RPG to play it will do the job, but that’s about it.

Helio is a young man who lives in village named Haven. He’s known for not having any Skills, and the entire town (save for a few people) treat him like garbage over it. He accepts this and doesn’t want anyone to make any trouble (although a pair of gorgeous women seem terribly upset about his plight even though no one else cares). His choice to be a doormat for these people is something I know is supposed to set him off on a journey of self-change as he gains confidence, but right out of the gate he seems dull and unlikeable. I know he’s had a hard life in this world, but he just didn’t seem like someone I wanted to spend hours and hours on an adventure with even if I suspected he’d change.

Naturally, things go south in Dragon Takers when the Dragon Army comes to town (a name that didn’t inspire me with any confidence in how creative the game’s story would be). Fighting breaks out as they have come for one of your lady friends, and the battles inspire the awakening of your ability to steal skills from monsters. Turns out you do have skills! You quickly use these to devastating effect on the enemies, and your other lady friend goes on and on about how amazing your new fire power is (and the whole copying skills thing). This all happens in a span of a few minutes, feeling like the whole story is rushing through Helio’s development and quickly setting him up to be great and strong.

RPGs, especially retro-looking ones, need strong characters and story to carry them through. Already, I’ve got a stereotypical self-loathing character who won’t stand up for themselves. Not interesting, but could lead to some compelling storylines. However, he gains superpowers within minutes, creating this sense that the game is railroading through their character arc (and they continue to do so). It all feels rushed, and while it’s written competently, nothing about this character’s story (or any of the other ones) feel like something new, interesting, or compelling. It’s not good, but it’s also not bad. It feels like it’s written to carry out an in-game purpose – to move you along a story track to the next gameplay beat - and that’s it. It washes over you. You know what’s happening, but none of it really connects with you.

The artwork for the characters probably should help this along, but it doesn’t. The game’s developers put in a lot of effort into some nice still pictures of the various characters, but there just aren’t many of these. You get the same handful of images of Helio, his pals, and his enemies making the same faces over and over and over again. Whether they’re chatting with buddies or screaming about loved ones in danger, it’s the same image used repeatedly. If Dragon Takers put a little emotion into these images then maybe I’d feel something, but as it stands I just felt no connection to the story or the characters at all.

This isn’t a game where the combat is going to make you forget the dull story, either. It’s a turn-based RPG where you select a variety of attacks from a menu to smack still images of various (and depressingly predictable) monsters. Outside of some visual flare with the swipes and plumes of fire or crackling electric attacks, there isn’t much for visuals in combat. While older RPGs have gotten away with this, they usually work in some sort of visual effect to imply damage. Even the original Dragon Quest gave a little satisfying screen shake when you got clocked to imply the weight of the hit. This game gives you nothing besides the visual of the strike effect to show you hit something.

You don’t even get an effect when the monster dies in Dragon Takers. They just disappear and aren’t there any more. I makes combat feel like I’m just selecting the correct button enough times until I am no longer in a combat situation. There’s no sense of power or effort in the combat to make it feel satisfying. It’s just something you do until you no longer have to do it.

You might think that the Skill Taker ability would add something fresh or exciting to the fights, but being able to steal enemy powers isn’t that exciting. To steal a power, all you have to do is hit an enemy with an ability a certain number of times and you get it. While there are a hundred of these, since combat doesn’t feel that interesting visually, all you get is a hundred different effects to juggle (and you have to equip them before combat – it’s not like you get a huge pool of useful abilities you can use all the time). And since you gain them by hitting creatures normally, it doesn’t feel like you gain the powers in an interesting way, either. It’s just a feature to say that there is something about this game that stands out.

Equipping the powers is more of a pain than it’s worth in Dragon Takers, too. You can equip abilities in the Skill menu, but instead of choosing one of your slots and then picking a power, you find yourself flicking through the powers while locked to the first slot unless you hit a specific non-directional button (X on my controller) to swap slots. It feels totally backwards. Likewise, you’re expected to equip things from your full inventory to a character instead of going into that character’s personal equipment and equipping things there. You can only really remove things while in the character’s equipment. It’s totally backwards and made putting on gear, the simplest thing in most games that has been done right for decades, into an irritating event.

While Dragon Takers is fine to play, nothing about it grabs the imagination or inspires you to keep going. It is a game that is inoffensive enough that you can get through it without much issue or without feeling angry about some frustrating elements, but there just isn’t anything here to make you want to play it. If you are absolutely desperate for a turn-based RPG and will play just about anything tolerable, this game will work. That’s unfortunately the nicest thing I can say about it, though.

Dragon Takers is available on the Switch, PS4, PS5, Xbox One, Xbox Series X, iOS and Android devices, and PC.

The post Review: Dragon Takers Is an Inoffensive Turn-Based RPG appeared first on Siliconera.