Xbox One game reviews are being posted now. It looks like Crimson Dragon is getting a lot of bad reviews, but they seem to be from people who just don’t like this type of game: ign.com/articles/2013/11/18/ … gon-review
I just hope it will sell enough to get a sequel, but it seems that a lot of people are just not interested in this game.
Indeed, not looking good:
metacritic.com/game/xbox-one … ic-reviews
Then again, the main issue seems to be the graphics, which are a 360 fair, obviously, although the controls have been mentioned the odd occasion.
Well, it’s a $20.00 game. I’m not sure why people expect better graphics than what it has.
Because it’s (presumably) being released exclusively for the X1, at launch, at a time when every game for the system, whether a full retail, or otherwise, needs to justifies people’s investment in a ?430 console.
Why spend money on a system to play games that are perfectly playable on the last generation? At least, why when they’ve not had any enhancements. It’s a legit question I’d say.
I can only hope that MS pulls a surprise on us and releases this for the 360 at a later date.
I had a feeling having to level up your dragon’s stats for hours on end with the same few levels, was going to get monotonous. I just had a feeling…
Why does your dragon need 100 configurations of move sets/abilities (and never mind focusing on one dragon but multiple?!)? Spending time on this system of upgrading probably took focus away from the environment and story. Why not have only a handful of new abilities introduced, only pertaining to the new dragons you unlock?
Also, I think the developers were looking at the mainstream audience as a whole and this whole obsession with customization, stat building, and level up prestige. When I think about what this games stat and ability system mirrors only Call of Duty comes to mind…
I hope it sells well though. I’d really like an rpg! 
This bizarre political competition has skewed expectations more and more all the time, so what if the graphics[sic] aren’t “next-gen” looking? It’s 60fps now which is a much bigger deal to me. I’ve actually kind of missed these transitional games that aren’t overreaching just to bludgeon the market with screenshots for launch. It’s a game not a ******* tech demo, and you either like the way it looks or you don’t.
Graphics don’t really much matter to me on games, as long as the game is fun and the things in the game actually look like what they’re supposed to be. I probably wouldn’t buy the game if the dragons just looked like orange triangles or something.
Reviews mean nothing to me, because they are just people’s opinions. I’ve often enjoyed games that other people thought were awful. I’m just kind of worried now that people won’t buy the game and it won’t get a sequel because some people thought it wasn’t very good instead of trying the game for themselves to see if they like it or not.
By the way, here’s the bonus dragon I grabbed a screenshot of today. It’s not what I was expecting, but it probably has good stats on it.
Yeah and that’s what I was responding to, the stupidity of even rating “graphics” in review criteria, unless it’s as a side category. And personally I’ve become entirely cynical about the very concept, the more (phenomenal) power these machines have the less is actually done with it.
Videogames used to be like magic… now they’re just depressingly superficial.
That’s why it’s such a shame Crimson Dragon was made to appeal to the hypnotized, brain-dead, mainstream demographic of gamers.
(I also heard they rearranged the music to sound more orchestrated and less like the Crimson Dragon Side Story music.)
gamefaqs.com/boards/718575-c … n/67861489
I think that feeling you are describing is when we feel a game is truly alive, and vibrant, without some forced overused or sometimes unnatural mechanic, ultimately giving the game a detached feeling.
I think on its own, without this overarching need to purchase an incessant amount of abilities/items, as well as level grinding, the game looks beautiful! But these activities eventually dumb down the appreciation for it’s artistic design by forcing you to have to replay the same few stages; just added variations of those same stages!
Seems, due to player feedback, they’re made a few amendments:
I noticed that as well from the playthroughs. Suffice to say, I don’t like those changes. The impression I get is that a lot of aspects about the game were added under pressure from Microsoft. This quote from Yukio Futatsugi is kind of telling as well:
Or, you know, you could have NOT based your in-game economy on micro-transactions. Then you wouldn’t have needed to make these “adjustments” in the first place.
[quote]By the way, here’s the bonus dragon I grabbed a screenshot of today. It’s not what I was expecting, but it probably has good stats on it.
http://i.imgur.com/RPo8uEH.jpg[/quote]
What the… I have no idea what I’m even looking at here, but it’s certainly not what we’ve been led to believe.
I was expecting the dragon to look a bit like Lagi, but maybe they were worried about being sued by Sega or something since they still own Panzer Dragoon.
I was worried about not getting my Xbox One until 2014 because I wanted the bonus dragon before I knew what it looked like, but I’ll be getting it before then. Now I don’t think it would matter too much because all it is is a big purple dragon.
I was kind of upset about the music being changed at first, but after listening to the new music, I don’t think it’s that bad. But it would still be better if they didn’t mess with it.
I hope your Xbox Ones don’t get any next-gen rings of death!
What I believe people (especially the lame azzed and technically uninclined reviews) fail to realize is that when porting a game over to a last generation console to a current gen console doesn’t automatically give you a “graphics upgrade”. I am a Direct3D programmer, and I can tell you right now, that switching from Direct3D9 to Direct3D11 doesn’t give you an instant boost gfx wise. Grounding clearly didn’t have the time to totally redesign the visual assets and what not, because the time frame that the game was initially going to be released, then abruptly shifted gears towards becoming an XBOne launch title isn’t enough time to “magically” create a totally new title with the “next gen” appeal. I’m not saying they couldn’t have, but there’s more to a game’s development cycle than the gfx, like the rigorous certification process. I used to do this dirty job, and I learned a lot about what it takes to have a game qualify to be on a Microsoft console.
Correctly if I’m wrong, but I’m quite sure that it was Microsoft’s decision to cancel the 360 release in favour of the XBOne. Microsoft has essentially made the same mistake with Azurik: Rize of Perathia and Halo1 (although the latter didn’t suffer much bad review, but almost didn’t ship). When you abruptly alter the development course of a highly anticipated title, you risk the chance of ruining it entirely. They should have just released it for the 360, and maybe people wouldn’t have complained so much.
[quote=“Terramax”]
Because it’s (presumably) being released exclusively for the X1, at launch, at a time when every game for the system, whether a full retail, or otherwise, needs to justifies people’s investment in a ?430 console.
Why spend money on a system to play games that are perfectly playable on the last generation? At least, why when they’ve not had any enhancements. It’s a legit question I’d say.
I can only hope that MS pulls a surprise on us and releases this for the 360 at a later date.[/quote]
I agree with this, except for the bolded statement, which I’ve already addressed.
This, but I was actually looking forward to 30fps.
[quote=“The Ancient”]Yeah and that’s what I was responding to, the stupidity of even rating “graphics” in review criteria, unless it’s as a side category. And personally I’ve become entirely cynical about the very concept, the more (phenomenal) power these machines have the less is actually done with it.
Videogames used to be like magic… now they’re just depressingly superficial.[/quote]
And this.
Blueshogun, you’re quite right to note the difficulties involved in porting the game. And there’s also the change from Kinect controls to standard controller support. You could clearly see in the early XBox One demo’s that they were struggling adapting them, I think Futatsugi even noted the difficulties they had with had. It was simply impossible for them to completely redesign the levels and gameplay to fit the far more precise controller. And then there’s the added “free flight” mode, that was yet another extra change they had to work on that which they clearly didn’t have time to tweak the controls for.
Yes, Futatsugi didn’t even know about it until they told him shortly before the release of the game (in a hotel at E3). Since he was the game’s director, I think that’s messed up. Here’s what he said in the Eurogamer article:
Reading between the lines here, Futatsugi probably wasn’t amused.
Consider that the release date for Crimson Dragon was June 13, and the start of E3 was June 10th. The game was done at that point, and the devs more than likely spent long hours during “crunch time” to get the game out of the door. That’s hours they spent away from their families that ultimately weren’t needed. I can imagine they were not exactly pleased to hear the news. I agree that Microsoft should have just released the game, if simply out of respect for their work.
I talked to Solo about the soundtrack as well. Almost half of the soundtrack is now attributed to Jeremy Garren, or at best to “Saori Kobayashi & Jeremy Garren”. The tracks now sound like a remix of Saori’s work. At times it sounds more like something out of Halo or a blockbuster movie, and Saori’s unique Panzer Dragoon style is often lost in the changes. A comment from Jeremy on his work:
By “work already done” I imagine the work really was 100% done. The Crimson Dragon Side Story soundtrack was 100% Saori and if you ask me infinitely better than Crimson Dragon’s altered soundtrack. Given how Futatsugi apparently had no say in the switch to Xbox One, I imagine Saori had nothing to say about the changes made to her work either. This is all speculation, but I can’t help get the impression someone at Microsoft wasn’t a fan of Saori’s work and felt the need to change the soundtrack.
Even now, Futatsugi’s recent statement has Microsoft marketing written all over it. Since when do we need “the power of the cloud” to patch the game? It sounds utterly silly. All they did was lessen the grind that has its origins in the micro-transaction based system. The complaints aren’t about the difficulty, but the grind. They seem to have increased the credits you gain with each mission to a point where, from what I’m reading, there’s probably little reason left to buy anything from the store. It’s probably the best they can do without completely redesigning the game. But far too little too late.
That’s the problem when your game is based on a F2P “dual currency” economy. It’s never “optional”, you can indeed decide to not buy anything but you can bet it’s still going to change your gameplay experience.
Ah, so it’s just as I figured. Microsoft, and their overwhelming desire for profit, disrupts the flow of the dev/release cycle once again. This is why I’m growing increasingly sick and tired of Microsoft and other money hungry [American] corporations who see the industry as nothing more than a big cash cow.
And now, in a world of gamers consumed by superficiality, this game is likely going to be underrated into oblivion. Thanks for ruining yet another greatly anticipated title for the sake of having your precious “launch lineup” Microsoft. After 12 years, they’ve S-T-I-L-L learned.
I don’t think you have addressed it. Why spend ?430 on a new, more powerful console, for a game that’s perfectly playable on the 360 you already own?
This has got nothing to do with how easy or hard it is to port games to a newer console. And it has nothing to do whether you, personally, care about graphics or not.
The vast majority of day-one adopters do care about visuals. And it’s MS’ job to deliver on what consumers expect of a next-gen console. And this is not it.
I do agree with your other comments however. It’s clear that the flaws in this game are mostly due to the ports to the new hardware. That being said, considering this was originally to be a kinect title, you could argue this was a doomed product to begin with.
I watched the Youtube playthrough and wasn’t that impressed. I could see that the person playing the game was struggling trying to maneuver the dragon. He clearly was not able to dodge enemy waves with any kind of precision.
Also, I have to admit If I had to compare this game to Zwei, Saga and Orta, I would say those games had better graphics and art direction. I still think it is truly amazing the level of detail they were able to put into those Saturn games! And even Orta had rich diverse detailed environments.
The environments in Crimson Dragon just feel too bland and generic. Ocean, Forest, Cave, Lava level…with very little distinct features that stand to elevate it beyond eye candy.
The Panzer Dragoon series oozes atmosphere and the subtle, mysterious story it entails left you pondering. Crimson Dragon’s story is very much thrown in your face leading up to some ridiculous revelation. And don’t get me started on the music…