Rating of
2/5
An Arcade Game That Should've Stayed In History
Nick - wrote on 08/31/13
Dungeons & Dragons: Chronicles of Mystara are two games that were originally released in 1994 and 1996 as arcade games. Without much memory of these games, I can only imagine these were unique in the arcade as being one of the very few beat 'em ups with that took place in a fantasy setting, and were considered RPGs. These games were most likely tailored to a distinct niche of players and created a lot of nostalgia.
Presentation:
Chronicles of Mystara is a set of two old arcade games with updated HD graphics. The graphics are updated satisfactory for a beat 'em up game, but the screen size was not updated to HD widescreen, and fancy borders were added to jury-rig it to work on modern day TVs. More effort could have been made to make this game work better, especially for multi-player, since there was very little screen real estate horizontally for your characters to run around on. An updated widescreen view would have done a lot to modernize this game for the price tag it carries.
Gameplay:
The game play was left as classic as possible, probably playing just like the original games. The style is true beat 'em up side scrolling action, with little screen real estate, so enemies can jump into view without notice to add difficulty. With a variety of weapons and items you can pick up as you go, as well as a point scoring system common to arcade games, it holds very true to the classic style of beat 'em up action arcade.
Originality:
Let's face it. The launch of this game has no originality. Capcom simply took one from Nintendo's book of secrets, do minimal work and re-release an old game, and charge way to much for it. Since the Dungeon and Dragons series probably has a high amount of nostalgia for 30-40 year olds, Capcom knew they could make some extra cash if they brought these games back.
Replay Value:
Arcade games do generally have some replay value, but with Chronicles of Mystara it feels lackluster. One thing you expect with any D&D based game, is the RPG aspect of it. This game claims to have those elements, but it really doesn't. As you play through these two games, you automatically level up as you beat levels, to try to make it feel like an RPG, but it isn't. So you lose the RPG addiction of continuing to play with a character that you can customize and build up over time. With the MeltedJoystick crew being very adamant about categorizing modern day RPGs in their own genre category because they don't stay true to what a classic RPG is, I'm baffled why this game makes the cut as an Role Playing (RPG) genre game.
Recommendation:
Considering the fact that this combo-pack of two games where originally arcade games never expected to come back from the grave, but brought back to life anyway to try to get people to pay $15 for only about 3 hours of gameplay to beat both, and the lack of any real RPG aspects, I would skip purchasing this game. It isn't worth the money for what you get.
Review Update: Since writing this review, the genre has now been changed to "Role Playing (RPG) (Elements)".
