Disclaimer/Legal stuff:
This review is written from my point of view. Because I am no professinal reviewer, but an amateur, it is only intended as an additional information for other bishoujo-fans who are not quite sure what to expect from the product and that don’t want to rely completely on the makers product description.
However, since I am an amateur, I might make some mistakes by reporting from my point of view (for example: ignore some points that are not important to me, but might be very important to readers of my review). So, I discourage anyone to decide about buying or not buying the product, only relying on my decription.
Further, it is inportant to point out, that this text only represents my own opinion of the reviewed product and not the opinion of the people who host it on their website.
… end of “Disclaimer/Legal stuff”, start of the mentioned "review"
Name: Suzukuri Dragon
Made by: Softhouse Chara
Genre:
This game is a simulation, but instead of the typical objectives (train a former childhood-friend into an obeying sex-slave or raise a daughter in order to become a princess), your main objective is here to build a lair that is capable to defend your hoard.
Story:
The player’s character is the dragon Blood. He is currently in a terrible pinch, because he suddenly finds himself engaged to an attractive female dragon from a noble family [Ryumisu] who even happens to be the big sister of his best friend Maito.
But Blood isn’t from a noble dragon-family, even not of any pure lineage, so he has to prove his worthiness by building up a big lair, pooling up plenty of gold and collect some sexual experience in order to become a satisfying groom for Ryumisu within quite a limit amount of time.
Those are the three simple conditions he has to fulfill. Oh, and of course, all his results have to be judged by Ryumisu herself and if he fails in one of this regards, she has the sad duty to relieve him of his life instead of marrying him. And the way he regards her (“one of the the strongest, most evil and cruel dragons”), his chances for that latter outcome are in his own imagination overwhelming…
Also, it seems that those funny creatures, called humans, seem to have a strong dislike for a dragon in their neighbourhood, even if he only goes every second or third month rampant in order to remind them of paying him a tribute, and thus a few dragon killers appear sooner or later at the cave-entrance and try to make him reconsider his area of operation.
… and then, there is also the Queen Ri Rukul, who actually thinks that a dragon would be an useful addition to her army because the neighbouring country currently thinks about expanding into her kingdom and her soldiers have a sudden change of heart towards pacifism.
Yup, this world is all messed up and poor Blood has only his female goblin-butler Ku and 42 goblin-maids supporting him at keeping the filth at least outside of his own lair. And perhaps, even survive beyond the ultimatum that has been set for becoming a wealthy owner of a lair that makes Fort Knox pale in comparison.
Oh, and one picky detail that has to be mentioned: The dragons in this world have the ability of turning in a human outer appearance! And particularly the dragons that appear in this game (Blood, Ryumisu and Maito) usually walk around rather in this form than her real apparearance. However, they are not used to this body and have particularly no idea about how to have enjoyable sex in it. That’s why Blood has the third objective besides building the lair and pooling up the hoard: learn about human sexuality from his female prisoners.
Gameplay:
As a typical simulation, this game is subdivided into turns. Every turn equals a week and the game ends (depending on the current game-level after 1 - 3 years).
For every turn, the player has to select one out of the following actions:
- constructions-works in the lair
- conjure monsters that defend the lair
- attack a human settlement (in order to remind them of their tribute)
- collect sexual experience with one of your permanent guests
- rest
and after about half a year has passed, another option appears:
- marry someone and end the game before the time has run out
Well, and among these “someone”, at least one option is always present: Ryumisu, but if she is summoned to a lair that looks more like a garbage-dump and the hoard contains much more air than sparkling stones or glimmering gold, then… try better in your next life!
However, there may also others show up or Blood might even develop the courage to cancel the engagement…
Of course, the selection of wedding-candidates also shows up at the end of the ultimatum.
As for the construction-works: The map of the lair is subdivided into 10 areas that could be changed. At the beginning of the game, most areas simply contain empty hallways. For every area exists an assortment of rooms that can be placed there and every area can be rebuild in every turn. However, building something costs mony that is deducted from the hoard.
The two most important kinds of rooms for the beginning are trap-rooms and monster-rooms. The name trap-room is self-explanatory and it is obvious what is supposed to happen if intruders step into it. However, a monster-room is a room that is particularly prepared for your hired monsters: they will only appear and fight in that kind of room. So hiring an army of monsters without having at least one of these rooms in your lair is… no wise choice. Well, actually, there is exactly one other room wheer monsters would fight as well: the room right in front of the hoard where every unwanted visitor has to pass through. And the area consisting of that room and the hoard is also not changeable by construction-works, only the area between the cave-entrance and this room can be remodelled entirely.
Conjuring up monsters is easy: Ku gives you a catalog that lists the currently available monsters with their current amount of hit-points, attack-points and speed-points, but with every fight a monster survives, it collects also EXP-points and levels up after every 100 EXP-points, which usually increases the HP and sometimes even either AP or SP.
However, if the monsters survive that long is up to the player, because after they are conjured, they follow their master’s command until they die - literally! You can tell each monster in which area of the lair it should select a monster-room wher it waits for visitors, after how much damage it is allowed to flee from the battle and a priority among other monsters who head for the same room, who attacks first. The lowest-HP-limit for fleeing can be set somewhere between half of maximal HP and “fight until you die”. Monsters that are assigned to the room right in front of the lair have only one option, though: they have always to fight until they die because they are the last line of defense. Every visitor who goes past them is free to take with him/her as much from the hoard as he/she can carry.
On the other hand, every intruder whom the monsters take down is stripped of his/her possesions and they are added to the hoard. The first intruders are only weak thieves who most of the time don’t have anything with them. But the more the cities get threatened by the dragon, the more is becomes likely they even hire elite-mercenaries and give them payment in advance in order to get rid of this threat. Taking one of them down could even pay off better than raiding the city itself…
… and of course, every visitor who loses the fight and survives becomes a “permanent guest”. And the females among them show up again at random if Blood decides to take sexual lessons from them.
After all that strategy in the defense, the attack on a human settlement is a kind of a guessing game:
The dargon has a certain amount of magical power (that build up every turn on itself) that he can use for his attack. He can see ahead what lies in his flightpath and has to estimate how much of his magic powers he will need in order to destroy as much of the buildings as he can (in order to emphasize his demand for his tribute) without grilling the peole who ran away in the opposite direction and thus wait at the ent of his flightpath: the more buildings get destroyed, the higher the fear and thus the tribute, but if the people themselves get burned, there remains nobody to pay the tribute…
Oh, and one partticular effect is directly related to the first time, the dragon attacks a town or village in his neighbourhood: from that very moment, the people get aware that he and his lair exist and thus the first counter-invasion starts right after his first attack.
And from that turn on, in every subsequent turn a group of invaders may show up and try to make a withdrawal from the hoard into their pockets, right after the dragon’s chosen action, regardles if it is construction, conjuring, attack, sex-training or rest. Only the marriage ends the game immediately with no chance of an invasion afterwards.
The collecting of sexual experience with the prisoners is like a set of random multipart novels, but of course, selecting this option also increases his sexual exp-meter and a certain minimum in this regard has to be achieved for a happy ending.
During rest, also stories (not necessarily with sexual content) can happen, and the natural? growth of magical attack-power during that turn is increased.
All story-parts are logged and that log can be accessed everytime. From that log, also past voice-actings can be replayed.
Sound:
The BGM-soundtrack consists of 22 themes recorded in CD-quality. Actually, they can also be played directly from CD and I was not able to hear a difference, but that may also be the result of my audio-hardware that is far from high-fidelity). Al themes, except the title-theme are pure instrumental. These themes are used for different purposes:
- expressing the mood of the current situation
- introducing certain characters
- point out the presence of a special attacker in a defense-battle
- title-song
All characters in this game (regardless of male/female/minor role/major role) have voice-acting, except the player’s characater Blood.
Sound-effects are also used, but only in appropriate situations. For example the defense-battles as well as the attachs on the human settlements have full sound effects as well as voices, while during the story-elemets usually only voice-acting and the BGM are audible.
Graphics:
The Graphics are at an resolution of 640x480 pixels. The displayed graphics during the story-parts are either CG’s that are drawn for that situation, or graphics that are generated by displaying cels of the currently present characters on a CG that represents the current location.
Animations:
If we donm’t regard the exchanging the cels of the same character in order to express a change of mood, the maily animated parts in this game are the attack- and defense-phases.
During the attack-phase, we see in a 2D-graphic that looks like a boardgame how the wave of destruction advances along the dragon’s flightpath and destroys the trees, fields and building by the wayside (and hopefully stops before it reaches the people at the end of the path).
During the defense-phase we see the intruders walk as mini 2d-cameos through a blueprint of the lair. Whenever something happens to the intruder (walks into a trap, encounters a monster,…) the cameo increases a bit and we see a small animation of what happens (with an accordind sound-effect: rolling boulders Indiana-Jones-style, anyone?).
… and there are also the opening- and closing animations that use both the title-song as BGM.
Extras:
The game features three modes: Starter-mode, Blood-mode and Ryumisu-mode.
Starter-mode is only for getting acquainted with the game. As soon as a happy ending in Starter-mode is achieved, the game changes into Blood-mode.
I first feared thatthe game grows more difficult withthe advancing modes, but actually, the few things that grow more difficult (mainly the power of the groups that attack the lair) can be compensated with the new abilities that Blood gains in the advanced modes.
As soon as the Blood-mode is activated, an additional entry “omake” appears in the main-menu that holds some of the usual extras:
- CG-gallery
- Scene-replay
- BGM replay
and a few special extras:
- comical variations of scenes that have been encountered in the game
- a game-quiz (that if solved 100% accurately also enables an aditional ability within the game)
- a monster gallery with level1-stats of the monster-types that have been employed at least once during the previous playthroughs
- funny variations of the opening- and closing animation
My personal opinion:
Wll, this game appealed very much to my bizarre humor:
While the things that happen here might seem from a human perspective atrocious, the dragon’s view on them is quite another matter and still as valid as the human side.
Also, the victims don’t seem to suffer here as much as usual. For example, while still some of the female prisoners are disgusted by their fate of being sexual educators to Blood, others have another attitude: some are happy to seacrifuce themselves in order to keep that harm happening to their co-prisoners, some are curious and some even feel sympaty with Blood’s situation. Of course, the fact that they all were intruders before and thus brought the things that now happen to them onto themselves serves as a further justification: nobody asked them to come there and take a stab at getting a share of the hoard. After all, Blood is a dragon and there could have happened worse things to them than the services they now may have to do. Obviously, their original plan was rather to kill the dragon…
The story itself is most of the time comical, but the threat what might happen if Blood doesn’t succeed always remains in the background and never really vanishes. So, Blood has a certain incentive to succeed in his three tasks, even though in the meantime a lot of entertaining things happen: From overhearing idle talk of the maids among themselves in the hallways, to the encounter with a queen who is willing to do anything to protect her people, even an alliance with a dragon at his terms.
The BGMs are recorded in CD-quality. At least, they are also recorded as normal music-tracks on the second game-CD and I couldn’t hear a significant difference between those tracks and the wav-files that are installed to the HD. Perhaps, that is to blame on the fact that my PC’s audio-equipment is far from hi-fi, though…
The quality of CGs is comparable with typical CROWD-games, the backgrounds are probably even more detailed. Especially the dragon’s living-room is a sight with its fine furniture…
Plenty of independent advancing storylines, random events, 11 different happy endings and the “pokemon-effect” of the monster-uplevelling system (gotta get them all and train them to the top) made this game really enjoyable for me.
I can recommend it to everyone who:
- is able to look beyond “Iiih, there is rape in the air!”
- wants plenty of gameplay
- has a faible for this nice combination: fantasy and comedy (like for example in Slayers)
At least, this game was able to coerce me into finally writing a review again after almost a year of absence. I hope my style of reviewing hasn’t rusted too much…
Thanks for reading until the very end! ;p
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