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xp crash

5 Rating: 5, Useful: 12 / 12
Date: August 18, 2005
Author: Amazon User

I just got this game a couple days ago and can't stop playing it. It's just so much fun to fly around and blow up all the monsters! The only thing that is bad is that this game does cause XP to crash, like the other reviewer stated. However, this is very easy to fix. After installing the game, go to Start, click on Run, and type in dxdiag. Then, click OK and when it comes up, at the top go to Sound and change the Hardware Sound Acceleration Level to Basic Acceleration, and then click on Save All Information. That's it! You're ready to play a great game!

Sets Fire to the Game World... or Ice or Acid.

4 Rating: 4, Useful: 9 / 9
Date: September 11, 2005
Author: Amazon User

I Of The Dragon makes an awesome buy. I mean, it has good graphics and a variety of characters and monsters. Great for people who just like to destroy everything in sight. Although the game doesn't work right sometimes.

I might as well talk about the plot right now since I got everything started. The story is about how dragons have left humankind after they were misunderstood. They fought a war with them and everything. So only one dragon remains with his egg and makes a prophecy that this evil guy will return and then flies away, leaving his egg behind.

So, yeah, you get to play as the son of a dragon god and destroy almost anything you come across. So back to basics. I won't talk about characters yet until I talk about other stuff that should help you understand what I'm talking about.

You have at least three natural attacks. They are breath, blast, and missile. Depending on your dragon, you get either at the beginning a blast attack, a breath attack, or both together. The breath attack is a stream of either dark energy, acid, fire, or ice. It's a close range attack and is very useful against lairs or things that are standing still. The breath weapon is also powerful at full charge and very close range. The dragon might stop when you're using it, though. The blast attack is probably the second most powerful natural attack. The blast attack is a big ball of dark energy, acid, ice, or fire that flies on a straight path. It should only be used on enemies that stop a lot. The missile attack is like the blast attack except weaker and follows your enemy. Even though it follows its target, don't always expect a sucessful hit. Especially at close range.

Stats. Yes, you heard me, Stats. Stats make your dragon stronger and better in some ways. There are six Stats altogether. Fly Speed allows you to fly faster. Duh. It also helps you to evade enemy fire and try and out-run homing spells. Life increases the amount of health you have. The more health you have, the longer you can stay in battle. Regeneration is how fast you heal. It helps when you're in a big battle or fighting with a boss. Fire Power is how strong your natural attacks are. Sometimes when you increase your Fire Power you get new natural attacks or upgrade the ones you already have. Breath Capacity is how many times you can use a natural attack. Mana Inflow is how fast your spells charge up. It allows you to use more of that spell. Some spells charge up faster than others, though.

Now the moment you have been waiting for... dragons! At the beginning of the game you get to choose from three dragons. Annoth is the red one. He's fire-based. At the beginning of the game he has low Mana Inflow, high Fire Power, and medium Speed. Annoth has some impressive spells, but they cost a lot to buy. But, hey, they're worth it for him. They are ultimate killer spells. Utter chaos and mass slaughter, man! Plus, just one use of his most powerful spell is enough to kill the last boss. He is a good first choice because most of his Stat upgrade costs are fairly low and he starts with the most Stat points at the beginning. Barroth is the blue dragon, or the ice dragon. He has fewer Stat points and I'd recomend him for people who have gotten used to the game and are pretty good at it. Barroth's spells cost low on Stat points. Plus he has high Mana Inflow so you can get them faster. However, most of his spells are fairly weak or have something to do with stamina, invisibility, getting rid of fire, acid, freeze problems etc. His so-called "ultimate spell" is fairly weak. It's the Ultimate War Shere. It doesn't attack very often and is killed easily. He starts out with the least Stat points and many of his Stat upgrade costs are rather high. He is speedy, though. Morrogh is the black dragon. He's acid-based. He is the slowest at the beginning of the game. His spells are medium on the cost rate, but they're pretty awesome. He is the earth dragon and can raise mountains and zombies, create craters, and is the only dragon that gets summon spells that he gets naturally.The other dragons can only dream of this. His Stat upgrades are 2-3 points, which is low. He can also do stuff like poison things, create wasteland, and make enemies scared of him. With Morrogh you might as well remap the land. Morrogh has high Regeneration, so he's the most well-balanced dragon in the game probably. Also a pretty good first choice.

Not only do you get to play the dragons, but you also get to play as a few "other guys". The first "other guy" you get to play as is a war chief that rides on a roadrunner. In the game a roadrunner is a dinosaur-thing with an ugly looking head. The next guy you get to play as is some hunter out to kill these evil wizards. The third one is the war chief again riding this rhino sort of thing that's virtually immortal. It's called a Maloric. The fourth one is the hunter again, trying to protect a very important artifact. The last one is one that you only get to play briefly. He's a wizard that has to get an evil wizard's soul.

There are three different types of cameras in this game. I named them with descriptions sort of because I'm not good at remembering different "modes". Parentheses seperate ups and downs from other text. The first is the trailing camera. It stays behind your dragon while it's moving. You can move the camera while you're stopped and then it goes behind the dragon when it moves. Upshot: Doesn't require manual control so you have a free hand to fight with.) Downshot: You can't take good pictures of your dragon moving.) The second mode is the freestyle camera. It stays in the position you place it on, no matter what. You can reposition it whenever you please. Upshot: You can take nice pictures with it.) Downshots: You have to move it a lot while fighting so you can see your enemies and see any attacks coming at you. Also prevents you from doing more than one command at a time.) The third is the "eye of the dragon". I named it that for a reason. You actually look through your dragon's eyes. The dragon's head and neck also move when you turn it. Upshot: You get a better experiance from levels and flying is slightly more fun.) Downshots: Goes back to the forward facing position after a bit, messing up an attack that you might have planned. A little hard to control, which means that you might not aim right. It always drifts a little after you command it to move. You can't see any homing attacks coming at you. This camera does have limits, you know.

I thought the game had great graphics. From the blood to the trees to the mountains and craters and cliffs. All of it's pretty great. What I liked the best is how your dragon changes throughout the game. At the beginning it just has these little stubs for horns and no sails or spines and stuff like that, and at the end of the game it has all that. The company said something about particle effects and how great it was. It's not all true. I mean like when I'm the Maloric Rider (rhino-thing) and I'm on fire and I go through a tree it catches on fire, too. But when I try to use just one breath attack with Annoth only one tree goes on fire instead of the whole forest. And, for some strange reason, when the dragon's on fire and it goes through the trees they don't catch on fire. And with Barroth when I try to freeze a tree it looks like it's been burned instead. Also, the lighting has a bit of a problem. When I shoot, say, an ice blast, it LIGHTS UP the ground. That's more of an Annoth attack thing. The sun, however, can cast marvelous glares and make your dragon all shiny.

The sound effects are rather poor, too. Instead of making up their own sounds, Stragy First slapped on sounds directly from other animals like dolphins and leopards and wolves. That's a bit of a blow.

The next thing is the mission quality. It didn't have a lot of variety, really. Basically it was, "Upgrade this town to level five," or, "Destroy all lairs and kill all monsters." I got a bit bored with doing the same thing over and over again except with different monsters and areas. The variety of monters was nice though.

The levels are a bit dull for the dragons. They seem to lack potential when you're just flying around. However, when you play as the war lord or the hunter the levels burst with realism. It just felt really different because the rolling hills and mountains don't seem flat any more. I just loved being one of those characters. It's just too hard to describe.

Now for MAJOR drawbacks in the game. The loading time is abysmal (worse than horrible). It takes like five minutes to load something. I couldn't take it. You could get up and eat breakfast and have a of cup coffee while you're waiting. The next thing is the worst. In a level called Wonderland, there are these things called Ganglins, and when you dive down to get a crystal while one's around, it'll freeze you and turn you into ice for a second. But when you're not ice you're still frozen and you would probably think that there's something wrong. Then you see that all the monsters are shooting you and you're completely helpless and unfreezable. Then you have to load up the place you were on A LONG TIME AGO AND WAIT ANOTHER FIVE MINUTES!!! It's a fatal blow, and a big no-no. The creators of the game should've seen this horrible flaw. Oh, and you'd think that just flying around would be a lot of fun. Well, sadly it's not. You just feel like you're some NASCAR vehicle on wings. plus you can't do stuff like barrel rolls or flips. You can do that sort of stuff on games like Dragon Rage and Drakan: The Ancients' Gates.

Here's another thing you might want to know. You might have heard people saying that this game makes Windows XP crash unless you turn the hardware acceleration down. I have a Windows XP and the game didn't make my computer crash when I tried to exit or turn on the world map. The only problem I had was with Morrogh. Every time I tried to load him, the game crashed. Some computers will react differently to the game. It probably shouldn't make your computer crash, though. That's a fact!

So yeah. It's a good buy for anyone who just likes to fly around killing things and stuff like that. But for people who like games that feel more "real" and have some more mission variety than it's only a consideratinon.

Dragon

5 Rating: 5, Useful: 7 / 7
Date: May 27, 2005
Author: Amazon User

Before I get into my review, I'd like to say something: sometimes, on Windows XP, the game crashes. To learn how to fix this, go read Tiffany Bates's review. Okay, now that we got that over with...

In this game, as you probably all ready know, you get to be one of the three dragons. Here are the overly simplified summaries: Barroth is a magician; he specializes in spells and speed. Annoth is the somewhat fast and powerful barbarian of the trio, focusing on his natural attacks rather then spells or regeneration. Morrogh is the slowest of the three. He focuses on regeneration, which is basically how fast you heal. His spells deal with raising the dead, terraforming (raising mountains, craters, ect.), summoning creatures, or poisoning his foes. Graphic-wise, this game is standard. Nothing special or remarkable except the dragons, who are very shiny and greatly detailed. To learn more about them, read Delphinidae's (Delph's) review.

You can switch between first person view and third. Unlike most action-based RPG's, this game is NOT about killing everything that moves. Okay, that's part of it, but it involves strategy and cunning more then anything else. Your dragon has certain stats (Health, Fly Speed, Regeneration, Mana Flow, Breath Capacity, Fire Power) that take a certain amount of experience points to raise, depending on which dragon you chose. Because of this, it has an almost unlimited replay ability. My favorite feature is not where you get to fly down, grab your enemies, and eat them alive, but is rather the unimaginable sense of freedom you get when playing this game. The game does a stupendous job with where you're able to go; you can fly into deep crevices or soar high above the land, to the point where your wings touch the lowest of the clouds. The day, sunset, and night transitions are wonderfully executed as well. The gradual change of color and sky is, surprisingly, actually breathtaking. Another noteworthy feature is the fact that you can change the time. Example, you can speed up to 200% or go in slow motion, somewhat like in the Matrix. If there was one downfall to this game, I'd say it was the voice acting. Completely monotone. But luckily you don't have to listen - you can go to the Audio option and turn down the voice to 0 if you want. The storyline is also quite intriguing and the music, while somewhat repetitive, fits the game well. Something I found odd is that the demo (or at least from the place I downloaded the demo from) has different music then the actual game. To make it simple; download the demo. Like it, buy it.

CAUSES XP TO CRASH - KNOWN PROBLEM

1 Rating: 1, Useful: 11 / 15
Date: July 04, 2005
Author: Amazon User

The manufacturer has a notice posted on their website that this game causes Windows XP to crash any time you try to save a game. I only found this out after I paid $40 for the game. They will not give me a refund. The technical support said they shipped the game with this KNOWN problem, but they have no patch. So, if you enjoy not being able to save your progress, then by all means, buy the game. But if you like being able to save your game - and you don't want to start over EVERY TIME you play, then buy something else. I will NEVER buy anything from this company again.

Works on XP/SP2

5 Rating: 5, Useful: 4 / 4
Date: March 03, 2006
Author: Amazon User

I won't go into how great a game this is; others have mentioned the choices/replayabilty etc already.
I just wanted to let those interested know: 1) "yes, it works on XP/SP2" ... 2) you can buy it at strategyfirst for twenty bucks
Being physically disabled/limited manual dexterity doesn't permit me to play any flying games; luckily, Dragons don't crash :-)
I wanted to thank Tiffany Bates(...see AUG 17th post) for her XP fix.
I have been experimenting with my Black Dragon, so I've saved/loaded/deleted etc several times; no problems.
I moved the sound slider(dxdiag) bar to BASIC ... didn't try it where the default had it
All I know is the game works just fine.
Thanks StrategyFirst(... you guys might like Disciples II - Elves)

Thanks Tiffany !

Best Dragon game ever!

5 Rating: 5, Useful: 7 / 12
Date: August 02, 2004
Author: Amazon User

Not only is this game easy to learn, but you can be the dragon not just ride one. You can eat your enemies when you get hungry, or the townspeople. You can learn cool spells depending on your dragon (choice of 3) like raising a volcano, or raining fire down on your enemies. You can choose to be good or bad, destroying your city and building it up again, or just flying around getting higher levels. You can use your mouse, or just the keyboard and let the automatic pilot take over if tired. In all this is the best dragon game out there, much better then drakan and others.

This game is original and FUN!

5 Rating: 5, Useful: 3 / 3
Date: January 22, 2005
Author: Amazon User

You're a Dragon, how great is that? You get to fly around and eat bad guys and burn things with your dragon breath. This game is awesome! It's a third person game view and you're the dragon. You can swoop down and grab bad guys and start eating them or you can use one of your many magical spells to zap them. You also have your main weapon, dragon breath. You get to choose from 3 different dragons, so this game has a lot of replay value. The game interface is really well done; you basically don't have to use the keyboard much. The graphics are ok, but good enough for this type of game. I would most definitely suggest picking this game up.

Really good game, for such an old computer

5 Rating: 5, Useful: 4 / 6
Date: September 16, 2005
Author: Amazon User

Normally my old Windows 2000 is used for things like Myst III and Masterpiece, but I found out about this game in advance on a dragon forum. My brother and I put togther our allowences to pay for it, and we got it at the local Comp USA. On my old Winows 2000, it loads in reasonable time, a minute or two at most. (including diffrent areas)

The game has three speeds- and personally I use the fastest so I don't have to upgrade my wing speed too much. It doesn't slow my computer if I go too fast, the only exception is the "HOLE" area. (too many mountains or such... I think Terra is this way too.)

My favorite so far is Barroth the magician. He may not be able to raise volcanoes like Annoth, or bring the dead to follow comands at my whim like Morrogh, but he's got quicker acting spells that one can use for mass slaughter. (Whee!)
It's not quite like Spyro, I'll tell you that!
The only thing that peeved me off was that Skarrborr the last "boss" was very easy to beat. and there wasn't much of an end. He just sort of dies, and you can start all over again with someone new...

I hope they come out with a sequel or something to work out that tiny quirk!

I of the Dagron

4 Rating: 4, Useful: 3 / 5
Date: December 22, 2004
Author: Amazon User

I've played the demo of this and have not yet purchased it but it was alot of fun. It's story was intriguing and the gameplay was often very fun. The teraforming of their graphics engine is outstanding offering the ability to burn down any tree you see and make a crater just about anywhere. it is a 3rd person perspective although if I remember correctly you can switch between multiple view choices. The only issue I found was a little confusion with controls. Although once you get past that this is a great game.

Good game no support at all

3 Rating: 3, Useful: 4 / 9
Date: August 31, 2005
Author: Amazon User

I played this at a friends house and loved it. Purchased download that never worked right, so purchased disk. It never worked so after visiting three sites to find support, I have written three letters asking for help and have not been answered in two weeks. At this point I just want my money back or the game working. I will not buy a game from Strategy First again period.

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