Vikings? Awesome. Dragons? Awesomer. Vikings battling on dragonback in interclan tournaments? Well, that’s surprisingly not as awesome as you’d think. How to Train Your Dragon, based on the Dreamworks film of the same name, follows the adventures of two Viking younglings, Hiccup and Astrid, as they seek to become grand champions. The game offers to modes, Arcade and Story. Arcade allows players to jump right in for a round of single or team versus, while Story follows the two through separate adventures as they unlock dragons and climb the ranks. To get the most out of each mode, it’s best to go through some of the story.
Becoming a champion requires hard work. First, each character needs to acquire a stable of dragons. To do this, both will have to help the other villagers with various tasks and win lower tournaments. Then, once captured, the dragons must be cared for and strengthened through experience. Both characters, playable from the beginning, will have to accomplish similar tasks in order to unlock tournaments, dragons, and dragon upgrades. From their homes on the Island of Berk, they must venture out into the Wild Zone, hone their skills in the Training Zone, and finally take up battle in the Arena. Their tasks will see them mainly in the village and in the Wild Zone, where they will pick vegetables, wrangle livestock, collect bugs, and gather flowers – the only violence is in the arenas. Each item will allow for the villagers to prepare for tournaments as well as allow the two to tend to their dragons’ needs.
Before taking to the first tournament, players will have to make sure that their starter dragon is up to snuff. The Training Zone allows for training in both melee and fire-based attacks. Each method has several leveled tiers that offer access to new combos and, most importantly, experience. This experience is invaluable as there is only one other way to gain the amount required to climb the ranks. The moves and combos are very basic, with the longest combo requiring about four button presses, but they also have some pretty tricky timing that might frustrate younger players. Unlike Mortal Kombat’s dial-a-combo system or the fluid, more traditional system in Street Fighter, How to Train Your Dragon’s timing puts it somewhere in between – an awkward position. Loading can also be significant for training, as in most of the game, with six or seven moves including up to five sessions per each, and training opponents often bested in mere seconds, younger players might become bored with all of the loading and opt to put off training. Fortunately for them, there is a solid collection of minigames that provide an alternative method to gain experience.
The Wild Zone is home to both a large cavern and a lone Viking. The Viking will offer you the chance to fight against a Legendary dragon in exchange for some coin, with the defeated beast finding its way into your stable for Arcade mode. These fights are surprisingly easy and offer some satisfaction with a new dragon to try out, but the real fun begins when players enter the cave. The cave is the hub for the minigames, with each providing a solid challenge through their score- and medal-based system. Players go for bronze, silver, and gold in addition to experience, gold, and various items. Gold is used to purchase recipes while the ingredients are used in the recipes, each serving to treat your dragons various needs – hunger, trust, and health – as well as fulfill certain quest requirements. So, in addition to being fun, they are also quite handy.
The minigames offer a mix of action and timed sequences utilizing on-screen cues. There are a total of three difficulty levels – Novice, Normal, and Expert – that offer greater rewards for their greater challenges. Players will start by gathering stranded sheep off of islands and dropping them onto the mainland, but will gradually face greater numbers, a stricter time limit, dirty sheep to clean (by dunking them in water), and more complex button combinations to pick them up. The other games include lighting torches in a given sequence, much like Simon Says; flying through hoops while hitting the corresponding on-screen button to receive speed boosts for the best time on a racecourse; creating ice sculptures by keeping a flame meter within a given range; and recreating a dragon design by picking out various parts from a number of options. While Novice is easy for most ages, Normal is about where younger players will want to cut off as Expert is indeed difficult.
Players will also spend some time in their in-game homes, caring for their dragons. Each home has a dragon den where their dragons’ status and moods can be viewed. After battle, training, playing or just downtime, dragons will need to have their needs taken care of; by using the recipes and ingredients, dragons can restore their health, trust, as well as catch some shuteye. Up for four dragons can be housed in the den, and each of those are captured at various points in-between the four main tournaments. Each dragon has a different look and range of attacks, from being small and fast with fireballs to large two-headed beasts with massive funnels of flame shot from both mouths. Dragons are also heavily customizable, both in appearance and ability. New heads, noses, shins, wings, heads, and spines are unlocked during play, which can lead to some pretty wild combinations. Dragons also earn a set amount of skill points through leveling, which are allocated towards several categories: power, stamina, strength, speed, and fire. Determining where to assign points is of some importance since different dragon types favor different abilities; one might have two upgrades in power and one for fire while another might have one in speed and two for stamina; and a good balance can help make victory easier. In terms of customization, the design aspect is the more robust area as their abilities are fairly limited by both range and upgrade capabilities.
With that said, I would say the appropriate age group for How to Train Your Dragon is about seven to nine. But even then it’s a tough call, as older kids will realize the mundane tasks for what they are and the younger ones frustrated by some difficulty spikes. The linear format of the game, with fetch quests breaking up tournaments, meant that there are far more tasks and much less brawling than one would think. During the tournaments, I found myself routinely besting far superior opponents due to the halfhearted AI. Every now and then, however, I would face an opponent that seemed to suddenly realize they were in a competition and unexpectedly whip out some combos. Still, I hesitate to call those difficult.
The format of the tournaments is such that they can become as much of a chore as collecting bugs. Advancing through the tournaments means facing teams of two, three, and eventually four dragons. Numerous opponents have to be defeated in order to challenge the champion, so if it takes three fighters to gain enough points to go for the top rank, then that’s three fights of up to four dragons each. Even though players can leave tournaments to heal their dragons or complete a task, it’s still a slog. But the real problem for younger players is whenever they find out the real final tournament is filled with every former champion, who now all have four dragons of the highest levels. When the defeated champs said they were going to train up and return, they meant it. I actually had to break off and level up some more when I reached that point, as my highest dragon was around 18 and their lowest was 21. Again, this situation wasn’t too difficult to overcome, but it will definitely cause problems for kids.
After Story mode, which should take about eight to nine hours per character, Arcade mode will be stocked with all of the unlocked dragons. A cool feature about Arcade is that players can import and export their custom dragons onto memory cards to bring over to a friend’s house. Also, the team of dragons that were played in Story is also set to the side in Arcade so that players can easily spot and select them. All of the different tournament masters are also playable characters as well. Since this is a barebones versus mode built around a rudimentary fighting engine, Arcade won’t extend longevity by too much, but I can see fans of the movie getting a kick for a while out of the match possibilities.
The visuals and audio are also suitable for kids. The characters, dragons, and surroundings are bright and cartoony while the sound effects and music are whimsical. The violence is of the Warner Bros. sort, over-the-top without being scary, and defeated dragons get a pet by their owner during the winner’s victory pose. The animations are a little stiff at times, making sword swipes (only used to break barrels and cut grass) awkward, but kids should otherwise enjoy the sights. The audio is a little less interesting, with the game suffering from a limited number of villager quips that quickly become annoying – they repeat the same things over and over and over. But the voice actors do a good job and should impress the young ones with their boisterous yet light-hearted performances.
Overall: 5/10
How to Train Your Dragon isn’t necessarily a bad game, it’s just mediocre. If kids go in wanting a dragon brawler, then they’ll be irked by the repetitive fetch quests, handful of dragons, and limited abilities – it’s far from Pokémon with dragons. Kids wanting an adventure will be disappointed by the small world and tournament-based fighting design. Older kids will be able to handle the combo system and fights but be bored with the busy work while younger kids will be frustrated by the long tournaments and load times. The core game is decent, if limited, and the minigames are actually good fun, so fans of the film might find this to be a worthwhile rental. In the end, though, I think that most kids might prefer spending their gaming time with something more to offer.
(This review is based on a copy provided by the publisher.)
