Arcade Archives: Dragon Saber (PS4|5 - Switch)

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Sturmvogel Prime
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Arcade Archives: Dragon Saber (PS4|5 - Switch)

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DANGER ZONE (PART XXI)
ENTER THE DRAGON (SABER)



The "Danger Zone" series of reviews so far
Spoiler


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The burning question: Are you up to the challenge?

At first, Dragon Saber looks like a rename of Dragon Spirit or an update of the game, pretty much like Sega did with After Burner II which is more of an updated After Burner. In Dragon Saber's case, the key gameplay elements of Spirit are retained. Your dragon still shoots on full frontal fire and have the air-to-ground weaponry, and the die-and-respawn checkpoint still remains untouched. But that's only the surface of the iceberg. Yes, there's pretty much the same in this game, but also new features. The first one is the Charge Shot, which unlike later games like R-Type and Megaman X, you don't have to hold the button. Instead, the charge will be generating while you're not shooting. This gives you an upper hand on taking large formations with one shot, and what's better, the charge shot feature is carried on the extra heads of the blue dragon for a total of three simultaneous charged shots along with all the additional powerups with different effects like multidirectional lightning attacks, wide shots, homing shots, and a dragon-shaped fireblast. There's less powerups and special attacks since those were switched to the alternate dragon forms like the Fire Dragon, Lightning Dragon and Steel Dragon. Powering up your shots is much easier in this game because you only need two red power ups to be at your maximum level. This improvement makes things not just simple and easier, but also more player friendly without being less challenging.



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Rebalanced gameplay, Fascinating graphics!

One interesting feature of this game is the ability of being able to play with two players in simultaneous gameplay. You and a friend can take the roles of Huey and Siria for a double dose of shmup action. This also helps with the die-and-respawn problem of the single player mode helping both on making progress on a stage despite losing lives.
Along with the inclusion of a simultaneous 2 Player Mode, the major and main improvement of Dragon Saber is the rebalance of things, which is the reduced hitbox and how the life bars finally act as life bars with their respective afterhit time, making the game far more playable than before as we can take more damage before dying. However, you have to activate the life bar on the Game Options menu 'cos the game's default setting is sending you as a 1-hit dragon, which will be a challenge for R-Typers, but not for the average players. This is the only flaw of the game which could be avoided back in the day by having the life bar as the default setting.

Dragon Saber didn't had too much console ports, being the PC Engine the first one and the most "butchered" as it misses all the major effects of the game due to the console's hardware limitations and some of the levels were simplified, like Stage 3, where the self-adjusting walls were a fixed layout, but the music was quite good for the console standards. The second port was on the PlayStation as part of Namco Museum Encore, where the resolution was slightly smaller, the same problem as with Namco Museum's port of Assault, but that was the closest thing to play the arcade game until 2022 when Dragon Saber was included as part of Arcade Archives, and what a surprise that turned out to be. The emulation is very arcade perfect, so we don't have the resolution problems of the PS1 port (can't believe we had to wait 25 years for this).



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Intense firebreathing combat at breakneck speeds!

Graphically, we're treated with a visual spectacle that can be compared with Assault and Ordyne as the System II hardware brings life and MASSIVE details to the game's overworld. If you've thought the animation in Dragon Spirit was very basic, then Dragon Saber brings them to a whole new level. With a detail rich world featuring devastated cities, sprite rotating and scaling magma effects and fast scrolling backgrounds that show why arcade games were so impressive and how were one step beyond 16-bit consoles which were the novelty back then.



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'Cos sometimes a magic sword is all what it takes to save the technological future.

While the game retains the "Swords and Sorcery" and flying dragons main elements that made Dragon Spirit the medieval shmup it is, Dragon Saber adds some futurism on it as the plot involves a post-apocalyptic world. You can see modern buildings and even a man with a beam rifle in the opening cutscene, giving a curious combination of fantasy and sci-fi at the same time, and the game exploits that later in the game as we have a devastated hi-tech city in Stage 2.



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Feels like a Contra stage.

Along with the Sci-Fi/Fantasy mashmup, the game throws some pop-culture references. On Stage 3, there's an Alien-themed level with Facehuggers that could perfectly fit on Super Contra, but manages to give the game an unique feel from any other shmup or game we've played back then, which was the idea of Namco's artist Yoshihiro Sugiyama who wanted the game to appeal to everybody, not just hardcore shooting fans. He also worked on the game lore once the game's story was finished, breaking with the premise of the "Save the princess" that we all knew already.

The music of this game is one major leap compared with its predecessor at the point of feeling like a FM Towns-like game due to its CD quality, this is clearly noticed on the first stage theme which has that CD arrangement feeling as we no longer hear "electronic" synthesized instruments and the instruments are perfectly recognized in great clarity. While the first and second stages are the action-like themes, stage 3 is more of a suspensful one that matches with the Giger-esque scenery of the level. But the best of all is Stage 4 which can best be described as "Thunder Force II Arranged". Thinking about the classic rhythms that characterized Tecno Soft's shooter, now reimagined with a higher instrument quality is just extraordinary. It is worth to mention, Stage 6 is also Thunder Force-ish, so we have a nod-homage of some sorts in this game.



TRIVIA SABER

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Psikyo ripped-off Namco?

- The dragon-shaped fire blast of the Fire Dragon is somewhat referenced on the Strikers 1945 series as the Shinden's Samurai Sword and F-4 Phantom II's Samurai Sword '99 where the plasma shot is shaped like the plane.
- The first boss shares similarities with the Gomander from the R-Type series.
- The game wrongly calls Arlia "God" instead of "Goddess".




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That was one hell of a blast.

Aside from the decision of making the life bar as operator optional, Dragon Saber is what Dragon Spirit was intended to be, as it fixes most of the critical flaws of the game and improves with new features and far more advanced visuals, it was kinda sad that this game never left Japan 'cos it is an impressive shmup and it is the real Namco dragon shmup that we deserved.



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