Dragon Marked for Death and Me

Dragon Marked for Death is Inti Creates' latest game that has come out exclusively on the Nintendo Switch late last month. It's a 2D platformer like Megaman Zero but with more RPG elements, looting and multiplayer, kind of like Diablo 3. Originally planned as a $30 game, they decided to sell the game in two different packs digitally on the Nintendo Eshop for $14.99 each. Each pack contains the whole game but you can only play as two of the 4 playable characters. If you are of the patient variety, the physical version of the game is set to come out mid march for $49.99 that is set to include all characters, dlc, and the pre-purchase bonuses.

I've been anticipating this game since it was first announced for Switch. Even when the release of Smash came near last December, I decided to play Dragon Marked for Death instead of Smash. But as you know, Inti Creates decided to wisely delay the game's release to January 31. Probably to avoid competing with arguably the biggest game on Switch.

Knowing this was going to be a multiplayer co-op focused game, I tried my best to find potential party mates to play this. As the launch drew near, I couldn't really find people who wants to play this with me. I even tried to get my IRL friend to play it. But alas, I didn't succeed. Luckily, someone on gamefaqs posted that they were starting a discord server. This was the first discord server I ever joined actively. I finally found people as excited for, if not more, than me.

First ever challenge is the first stage. This game doesn't wait to throw you into the fire.

Release finally came. I bought the Frontline fighters pack as I felt that the Empress character felt like a female version of Zero. I played it solo at first. The game felt really slow in the beginning. Nothing died in one to two hits. This isn't anything like Megaman Zero. I'm not a god warrior like Zero. I can't even double jump or wall jump. I felt like a total noob. But then I remembered, This is a 2D action RPG looter. Those buggers require grinding and luck. So, I pressed on. Luckily, the match making system is quite friendly and you can see everyone who is opening a room for the missions you unlocked world wide. I jumped in my first multiplayer match, and OH BOY! The game finally clicked. THIS! This is how it's meant to be played. My whole party was rushing through the stage, the Warrior was moving big objects and shielding us, the Shinobi player,  jump through the levels and grabbing the chests for us, and the Witch kept us healthy and dropped screen wide spell attacks. It was so much fun. As I kept playing, better weapons and accessories started dropping for me. Things with +30% movement speed, weapons that give you double the damage when fighting higher level bosses made me feel like Zero again. The game wasn't bad or too hard. This is just a game that makes me earn my right to be strong. So I earned it. And I love it.

Co-op mayhem! 

I beat the game as my Empress, and unlocked the different endings. Then I beat the final boss again on a higher difficulty. It's so much fun to open the loot every time you beat the boss. Each quests have multiple difficulty settings, and the boss gets a stronger attack, higher hp and dmg, and more complex patterns as you increase the difficulty. Higher difficulty also means better loot. And this is where the real fun begins. The grind for super end game content. Right now I've beaten the game with the Empress, Warrior and Shinobi. The inventory for the characters are shared, so repeated play throughs do get easier. You still have to unlock each quest for each one though.

Team creation lets you communicate with prewritten keywords that are auto-translated for each player.

Playing as the Warrior was quite a different experience from the Empress. His stat distribution and weapon type gives him three times the damage of Empress. Almost anything he hits with the charged axe dies in one hit. The catch though, is that his attack speed is super slow. His movement speed feels heavy and slow. He only does one swing with his axe. The best combo you can do with him is to jump attack, and ground attack. Compare that to Empress, that has an unlimited jump slash combo, and a 4 hit ground combo with the dragon axe finisher. Luckily, my empress got an accessory that gives me extra movement speed and attacks. I used that on my Warrior and now he feels like sonic.

Having so much fun with the game, I decided to jump in and get the other characters, the Shinobi and Witch. Oh boy, the Shinobi felt amazing. He can jump twice in the air like Zero. He can wall jump like Zero. He can glide like Knuckles. He even has a targeted mid air dash. His mobility is insane. The game really opened up for me when I played him. The only downside is that his melee attacks are very short range. If you don't have the energy meter to do the targeted dash or his shuriken shots, you have to be careful with being too close to do damage. The Witch, was also quite amazing, though I have yet to finish her story quest, I'm quite excited that that is still waiting for me.

Shinobi's mobility lets him get around to secret areas easier.

I'll admit though, that the game could probably use some numbers adjustment for the intro levels during solo pay. Without the help of the community of players on discord, it would have probably taken me twice the amount of time to start getting strong. This difficulty spike could turn off most people, but it's definitely not impossible. Just twice as grindy.

Oh wait, I haven't talked about the graphics. The graphics and pixel art work on this game is amazing. The character and world designs were all from the genius mind of Toru Nakayama. The same guy that designed all the Megaman Zero and Megaman ZX games. Those games were from the GBA and DS, small screens and lower resolution. Did the charm and pixel work survive the transition to HD in the Nintendo Switch? Hell yes, it did. The graphics and world are amazing. I was at first worried with it because they don't really show much in the trailers. Even the developer gameplay streams kinda felts samey as they only play the intro stages. Once I got into the game, I discovered that they have function to zoom in and zoom out the camera. You can be zoomed in as close to your character that they'd be as big as characters in a 2d fighting game, or you can zoom it out and make the game look like a classic Mario game.

The levels and city hubs are very intricately designed. The sprites are animated, and in the city hub, the backgrounds have animated sprites in them too. I didn't even notice it until I played on my TV and started zooming in on the backgrounds. There are so many varieties of level design, there like a green field, a poison forest, a ship, a stomach of a sea monster, a pyramid, a snow mountain, an asian inspired castle, a sky tower, and more! The sprites are all beautiful. The boss designs are really cool. The only weakness I see is the monster/mob design. They don't seem very varied. Some are repeated and I feel like they don't suit the level they are in. Example, you can find the demon frog inside the stomach of a giant squid and also as a mob in a castle. It could have used some variety there. But that's honestly me being nit picky.

I wish the story was more interesting and fleshed out. You can see hints of the world and the politics when you talk to the NPCs but they are few and far between. Cutscenes for the game are mostly acted out with sprites. With some rare situations where there are still image artworks of the scenes. There are no animated scenes in the game. No voice acting other than the custom voice grunts you choose for your character. The only animation you can really see for the game are in the trailers. I prefer it this way though.

The sound design is quite good. Once you put on your earphones or speaker, you can really feel that Inti Creates really cared for this game with their fully orchestrated sound track. I do wish they had more voice acting from the characters, but maybe that's be asking for too much.

My Empress with my rare endgame sword that took me two days to farm.

In conclusion? I love this game. If you like farming for gear, customising your character stats, grinding hard against the boss, grinding some more, and coming back later and destroy them in seconds, go buy this! It has it's flaws, but nothing a good community can't fix. There's more content planned and additional quest DLC coming in March. Knowing how Inti Creates support their game, this will probably take hundreds of hours from me.

8/10