Mobile Game Reviews: Dragon Lapis

In an age where smart phones are in nearly everyone's hands (and almost definitely in the hands of people under a certain age range), mobile games are big business; Konami, Capcom, Sega and Nintendo all have a mobile game division in their companies, and they were some of the biggest game developers in the 80s and 90s.

However, if you've been playing video games as long as I have (since 1989), mobile games have a bad reputation, and for good reason.  You see, mobile games have one major obstacle to sucking in people like myself; control. Touch screens lack the precision control that a keyboard, mouse or controller have, so certain types of games are difficult on mobile devices unless they offer Bluetooth controller support.

And that's where this new series comes in; I download a game, play it for at least a week, and let you know if they're worth your time.  I'll be judging on a few criteria; control, graphical fidelity, sound, and frequency of ads, if any, and fun factor. And then, I'll round it up to whether it's worth your time and money. And with that, welcome to Mobile Game Reviews.

Before I start, let me let the cat out of the bag; yes, I changed the URL and the name of this blog.  I'm finally moving away from that Rurouni Kenshin inspired name I carried for WAY too long.

With that out of the way, today's game is a full port of a 3DS game, Dragon Lapis. This game is a full JRPG by Kemco, and it was the first game that showed me that mobile device games could be more than just puzzles and endless runners.

Control: Sadly, we must start with worst part of the game, control. The tapping of menus is fine, but trying to move around the overworld is hardly accurate, no matter which control scheme you use. More than once, I've tapped in one place and it thought I tapped in another to move.  But thankfully, a JRPG doesn't need extremely accurate movement controls, so I'll give this game a pass on that.

Graphical Fidelity: Dragon Lapis is a game that would have looked at home right on the Super Nintendo or Sega Genesis.  It's a retro inspired game that captures the aesthetic perfectly.

Sound: Dragon Lapis sounds like it would have been at home on the Super Nintendo with the chip tune inspired music and sound design. Nothing sounds out of place.

Story: Dragon Lapis is a JRPG where you take control of Lucas and his party of adventurers as they go through the lands and try to gather the Dragon Lapicis to awaken the power in Lucas' blood and stop the evil Silver Dragon with the aid of Iria, the Gold Dragon in human form, Melvin the Rogue and Elodie the mage.  And even after you complete that story, there's an...expansion I guess, that you start up immediately after to stop a demon from taking over the world.  There's a lot going on in Dragon Lapis, and you'd better be ready for it.

Ads: The ad policy in Dragon Lapis is really bad. When you start the game the first time, you don't really see that many ads, but once you get to a certain point after you recruit all four party members, you get a cutscene where they tell you that "the information deity wants to inform you of products and services you might like", which is an in universe explanation of not only more frequent post battle video ads, but also banner ads at the top and bottom of your screen. You can buy an "upgrade" to opt out of this, but I still think this is an extremely greedy way to get money.

Fun factor: Dragon Lapis is a full fledged JRPG, which means it has all the tropes; random battles, upgrading weapons, leveling up your character from said random battles.  But this game has a different ways to handle leveling up. You see, it utilizes job classes, so you can play any job with any character, and when you do so, you get specific weapon and armor proficiency. However, to level these jobs up, you use growth plates to upgrade your abilities and gain new ones. It is definitely a unique way to handle advancement.

Final analysis. Dragon Lapis is a game with a lot of problems, but there's a lot of good there too. But despite all the problems I saw, I had fun with this game from beginning to end.  If you're a fan of retro JRPGs, you don't want to miss out on Dragon Lapis.