PAX 07 hands-on: Dragon Blade: Wrath of Fire
D3's Dragon Blade makes a very good attempt at representative motion for a sword-based Wii game. It's not 1-to-1, of course, but at least the canned attack animations are mapped to reasonable motions. For example, swinging the Wiimote to the right slashes to the right, instead of executing some spin attack or opening the menu. Having a logical basis for the control scheme makes it very simple to know what's going on when you get into a frantic battle against some, I don't know, evil dogs or whatever they were. The attacks themselves form rhythmic three-attack combos, exactly like those found in Phantasy Star Online.
The Wii graphics were nice, but nothing special, with the exception of the dragon-power effects. The hero gains abilities as he finds pieces of the Dragon Blade, and is able to activate those abilities with the D-pad, controlling them with the Wiimote. These effects fill the screen with huge flaming hands (or whatever the part may be), and they are stylistically very nice. The dragon hands allow you to attack with two giant fire hands, each controlled by one of the Wii controllers. I actually really wished I could have done this the whole time. It's nice-- and surprising-- to see an original action game for the Wii, and, based on my time with it, Dragon Blade could be something of a sleeper when it releases this September.
