Crouchin ‘Tiger
Set in Imperial China, Hidden Dragon Legend starts with a simple but unusual premise: the protagonist finds himself lost and unresponsive, and when he is rescued by two locals, who are then suddenly assassinated by a killer clan, remains enveloped in a double-wire tying to his destiny.
This “dark faction” has in fact poisoned him and has cast him against a spell of unknowingly wicked purposes, which is why the noble motives of his revenge will add more personalities to the revelation of accounts which comes in about ten or so hours.
Let’s say “about” because despite your skills and the actual playing time, it’s easy to get into an unhealthy amount of frustration due to problems that do not stem from your inadequacy; are rather direct as a result of gross programming errors, bugs and glitches, a poor management of some phases calculated roughly to say the least.
Take as an example the steps – fortunately a few – in which you will be forced to run away while a general threat is running around you and the screen behind you is about to engage you leaves no margin of error. There would be nothing wrong with such a less indulgent difficulty if everything worked perfectly; instead of even jumping or jumping properly, your character may be jammed in the middle of a wooden jetty that crumbles, or that physics will let you reconsider the trajectories to cover in relation to your weight, movement speeds and other variables that appear in the Hidden Dragon Legend are little adhering to reality.
These approximate developers’ calculations heavily affect the title’s enjoyability, which looks more like an early access product that would require a thorough review before coming into the market under optimum conditions.
Hidden Dragon Legend can mix these sections with moments where you have to solve puzzles and other, real heart of the game, which you have to put your hands on. Your alter ego will therefore have to deal with a good variety of enemies and make them out with bold maneuvers and acrobatic combat skills, utilizing a skill tree that improves their capabilities and offers a wider range of moves and combo available .
What attempts to make Hidden Dragon Legend , at least in intentions, is really good; the problem is all about awkward execution that ruins much of the fun. In the first 2-3 hours, you may find the game enjoyable, because the enemies are still quite weak and with basic and manageable attacks, but the alarm bells are already in the early fights and are likely to become obvious problems when the difficulty arises.
Fight for your life
In addition to a combo system based mainly on weak attack and powerful attack, you can use kunai to counter distant enemies and alternatively use about four “super” ones that should facilitate your task when you are overwhelmed and with little chance of having the best. Actually, this is not so, because although you can use the dodge button with precision and diligence, being in the corridors barred at each fight means having a really limited space of maneuver; in spite of changing your moves and performing in combo areas, mid-air or on the ground, it will always be time to measure with the greatest enemy of all: a deep sense of discomfort caused by the inadequacy of the combat system.
It is slow, little reactive, the animations are incredibly rigid and the latency between one move and the other leaves you uncovered for a time window where you actually have to improvise and hope for the best. And this is a bad thing when talking about an action that would be technical and pushing players to have great accuracy.
To this you have to add some incomprehensible variables that will let you launch the air pad and prove that the game is not exactly behaving correctly with you. Some examples? At one point you will find yourself on a kind of self-propelled lift with the two outer sides that give you a joke: to be hit by an enemy means to fly off and start over the entire head section without the possibility of avoiding the catastrophe.
