Format: iPad, iPhone, iPod Touch
Developer: Griptonite Games
I do not think us guys ever grow out of thinking that dragons are seriously cool. I would love to have a whole collection of dragon statues on the mantle in my living room (but my wife wont let me) Anyway Dragon Storm’s title alone was enough to grab my interest, but when I leaned it was a kingdom building game I was not so sure. But also this is a game that has a little action to it. So read on to find out if this is the game for you.
Graphically I really like what Griptonite Games have done here. In these kinds of games it is always hard to get amazing looking graphics. But this is still a very nice looking game. The whole thing has this epic feel to it. And if you are a fantasy fan I am sure you will get a kick out of the story.
The story is that of a evil dragon lord who wants to destroy the world of mortals with his dragon army. Luckily for the world of mortals there was some lords looking out for them who took some dragons eggs that had not yet hatched. You as one of the last mortal lords need to try and rebuild the kingdom and keep it safe while protecting the last dragons egg. It is basic fantasy stuff, but it still has this epic feel to it. And the story does do a great job of making you feel like there is a lot at stake here.
Now in terms of game play to me at least it does not have the pay off that the epic story builds up. After all at the end of the day this is a town building game. And before you can do anything you will be required to build a barracks to train warriors and also farm and mine in order to get resources. You have probably done this kind of thing a million times before. And like always these things take time. But you can use crowns which are the in game currency to make it happen faster. And of course you can buy crowns with real money from the in app store.
The sad thing about Dragon Storm is that it takes forever to build your fortress and I mean forever. Because you can only build one thing at a time you will easily use all the crowns you have at the start of the game to just get up and running. Which of course means when you really start playing the game you either will have to wait ages or use real money to buy more crowns.
Once you have your fortress sorted you can then start to play through the games campaign. You can send your warriors into battle to try and take your enemies land and what not. But the tutorial (if you can call it that) is terrible and you will probably just be destroyed in your first battle. The AI in the single player mode is really ruthless even in the very first battle. Of course there are player vs player battles that you can take part in and these are more fun and generally feel fairer. But if you play against someone who has played the game much more than you then you will be severely beaten.
I love the idea of Dragon Storm and I really wanted to love this game. I liked the story and setting of the game. But the game just feels like its goal is to get you to open up your wallet to make things speed up so you can get on with battles. If you like dragons then by all means give it a go, but just know you will either spend a lot of time waiting to spending a lot of time in the in game store.