During my time at Gamescom I had the chance to meet with Ash Monif from Grimm Bros to take a look at their awesome new RPG. Dragon Fin Soup is an upcoming RPG with roguelike elements. You take control of a female character called Red Robin who sort of looks like Little Red Riding Hood if she got sick of it all went home to get her gun and a couple of bombs and then went to ‘visit’ the wolf.
I don’t like to begin talking about the visuals of a game but in Dragon Fin Soup they’re so striking it’s difficult not to instantly let them carry you away. There’s an intentionally obvious similarity to SNES titles that so many of us have fond memories of. It’s impossible not to be taking in by Dragon Fin’s charms. Fortunately Dragon Fin’s charms don’t stop at the visuals.
Dragon Fin also has an incredibly compelling soundtrack. I love a good soundtrack in any game but in an RPG like this it plays a hugely important role – or at least it should. Check out a few samples on the Dragon Fin website here. As well as meeting Ash I also had the pleasure of meeting Jade Leamcharaskul, Dragon Fin’s composer. Playing or watching Dragon Fin takes me back to the Nobuo Uematsu days of Final Fantasy when a soundtrack was not only important but integral to a game. Check out this trailer to see (and hear) what I mean. There’s a definite Murray Gold feel to this particular track and I love it. Can’t help but turn this one up!
I remember watching the trailer for Dragon Fin and being completely baffled by how the combat system worked. It appeared to be a strange cross between turn based and real time gameplay. I eventually decided that I would need to play in order to really figure out how it worked. Fortunately getting your hands on the game makes everything clear.
In the top left of the screen there is a turn counter. Every step you take or action you perform increases the turn count. So rather than conventional turn based systems that see you setting up actions for you team and then the enemy doing the same a turn ends on every step or action. Effectively this plays as a turn based RPG with an unusually high pace. And the depth of strategy looks promising too. I only fought some very early enemies and still managed to get myself beaten badly. It’s a strange way to play but only because I can’t think of anything else like it.
Although I didn’t get much of a chance to look through all the content available in Dragon Fin it’s clear there’s going to be plenty to do. There’s a complex crafting system, gorgeous sound and visuals and solid battle mechanics to underpin it all. Dragon fin is planned to arrive 2014 for PC, Mac, Linux, PS4, PS3 and PS Vita.
