Dragon High & Low Hands-On Impressions: Low
Posted 17:58 EST on 06MAR2014 by: tim walker in hands-on » dragon high & low, inaba, iOS, puzzle & dragons
“Puzzle & Dragons is a pretty fun game on mobile platforms. Let’s rip it off and sell our own version!”
“Sure, we could do that. But you know what’s bad about it? That combat system! It’s too complex! Matching all those jewels to make combos just gives me a headache sometimes!”
“Hmm, what if we just tore that combat system right out of there? And maybe replaced it with something more simplistic?”
“Sure, why not? But what should we replace the jewels with?”
“How about that old drinking game, High/Low? Yeah, everybody likes that!”
“I know, right? And it’s so easy to play! Hmm, but couldn’t we make it even more basic? Like, maybe, by making combos depend entirely on blind luck? You know, remove skill from the game completely?”
“Love it! Uploading it now…”
I’m not sure if those are exact quotes from the design meeting for Dragon High&Low from Inaba, but after spending some time with the game, it’s probably not far from the truth. Soaring to the top of the Japanese App Store just days ago (and, as of this writing, plummeting fast), H&L is the latest in a long line of clones that attempt to share in the success of P&D, but which completely miss out on what makes the latter such a great game.
I’m not going to spend any time covering the basic setup of the game, evolving your monsters, choosing allies, etc. If you’ve played P&D, you’ll feel right at home, though this particular house is built on a shaky foundation. The main difference between the two games (aside from P&D’s superior aesthetics) is the combat system. P&D has you match jewels to inflict damage on your opponents, but there’s much more to it than that: You have a window of turns before monsters attack you (allowing you to plan out your strategy), and you can increase your attacks exponentially by scoring combos in the jewel game (partially luck-based, but with some level of skill involved).
There’s none of that finesse to be found in the combat system for H&L. Instead, swipe up or down to tell the computer if you think the next card will be higher or lower than the one shown (you can also “Fold” once per deck of 13 cards by swiping to the side, though it’s rarely to your advantage to do so). Guess right, and you’ll damage the monsters; guess wrong, and you’ll suffer the damage yourself.
Let’s go over a few of the basics of this system, and then we’ll see how it falls apart in actual gameplay. Each battle in H&L begins with a card between 1 (Ace, always treated as a low card) and King being drawn, and with the suit of the next card visible. There is only one of each numbered/royal card (13 total), and icons at the bottom of the screen keep track of which cards have been drawn. Cards have suit that match the one of four offensive elemental classes, and are always randomized; a fifth suit (Hearts) heals the party when it is drawn.
The elemental suit of the card dictates which characters will strike in your party, and you can pick your target beforehand. Certain element classes are supposed to have higher priority to damage certain other ones, but this seemed to become moot once I killed off most of my non-party members to jack up the stats of my main group.
Once you win a battle, the deck resets (with randomized suits again), though any damage you take sticks until your current quest is done. If you happen to burn through all 13 cards fighting a single group of monsters, you’ll just be rewarded with a new deck to use.
Beyond the somewhat broken elemental system described above, the only other real strategy (if you can call it that) is to pull off combos. Subsequent correct guesses result in blows inflicting more damage; an incorrect guess or passing breaks the combo (Side Note: With this in mind, unless your life is about to run out, there’s really no point in passing at all: The worst that could happen would be a broken combo, the same result that happens anyway every time you pass). Since they’re guesses though, there’s no real skill involved beyond a rudimentary comprehension of probability.
As in P&D, characters can also unleash special attacks after they’ve been used a certain amount of time. These don’t especially inflict any greater amount of damage, but they’re 100%-guaranteed hits without the risk of damage to your party.
There’s a lot that’s wrong with this system, at least compared to the one employed in the game being copied here. For starters, you have far less control over which type of elemental attack to use than you do in P&D. Sure, you can tell what the suit (element) of the next card will be and can choose a target to be attacked, but what good does this do you when, say, you’re attacking a single fire-based monster and the next four cards in the deck happen to be fire? Aside from the aforementioned “Fold” move, there’s no real way to affect your fate, something that is almost always present in P&D.
Not that winning battles is especially challenging, due to the nature of the mini-game. With 12 card draws per deck, you’re guaranteed hits from at least 2 cards (Ace and King), and can pass on another if you choose. That already takes away 25% of the chances your enemies have to attack you, and that’s just the gimmes. As long as you understand the odds, you’ll rarely give up more than 10-15% of the rounds to your foes, even if you forgo using the special moves.
Beyond these factors though, the main problem with the system is that it’s just not fun. You’re welcome to rag on Bejeweled and its candy-coated ilk all you want, but the fact of the matter is that games like that one actually require a certain amount of thought and planning, which is what makes them (and, in turn, P&D), fun. Dragon High&Low asks you to guess whether the next card will be bigger or smaller than the 9 currently on your screen. I’m certain there are good games out there that borrow liberally from Puzzle & Dragons, but this is not one of them.
(Dragon High&Low is currently available on both the Japanese and U.S. iTunes stores. It is free to download and play, and includes in-app purchases)
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