
DragonStrike
SSI 1990
Genre: Simulation, Action
Themes: Sword & Sorcery / Flight
Language: English
Licence: Commercial
System: PC
Rating:
Wandrell: 4/6
NetDanzr: 5/6
Overall: 4.5/6

Review by Wandrell (published February 12th, 2006, last updated March 6th, 
2010):
On board of a dragon you will engage in aerial fights with your lance and your 
dragon's breath as weapons over three-dimensional, polygonal landscapes.

This, albeit its problems, is one of the few original D&D games, to this helps 
that there aren't statistics and tedious development levels that are the label's 
trademark. But, as usual, the main lack is the simplistic story. The game is 
based in the Dragonlance books, so you will be fighting along the good guys, 
called in a stroke of originality the good dragons army, against the bad guys, 
named, surprisingly, the evil dragons.

The story won't advance much further. You are a dragon rider, who with the help 
of your dragon and your dragonlance of dragon metal will fight, mainly, against 
other dragons or dragon-like creatures.

It is the game in itself what is noticeable, starting with your vehicle, a 
dragon. There are various kinds of which you can ride one as the game goes on. 
Some are a better version of the same type, others are of a different colour, 
which usually means higher quality and always different breaths. Each dragon 
haves two of them, one fast, like fire or lightning, and another slow, like 
paralysis gas or poisonous gas. They are your only way to attack from a 
distance, but not the only way to fight.

Your main weapon is the dragonlance, which in theory kills anything with one 
hit. You can move it around the screen, pointing it to wherever your enemy will 
be, or already is, while you manoeuvre your dragon, trying to get in a good 
position. Going under an enemy means getting bit, clawed or even thrown out of 
your dragon, but if you get too close in a good position your dragon will also 
attack.

For this you should notice that there are two life gauges, one of the mount and 
one of yourself, which increases the difficulty as one may be in perfect health 
and the other die at the first enemy hit. Luckily from mission to mission you 
may get healing pomades to apply in any of the two, and also sometimes a special 
defensive object.

Your enemies won't be always dragons, just usually. There are ships and 
encampments, which send a cloud of arrows against you; and some flying monster, 
mainly dragon-like flying monsters. While there is some variation among all the 
enemies it is mainly their weaknesses and resistances, not much else.

Also the missions tend to be short, but with some variation. You will usually be 
the one attacking, sometimes alone, sometimes helped. In one mission you will 
have to take back a fortress, another time you will have to resist against the 
enemy attack and a few times you may be in a quest, and optional mission which 
you need to complete to join one of the military orders.

Even thought being simplistic the game is not bad. Close combat aerial fights is 
something that is not usually seen and can be quite interesting, and also it 
haves some replayability with its customized fights.

Review by NetDanzr (published May 25th, 2006, last updated March 6th, 2010):
DragonStrike was a unique game in several aspects. First of all, it was the 
first dragon riding simulation ever. As a Solamic Knight, you were battling 
across the world of AD&D (Dragonlance, to be exact), riding a dragon and 
destroying everything in sight. In addition to riding the dragon, you had to 
take care of the beast: feed it, let it rest, etc... Resting was quite easy - 
you just sailed down the sky when you were safe. Feeding it, on the other hand, 
proved to be lots of fun: your dragon could eat cows or enemy soldiers. Without 
descending into blood and gore, the game gave you the idea.

The second unique aspect of the game was the use of vector-based graphics. In 
fact, this was one of the first games to use these graphics. This enabled the 
designers to create a very plastic world; almost no terrain was flat. You flew 
through canyons or over lush pastures, but the terrain always varied. The 
designers tried to do the same with the creatures and other units. However, 
these looked really sterile in vector graphics; fortunately the creators 
included an option to switch into bitmapped graphics here.

The last and least visible unique aspect of the game was the world where this 
game took place. While there were games taking place in the Dragonlance world 
before, this was the first game to use the 2nd Edition AD&D rules.

In this game, you assume the role of a knight who rides a dragon. As one of the 
elite units of the army, your main task is clearing the skies of enemy dragons 
and support for the ground or naval troops. Your army has the task to cleanse 
the continent off the enemy. You start out on a small island off the coast. 
After getting rid of a few enemies and supporting the initial invasion of the 
continent, you will be thrown into twenty or so more missions, ranging from 
dogfights in arctic regions to a full-scale multi-dragon battle in the deep 
south. As the game progresses, you will notice that the story is greatly 
dependent on the choices you make and the outcome of the missions. In fact, the 
story is very non-linear, which greatly increases the replay value of the game.

When fighting, you will have three main weapons: the dragon breath, the dragon 
claws and a lance. While the dragon breath is the most devastating weapon, it 
needs some time recharging, during which you'll be hard-pressed to use the claws 
and lance. To make matters worse, there are several types of dragons, most of 
them immune to a certain type of dragon breath. The type is dependent upon which 
dragon you are riding. As you play, you will have the choice to be promoted to 
better knightly orders, each with a different dragon. Yet, even the best dragon 
does not assure victory.

Both you and the dragon are vulnerable. You have a certain amount of hit points, 
which are extremely hard to regenerate, which makes the game more challenging 
and exciting. Due to the sheer number of missions, every hit point counts, and 
even lesser enemies can wear you down. However, once you encounter Death 
Dragons, you will realize that everything else in the game (including yourself) 
is the lesser enemy. I am sorry to say, but this is one of the problems with the 
game. While the learning curve is flat at the beginning, it just jumps up a lot 
at a certain point. You may have been comfortable before, but if you didn't mind 
to lose a considerable amount of hit points before, you will have to restart the 
game and try to do better in the first few missions.

Among other negative aspects I've encountered, I'd mention only two: low 
simulation level and claw to claw battles. The level of flight simulation is 
pretty low: the dragon does not lose altitude when turning sharply, and it is 
much faster than any of your enemies. The claw to claw battles are very long and 
frustrating. You can do almost nothing to influence the battles, which are more 
based on luck than anything else.

Overall, however, this is a very entertaining game. It is unique, offers superb 
graphics (for a 12-years old game) and feels like the designers have built it 
with lots of enthusiasm and love. It is one of the few games by Westwood that 
have their own personality, and where the gamers' side of the designers 
prevailed.

About the authors
This was one of only two games designed by Louis Castle and Brett Sperry (the 
other being the highly underrated Mines of Titan a year earlier). Soon, their 
paths parted. While remaining in the same company, Louis Castle concentrated on 
producing games, while Brett Sperry stuch with design. Sperry became known as 
the creator of the highly acclaimed Command and Conquer universe, which was 
partially produced by Castle. After the release of Command and Conquer: 
Renegade, which posted rather disappointing sales, the two parted ways. Sperry 
was laid off by Electronic Arts, which owns Westwood, despite the vehement 
protests of Castle, who runs the Westwood division.
