Ring of Red

Well, I snapped this baby up the other day and thought I would give you my thoughts on the game.

Once again, its a mech combat game. It has stomping big mechs in it. It is set in the 1960's, and the introduction includes some WWII footage with these industrialised mechs hulking around in the background. They call them AFW's. Armoured Fighting Walkers.

The initial couple of training missions, highlight the pretty simplistic battle mechanism. Two mechs, face-off. Each mech has a loading time for its main weapon. Whoever gets loaded first, enters the sighting screen, depending on your distance from the target, you get an initial % accuracy, if you wait, this increases, the longer you aim, the higher your accuracy. Although the rate of accuracy increase starts to level at around 90%+. Once you figure you have high enough accuracy for the shot, you press [X] and fire. Thats all there is to it.

The game opens up, once you get to select crew and ground troops to support your AFW. The stats can be quite bewildering to begin with. And the manual is a bit poor. Each AFW in your team can have three support units. One to help pilot it, the Crew, and two ground troops, the Forward and Rear Vanguard. Each company has its own special abilities and stats (loading times, troop recovery, special attacks etc.) The companies are also split by their primary function, such as infantry, shooters, medics, minelayers.. etc. And you can swap troops in and out of your AFW's slots. With a team of four AFW's choosing the right troop combination takes some time. But it allows you to design specific battling combinations. Not only is the AFW and primary pilot levelling up and gaining new abilities, but you can further tweak your force using troop combinations. On the battle field, there are towns where you can capture and then win-over new troops, with new abilities.

The AFW combat is initiated from a mission map, where like Front Mission III you move representative counters around a grid. There are different attacking distances, and some of the AFW's specialise in close combat, some short, some medium and long distance. The long distance AFW's are basically a large cannon mounted on a spidery 4 legged mech. All the AFW's are nicely modelled and really do look like a WWII tank has mated with a Japanese robot. Whirring cogs, puffs of smoke and jittering engine parts make these hulks come alive. The map movement and attack is turn based. You can move and then attack, just move, wait on standby or recover. Standby and recovery have different time costs and affect the units turn, recovery being the most costly.

Once an attack has been initiated - you enter the 3d battle arena, which is usually nicely animated. Most of the work going on the AFW's themselves - but the landscape is usually representative of the landscape presented on the mission map. The troop models are ok, but tend to look a little blocky. Combat with the troops is a real joy. Not only are you co-ordinating the firing of the main weapon and maybe slotting in a special attack/move whilst loading.. you are readying your troops and maybe sending the one of the flanks in to start picking away at the enemy AFW or laying surpressing fire on the enemy troops. Your crew can have special shells, such as White Phosphor shells, which temporarily disables the enemy's troops, or incendiaries, or armour piercing shells for that extra damage. Your troops can also perform specials such as getting up close and personal and lobbing grenades at the enemy AFW, or firing a wire wrap around the enemy AFW's legs preventing movement and escape (good for holding them steady whilst finishing them off, or preventing them from advancing into a position where they can initiate close combat melee). They can also, try to repair the AFW and heal the other troops. So despite the relatively simple loading/firing mechanism for the AFW, actually co-ordinating the battle on several different fronts is quite exciting. Theres always something to be checking and reacting to during the battle. Your battle tactics have to adapt to what the enemy throws at you. If they start laying into your troops (and the AFW's can attack troops with their main weapon too) - until you have lost them all - then you are open to troop attack - and getting your weapon to fire with sufficient accuracy will be difficult. If you take hits whilst aiming, you lose some accuracy. So if you are taking many hits you will have a job on getting your weapon to fire and hit.

The chaos of the battle is where this game shines. And the troops running around your AFW's legs, advancing and retreating on your command, realy does give you a sense of battlefield combat.

There are a couple of niggles with the game:

On the mission map, if an enemy base is occupied by an enemy AFW, you move up to them and attack, and if you win, you have to wait for the next turn to move one square into the base.

On the battlefield there is an operational timeout - which means you have to destroy the enemy within a time limit. This prevents overly long wars-of-attrition between AFW's - but it invariably closes the battle - just before you land the winning blow. This is a bad thing if there are two or more enemy near by, who now have a chance to have a go at your battle weary AFW. Leaving the near dead enemy AFW to recover/escape and have another pop later.

When issuing a AFW move order (forward/backward only) in the
battlefield the AFW will only move when you are NOT issuing troop movements or aiming your weapon. This can be a pain when you want to assault a 4 legged AFW using close combat, and you have to keep your troops well out of it until you get up close. I would prefer the mech to keep moving forward, alongside my advancing troops.

Overall, I would recommend RoR to anyone who enjoyed Front Mission III and want similar sort of action, but with a ground troop element thrown in. The storyline is interesting, introducing an alternative history, where the Japanese, Germans and US are battling against the Soviets. The characterisations are pretty dismal. The translation
doesn't always work, and a lot of the dialogue is cheesey japanese boy/girl stuff. But on a whole the game stands up as giving you a mech-based battle arena with some lovely chaotic and desperate moments. And theres nothing more satisfying than getting that APC Shell off just seconds before the battle is about to timeout, watching the enemy AFW tumble and burn.

Dragons Blood

Dragon’s Blood was a game that caught my eye before I’d bought a Dreamcast. It was one of those that went on the slowly growing list of titles that eventually tipped the balance and forced me to part with the cash to become a Sega fanboy for the first time. Odd I know, but that’s me, just getting into the whole Sega ethos as the company starts to die out. I curse myself daily that I didn’t years ago.

In any case, I’m now sat at the start of the penultimate level of this beastie and I can say hand on heart that Ian is right in his assessment of the game’s merits. You need to like that particular genre to get on with a game like this – but if hacknslash epics do float your boat then you’ll find a surprising depth in this. It’s not without one downfall though. The aforementioned swoop and sway will eventually I’m sure send you blind. I find after an hour plus in this (the time needed to explore a level fully and knock it on the head) each turn of the wide angle perspective camera sends not inconsiderable stabbing pains to the eyes. Infact a glance in the mirror after a two hour stint recently showed them up to be noticeably bloodshot.

Funny how games can get you like that. FPS’s are prone to give people motion sickness, that is well known. This is the first time though that a game has reddened my eyes and made them sting. Perhaps the Draconus’s abilities extend beyond those just on the screen…

Regardless, this is a stomping slasher. Each episode like level is enough to fulfil one sitting at a time but the drive to go back always returns. The worlds are large, they are atmospheric and although the dialog is awful and voiced by a genuine B movie star wannabe it somehow only adds to the overwhelming feel of an eighties fantasy movie. Marc Singer in Beastmaster? This is what this game gives you. Peter MacNicol in Dragonslayer? Oh yes. Ken Marshall in Krull? Absolutely. If only there were fair maidens to rescue.

As it is there’s undead skeletons, creatures, minotaurs, goblins, trolls, giant insects, dwarves, the Draconus and ultimately the mighty Dragon to take on. Each level brings harder and more tactically aware adversaries. As your skills with the excellently weighted controls improve, those of your opponents do too. The dwarves imparticular are very adept for figures so stout. With the option to use an effective block though combat never degrades to a simple hack, hack, hack process. Hang back, observe, block attacks, take a stab when you can see an opening. Its not a beatem up, and nor does it want to be, but the swordplay here maintains a strong and enjoyable tactical balance that sets Dragon’s Blood above most slashers. Throw in a few button presses, sidequests and simple puzzles and the games rounds itself nicely into a well presented, solid and enduring use of your gaming time.

As Ian says, quite a surprise from a game that has been very quickly relegated to the bargain bin. This hidden gem is considerably better than a lot of titles sitting proud above it on the full price shelves.