DragonStrike (1990)

Beat on Easy as the gold dragon. I started off on Hard but it was way too difficult. Upon beginning Easy I noticed that Hard had skipped the first few levels. Even on Easy the game was extremely difficult. I thought it would be a standard vertical shoot em up but it was actually more like a precursor to the Strike games because I could freely turn around and go in any direction. The level design and objectives were very simple, being either kill specific targets or get to the other end of the map to fight a boss. The game was so difficult for 3 reasons. First, the dragon always moved forward with no ability to hover or strafe, so it was like a jet rather than a helicopter. Kind of like that Jungle Strike level with the F117, or Air Strike Patrol, so more of a pain in the ass than if it was a chopper. This made it difficult to avoid enemy shots and crashing into stuff, and was especially exasperating in tight quarters. The second was that the screen did not keep you centered, so enemies always seen me and fired first. I attempted to counter that by flying in spirals to slowly creep the view further. Third, health was not restored between levels, but it was restored on continue. So I made it a point to die at the beginning of each level to get fully healed. Powerups did not seem to carry over between levels, and there was no penalty for continuing, so I don't see why they did not program the healing in.

The dragon could switch back and forth between low and high altitude, which was the main gameplay mechanic other than shooting. Low was required to hit ground targets but you could crash into medium height things like trees. It also made all dragons much smaller, making dogfighting more difficult, though some enemies could not attack low at all. Some targets could only be hit from high. Most enemies could shoot both high and low with slight graphical differences for each altitude. You could avoid projectiles by baiting an attack from 1 altitude and then switching to the other, which was the main strategy for bosses. I preferred to take it slow by methodically defeating enemies, though occasionally it was better to skip them and preserve as much hp as possible for the boss. All bosses were well done except the bone dragon. That bastard was way too difficult to hit, and there was no visual difference between his projectiles at different altitudes. The efreet after him was a joke because he could not fire low behind him. The dragon head level was very annoying because of all the stuff in the way to not crash into. The final 2 bosses were not difficult either. Bosses were either about changing altitude to avoid hits, or circling around while firing shots when I could. My turn speed was faster than the enemies' so that was key. It was very difficult to understand the stat differences between the dragons. Gold was slow with a cluster fire shot and wide spread gold shot. I found the cluster good for sniping stationary targets while the spread was better for dogfighting and hitting from weird angles. The bronze had a lighting shot that fired like beams from the wings, leaving a blind spot in the middle unless hp was very high. The other shot was a wide area paralysis gas that was great for dealing with the stronger enemies but useless against bosses. Silver was the fastest and had the same paralysis shot with a moderate spread ice cube shot. I probably will not play through as the other dragons or on higher difficultly.

This was a very interesting game but it was way too difficult. Pretty bad when I had to hardcore save state scum on Easy! It definitely needed some fine tuning and maybe a way to stop forward movement using the select button.

7.0/10