It’s the small things in life that really matter. The same thing can be said of Dragon’s Crown, a fantasy beat ’em up with a gorgeous art style as well as an attention to the minor details.
Atlus has disclosed new information about the co-op hack-and-slash dungeon crawl from Vanillaware today, mostly pertaining to small customization options you will be able to take advantage of when the game hits on August 6th. The most basic example is the option to play with new-school analog sticks or old-school D-pad controls for character movement. Which will you choose?
That’s only the beginning. In the town area of the game, you will head to the Dragon’s Haven Inn to choose your class from six options. With a class selected, you will then get to edit your character’s name, choose from one of five different outfit colors per class (the gallery at the bottom of the page has images of these outfit options along with new screenshots), select a voice over language option (English or Japanese), and customize various greeting and death messages. These messages will appear when playing cooperatively, and once you’ve teamed up online with someone, that player’s character might just appear in your game as an NPC.
At launch, a free-for-the-first-month DLC add-on will additionally allow for the default Victorian-accented narrator to be swapped out for any one of the character classes, if for instance you would rather listen to the youthful voice of the elf or the gruff tones of the dwarf feed you story info. The “How to Play” section of the game’s website has narration audio samples for all of the classes. Turns out the sorceress is more than a sexy witch with absurdly large fun bags; she has the most engaging storytelling voice of the bunch if you ask me.
New details about “dungeon gimmicks” have also been revealed. In addition to nasty monsters, each dungeon will be populated by deadly traps, hidden rooms, and other secrets and special events, such as magic carpet rides (see top screenshot) and the ability to call forth the aid of a giant golem when confronted by an equally massive foe. The video below shows brief footage of one type of dungeon trap, a magician’s portal that endlessly spawns new enemies until destroyed.
I don’t know about you, but every time I see or learn something new about Dragon’s Crown the desire to finally get my grubby gauntlets on it only grows stronger. Good thing the game’s only a month away from PS3 and Vita go time, because I don’t think I can stomach the wait too much longer.
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Matt landed his first gig in the video game review business writing for the now-defunct website BonusStage.com. After the sad and untimely close of BonusStage, the former staff went on to found VGBlogger.com. After a short stint as US Site Manager for AceGamez, Matt assumed full ownership over VGBlogger, and to this day he is dedicated to making it one of the top video game blogs in all the blogosphere.
Matt is a fair-minded reviewer and lover of games of all platforms and types, big or small, hyped or niche, big-budget or indie. But that doesn't mean he will let poor games slide without a good thrashing when necessary! 
Despite the initial negative chatter about the “bosomy” art style, the game definitely looks like a blast. Reading this just adds to the cool factor. I love the idea of having the option of English or Japanese voice work.
freemantim Vanillaware’s art style definitely gets exaggerated with the muscles and female naughty parts. Have you played any of their previous games like Muramasa or Odin Sphere? They always manage to be a lot of fun with great style and animation. I just bought the new Vita remake of Muramasa myself. Haven’t started it yet, but hope to dig into it over the weekend while on the road. Hopefully it’s as good as I remember on the Wii.