Twins are born - brother and sister - in China in the Year of the Dragon, and one of them must be chosen to become the new Golden Dragon, Guardian of the 12 lost temples. The brother is found to be more worthy and is chosen for the honor. The sister, jealous of her brother, joins forces with the evil Zodiac Master and seeks to destroy the 12 guardians to steal their power and become invincible. When researching this game online, I found it to be based off of a Jetix cartoon by the same name.
Legend of the Dragon for the PSP has three options for play. One is the campaign mode, in which you follow the sister's path of destruction as she challenges and defeats (if you're good enough) each of the 12 temple guardians. The second is a challenge mode, in which you can leap right into a fight using any one of 18 different fighters. The last is a practice mode, in which you can choose your fighter and an opponent and take your time learning your moves in the game while your opponent just stands there and takes a beating.
In the campaign mode, you enter into something of a fog-of-war-style map where you have a number of directions you can choose to move in; you then move from node to node until you discover a temple. Once you enter the temple, you challenge the temple guardian and have to defeat him/her in a specific way, such as throwing them out of the ring or using one of the special moves available to you or finishing your opponent in a specified time limit. If you do not best your opponent by the required move, you lose the fight and have to try again. Depending on how good you are at the fighting part, you may end up just pummeling your opponent into unconsciousness and lose the fight that way, because you did not finish him off by the required moves.
In the challenge mode, you choose your fighter and your opponent and enter the ring where you have to beat your opponent in two out of three matches. The games fighting style is not very complicated. You can jump, punch, kick, grab and defend - using the button pad on the right side of the PSP. Then you can modify the moves using the direction pad on the left side of the PSP. The game plays pretty much as most fighting games do; you move back and forth and pummel each other until one falls down. The neat part of this game is that it's not just a side scrolling boxing match. You are in a 3-D arena and can maneuver around the ring to avoid attacks and try to gain an advantage in positioning.
The game also has a power-up mode, in which you glow pretty colors and can transform into your Uberfighter mode and fire energy blasts and such. Of course, your opponents can do the same thing, so it can be something of a challenge to defend against their attacks.
Each of the characters, though they look different, seem to fight pretty much the same. There is not much variation in combat styles. Although, each has a different Uberfighter look to them, which can be entertaining to cause to occur.
There are a number of different arenas that can be chosen for fight venues, and more become available as you unlock them from wining matches. Some of the arenas have interesting designs, though the graphics quality of this game is not the best I've seen.
The controls were easy to use, though making them work well in a fighting game is a different matter altogether. I'm typically not very good with the fighting-style games, so I get beaten more often than not, even by the computer ... the user interface is not very sophisticated, just a health and power meter and not much else.
The game is not difficult for the most part. There is one point during which you have to defend against one of the power attacks, and you have to hit the keys in the order they appear on the screen as they scroll, and the scroll speed is fairly fast. So you need to really pay attention when that comes up, or you will miss hitting the buttons in time.
For the most part, I didn't get much out of this game. I lost interest after only a few hours of play. For those of you who like fighting games, you may find Legend of the Dragon more your style and get more entertainment value out of it than I did. It's rated T, so it's good for the older youth and up.
I've been gaming since the days of the original TSR D&D and have grown up playing just about every PnP RPG created. Eventually with the age of computers, I started getting into RTS and military strategy games. And then came the MMORPG Asherons Call which changed my computer gaming forever. These days when i'm not gaming I'm working with the Los Padre's Council BSA and my son's Cub Pack - when not conquering the virtual world.
