Dragon's Crown is a 2013 action role-playing game developed by Vanillaware for the PlayStation 3 and PlayStation Vita. The game was published in Japan and North America by Atlus and in PAL regions by NIS America. A high-definition port for PlayStation 4, Dragon's Crown Pro, was released by Atlus in 2018. Players navigate environments from a side-scrolling perspective, choosing from six character classes to fight in the style of a beat 'em up and acquiring loot through repeated dungeon exploration. The storyline follows adventurers as they journey across Hydeland and become involved in the search for the magical Dragon's Crown.
Director and lead artist George Kamitani originally planned Dragon's Crown as a Dreamcast sequel to the 1997 Sega Saturn title Princess Crown. Following Vanillaware's successes with Odin Sphere and Muramasa: The Demon Blade, Kamitani restarted the project. Originally set to be published by UTV Ignition Entertainment, that company's withdrawal from the gaming market led to Atlus taking up the project. Upon release, Dragon's Crown received positive reviews from critics, who praised its gameplay and art style, while the story and repetitive elements drew criticism. The game also generated controversy for its exaggerated character designs and sexualized female characters. It had sold over one million units by September 2017.
Gameplay
Dragon's Crown is a two-dimensional (2D) side-scrolling action role-playing game in which players take on the role of an adventurer exploring dungeons in the kingdom of Hydeland. The adventurer's base is a town at the kingdom's heart. There players interact with different establishments populated by friendly non-player characters (NPCs); the Adventurers' Guild where quests are accepted and the player can unlock new Skills; Morgan's Magic Shop where equipment can be repaired and upgraded; Canaan Temple, where players can pay to resurrect bone piles found in dungeons and receive boons for dungeon runs; and Lucain's Tower, which documents rune magic unlocked by the player.
Outside of town, players can explore nine dungeon environments in the surrounding lands; each dungeon has two paths, one unlocked after the first run, and hidden areas. Dungeons are reached either through a magical portal called the Gate, or after a certain point using the stables for a fee. Players are always accompanied in dungeons by two NPCs; the thief Rannie who unlocks treasure chests and doors, and the fairy Tiki who helps point out hidden treasure. While exploring dungeons, players move constantly from left to right, battling both standard enemies and boss monsters at the end of each stage. All characters have the same basic moveset of attacking, dodging and jumping similar to classic beat 'em up games. During single-player, players can find bone piles in dungeons and pay to resurrect them in town, recruiting them as AI-controlled fighting companions. During exploration of some dungeons, players can pacify and mount larger animals with their own health and attacks.
After the first half of the game, players can continue onto a random dungeon after finishing a run, which triggers a cooking minigame where the player uses ingredients and seasoning to produce meals which increase a character's statistics. After completing each dungeon for the first time, a side quest is unlocked for that region. Some of these are key to reaching the final boss, with later boss battles including time limits players must beat to get the item needed to progress. Loot in the form of equipment and weapons is found in chests within the dungeons, and given a letter grading; gradings range from the highest "S" and then from "A" to the lowest "E". After returning to the town hub, players can spend gold to appraise the item, which gives it an altered selling value compared to its unappraised state. During dungeon runs, players can activate runes, magical abilities triggered using sequences of three symbols, up to two of which can be hidden in the local environment.
The adventurer is chosen from one of six character classes, separated by the skill level needed from players. The Knight for all players, the Amazon and Dwarf for players of average skill level, and the Elf, Wizard and Sorceress for players of high skill. The Knight is an armored melee fighter based around sword attacks. The Dwarf is similar, but with greater strength and more unarmed attack options. The Amazon is a complex melee class with low health, but strikes grow stronger and faster as she continues attacking. All melee-based classes can launch a powerful area of effect attack, losing their weapon for a short time. The high-speed Elf uses a mixture of archery and close-range melee attacks, replenishing her arrows by defeating enemies. The Wizard and Sorceress are both classes based around magical attacks powered by Mana, needing to replenish Mana by either using normal attacks or charging their Mana meter while stationary. All female classes (the Amazon, Elf and Sorceress) have a high luck statistic, giving players the chance of finding more valuable loot. Each character can unlock additional skills, divided into two skill tree types; general improvements, and class-specific skills.
Dragon's Crown supports co-op multiplayer; all versions have online multiplayer, but local co-op is exclusive to the home console versions. The online multiplayer is unlocked after players have completed the first half of the story campaign when the harder alternate dungeon routes are unlocked in-game. In addition to class-based difficulty modifiers, there are three difficulty settings. The player begins the game on normal difficulty, and after completing the main campaign the difficulty can be raised to "Hard". After a second run, the difficulty can be raised again to "Inferno". Each difficulty has a level cap, with Inferno difficulty maxing out at level 99, and the higher "Ultimate" difficulty maxing at level 255. After completing the game, a tenth procedurally generated dungeon called the Labyrinth of Chaos is unlocked. A player-versus-player battle arena can be unlocked, accommodating up to four players. An eleventh dungeon dubbed the Tower of Mirage is unlocked on the Ultimate difficulty setting, featuring a larger number of randomly generated areas and bosses.
Synopsis The adventurer arrives in Hydeland and gets involved with fights against surging monster attacks from ancient sites across the land, and a political coup attempted by the Prime Minister against the next heirs, siblings Vivian and Dean, following the disappearance of the king. The king killed himself to thwart a ritual by the malevolent Morneon religion to summon a powerful ancient dragon, sealed in the Illusionary Lands by the world's goddesses. Key to their plot is the Dragon's Crown, an artifact that was imbued with the power to control dragons. Following his ascension to the throne, Dean is sacrificed by Morneon, though the adventurer has already destroyed the existing magic to reach the Illusionary Lands. The adventurer finds nine talismans to enter the Illusionary Lands and slays the ancient dragon before it can break free. Vivian is made queen and inherits the now-powerless Dragon's Crown.
The goddesses, one of which was restored by the ancient dragon's defeat, then tasks the Adventurer with defeating two progressively stronger dragons which stole their power. Upon accomplishing these tasks, the restored goddesses declare the adventurer as the "Gate Guardian" for the Illusionary Lands, their name recorded in their mythology. Each character class also has a specific ending; the Sorceress briefly entertains the nobility before returning to an adventuring life, the Knight lives a long life full of adventure, the Elf returns to her homeland and is made Crown Regent for felling the dragon, the Dwarf leads his people into a new golden age, the Amazon is hailed by the people and recognised by a Hydeland noble family as their lost granddaughter, and the Wizard returns to undo a failed magic ritual he performed on his sister.
Development Dragon's Crown was originally designed by George Kamitani as a Dreamcast sequel to Princess Crown, a 1997 video game for the Sega Saturn which he directed. Due to its platform and publisher pressure, Dragon's Crown would have used 3D graphics. This earliest version was inspired by the Wizardry and Sorcerian series. Kamitani's aim was to recreate the gameplay experience of Capcom's Dungeons & Dragons: Tower of Doom, which he worked on. Due to the closure of the studio he was working at following the commercial failure of Princess Crown, the concept was scrapped. Kamitani later reused the female warrior concept art for his work on Fantasy Earth: The Ring of Dominion. Over the next decade, he pitched to several different publishers but was always turned down.
In 2009, after finishing Muramasa: The Demon Blade, Kamitani returned to the concept. As the original version had been a hard sell to publishers, he rewrote the pitch. Originally planned for the Wii, Kamitani presented it to Capcom. While initially well-received, Capcom's executives decided to pass on it as it would not sell the same numbers as Monster Hunter. The project was next pitched and eagerly picked up by UTV Ignition Entertainment. The original target platform for the game by this point was the Xbox platform, hoping for an international audience. It eventually settled onto PS3 and Vita. The Vita, with its PS3 crossplay functions, was chosen due to the success of the multiplayer-focused Monster Hunter series as UTV Ignition wanted a multiplayer experience. The original producer was UTV Ignition's Kashow Oda.
During 2011, UTV Ignition ran into financial trouble, pulling first from game development and then publishing. This meant funding for Dragon's Crown dried up, threatening its existence. Not wanting the game to be cancelled, Kamitani went to Atlus, who had previously published Vanillaware's first title Odin Sphere. As the project was well into development and had promise, Atlus agreed to take it, both becoming its publisher and lending development aid from its Persona series team. The game's new producers were Katsura Hashino and Yousuke Uda. This did not end the game's production troubles, as it was further threatened in 2013 with the bankruptcy of Atlus's parent company Index Corporation. Dragon's Crown had Vanillaware's longest development cycle at the time of four years, and was its most expensive with a budget of over ¥100 million (over US$1,000,000). It was also their first title designed for high-definition consoles. The team put a large amount of effort into development, which left them no resources to aid in the localization of their previous title Grand Knights History. This led to its planned Western release being cancelled. Kamitani described the production as being "full of twists and turns".
Kamitani credited programmer Kentaro Ohnishi for steering the game into becoming a beat 'em up, something Vanillaware had never done before. He also asked veterans of those days the games they best remembered for inspiration, and typically they recalled Capcom and Sega's arcade titles of the time with fondness. Ohnishi created the skill system design. Kamitani included elements from games that he enjoyed. He drew direct inspiration from Dungeons & Dragons: Tower of Doom, Golden Axe and The King of Dragons. He also cited Dungeon Master, the Wizardry and Sorcerian series. The loot system and its surrounding mechanics were suggested by Ohnishi, based on those in Diablo. Random dungeon generation similar to Diablo was dropped early in development so players could enjoy memorising and mastering each dungeon. The increased difficulty options were incorporated based on Ignition's request for elements that would appeal to the Western market. Ohnishi described getting the online components to work as his biggest challenge.
Scenario and art design