KEMCO comes to delight me with my first pixel RPG from home of the year. Well… The game dates from December 16 but the vagaries of holidays, codes and others and here I am on my first KEMCO of the year. I have a good idea of what awaits me but I always keep an eye open. Perhaps this KEMCO which closed the year 2024 and which opens 2025 for me contains surprises!
You are Helio! A young man full of energy but perhaps too nice given how the mayor of the village of Haven treats you. His daughter, in addition to being beautiful, likes you and tries to shake you up a little. But what better way to do this than the invasion of the Dragon Emperor Tiberius? He sends his monsters to kidnap your friend and almost kills you. Fortunately, your “Skill Takers” ability has just awakened and saved your ass. Basically, you can copy an ability from a monster you are going to defeat! At the start of the game, you will have fiery breath, lightning or even a blade of wind to support you.
The story is classic KEMCO if you will, with a hero who will reveal himself, colorful secondary characters like the beautiful Milena and that touch of humor that I appreciate in the developer’s games. A recipe that works well but with variations in substance. Indeed, for the form, we keep the basic structure with pixels everywhere except for the characters during the dialogues. Move around the top-down map to explore and fight in first person. Ditto, the music is in the KEMCO style, old-fashioned but full of heroic energy!
Basically, we have slight changes such as the save function which is now separate and the organization of equipment menus which has changed layout. It’s pretty well thought out but validation and navigation are not always implicit. The ability allocation menu, for example, could be better done. In combat, the first person view aspect could be interesting but the execution lacks punch overall. On the other hand, the “skill takers” side is interesting and allows for customization (albeit slight) of our hero. This changes from certain productions where our hero follows a track or even benefits from the same thing as his comrades without any more panache than that. Here, Helio is the hero and we really feel that side.
Dragon Takers is therefore a nice KEMCO RPG which lacks a little oil in its menus but which tries things fundamentally and we feel the potential of this change. In the end, we have something to have fun with a smile and that’s already it!
Belgium
