This review was originally published on the Console Purist Facebook group on November 10th, 2018. It has been edited slightly for formatting.
Hello and welcome back to the PlayStation Basement. I’m actually in another state right now at a tabletop RPG convention called Con on the Cob, but I’m still here to do the review like every other Saturday. PlayStation Basement is a series of reviews about strange and obscure games for the original PlayStation. As always, I’ll be using a nine-point scale where 7-9 is Good, 6-4 is Neutral, and 3-1 is Bad.
Today, I’m continuing on the monster-raising trend started last week with Eternal Eyes with this review of Dragonseeds. Dragonseeds was developed and published by Jaleco in both the US and Japan in 1998. Despite what the title may sound like, this is a game about a city where dragons are created via cloning and gene splicing; these are not your standard, organic, fantasy dragons. The setting is somewhat futuristic and reminds me of the second part of an anime OVA from 1988 called Dragon Century.
I love the cover to Dragonseeds quite a bit. The odd text “Breed beasts for battle using memory card data from any PlayStation ® game” beneath the burly, purple dragon wielding shield and scythe drew me in as a child. The title font is cool too. Then there is just a bunch of green space all around everything. The Japanese cover is all black and dark blue, a shadow of a beast behind letters that very much match the setting of the game. Both of these covers are good.
Graphically, Dragonseeds works well. The city map, backgrounds, and character portraits look very gritty and cool. The characters are very unique looking, their aesthetics resembling their personalities nicely. In battles, the game is all 3D with sort of three-quarters view of the scene that rests somewhat behind the player’s dragon. The dragons look pretty solid, though the colors are a bit too bright at times. It’s especially cool to see how the dragons change as they age. Now, the dragons in this game are not all reptilian beasts with wings and fiery or poisonous breath. Some, such as the winged and saurian dragons are pretty close to that image. Other dragons, such as the wasp and beetle dragons are insects, while crustacean dragons and natura dragons are crabs and statuesque creatures respectively. There are even weirder things like the humanoid spirit dragons, which resemble Egyptian gods or fairies, or the evil dragons that look like inanimate objects. When I first read the manual as a kid, I was so confused by these odd creatures, but I soon grew to love the strange world that Jaleco created.
Dragonseeds has amazing sound design. Seriously, the soundtrack is one of my favorites of all time. The music ranges from industrial rhythms that could almost be in Tetsuo: the Iron Man to soaring rock ballads like the main battle theme. The song that plays when starting a game really drew me into the sprawling Warm City. The sound effects are great too with various dragon grunts and cries, swords slashing, blasting elemental beams and breath weapons, and more. I wish more games sounded like this.
Dragonseeds functions like a lot of dating sims in that the player selects a place to go on a map with each visit consuming an amount of time. You can create new dragons, buy equipment, engage in underground fights and official tournaments, and, eventually, let your dragon go at the Memory Forest. Equipment is the most standard thing, consisting of a weapon and reflector along with some other special items that are one-time use. In combat, weapons deal damage and reflectors reflect the opponent’s special attacks of fire, water/ice, and lightning. Each turn, each combatant can take two actions, selecting from attack, special attack, reflect, move back, move forward, and taunt. Reflectors and special attacks can only be used a limited time per battle, adding additional strategy. The physical attacks only hit at the closest of three ranges. Special attacks are able to hit at long range but are trumped by weapons at point blank range. By going to tournaments, the player is able to climb ranks and fight consistently stronger enemies. In an odd twist, the loser of the fight is killed unless they surrender. Warm City is a harsh, blood sport-driven world. However, through patience, planning, and careful saving, the enemies are able to be overcome.
Through the passage of time, dragons age and grow stronger, changing into new forms. Some dragons get considerably weirder, and it’s especially telling seeing the spirit and evil dragons that are unusable by the player at the start. As the dragons age and transform, they can change into mutant and super dragons if played and created in certain ways. Dragons are created by combining words into odd sentences, granting various statistics, types, and elements to the gene-spliced dragon. After so much time, dragons grow old and leave for the Memory Forest to live their life out in peace, finally.
In addition to the single-player campaign, Dragonseeds also allows the player to battle a friend using dragons raised in single-player mode or created from memory card data. Oddly, the latter is the main thing emphasized on the box, making the game seem a lot more like Monster Rancher than it actually is. There is an element of using memory card data to create dragons, but this is based on entering a certain name for your dragon (not the string of words used to generate its statistics) with data from a certain game in the second slot. I don’t remember anything in the single-player campaign mentioning this, so I have never actually done it.
Dragonseeds is certainly unusual and is somewhat harsh, but the game is fun and challenging. It’s fun to see what your dragon will change into, and thinking up training strategies and combat tactics is enjoyable. Back when I got this game when I was a kid, I was really put off by the killing and the difficulty. After I played it a few years later, I was able to complete the game and really liked it. I recommend Dragonseeds to more experienced RPG and simulation game players.
Dragonseeds receives a rating of Good (8).
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