Eat, Sleep, Loot, Repeat

Dragon’s Crown Pro is a 2D side-scrolling RPG beat em up where you take up the role of one of six classes through a heavily driven narrative. Stages consist of moving through each stage while enemies come from all angles. You can travel with computer controlled AI or with other players online and can even support local multiplayer.

The games’ story revolves around a band of mysterious magic users in search of a legendary relic, the story goes deeper than that but is presented and delivered well and is best experienced by the narrator. Dragon’s Crown Pro is fully narrated by a calm voice, however, this can be changed. It wasn’t until after the many hours I sunk into Dragon’s Crown Pro that I came across this option. Apart from the default option, you can change the narrators’ voice to any of the classes and each having the Japanese option also, in total this makes for 14 different narration options.

Dragon’s Crown Pro is so lovingly presented and told in a visual novel style. The scenes are gorgeous with unique looking characters and the fantasy style it has is something to behold. It has some of the most amazing orchestrated music I have heard also that really fits the style of game that it is.

The game really has some amazing visuals and each level is lovingly made and full to the brim with detail. The background is drawn while the objects and characters in the foreground bring the visuals of the game even more alive. One thing really unique with Dragon’s Crown Pro is the stage based gameplay, while this style of gameplay does exist it is rare to see it merged with an interesting story and upgradable skills and loot which Dragon’s Crown Pro has. Rather than a traditional beat em up it feels more like an RPG with a beat em up Style of gameplay.

Each level is more than just traversing to the right and defeating every enemy in your path as each level is littered with secrets such as hidden paths which really keeps the gameplay interesting. Dragon’s Crown Pro mitigates the repetitiveness of usual side scrolling beat em ups by the many secrets found in levels; opening treasure chests and being able to switch out characters after each stage plus levelling up your characters and skills and finding new gear for your character. Each stage has a decent enough length with a big boss at the end. There is much to do in Dragon’s Crown Pro, grinding being a prime example.

At the beginning of the game, you can explore the town where you will find the various hub activities such as buying items and picking up additional quests, from there you will set out onto the stage where you will fight enemies and be rewarded with a load of treasure upon completion and then repeat this process. You can backtrack to a stage if you desire if you need to complete an additional quest that you have not yet done. Treasures you find in each stage scale to your level so anytime you backtrack even if it is in the first dungeon you won’t be rewarded with low-level gear.

Each character is unique and each race that you play has a difficulty level depending on your level of expertise with the game itself and while some are most definitely easier to use than others each has their own play style and learning this is part of the fun of Dragons Crown Pro. Whether you prefer to use magic or get up close and personal and there is something for everyone here and the best part is being able to play with your friends. When you do have a full team the screen can seem somewhat over encumbered so you can lose yourself amongst all the fighting on screen but it is still fun as ever and once you find yourself accustomed to a character you will find yourself gripped to the game.

While I have not played the original Dragon’s Crown Pro doesn’t bring much new to the table although it does have an increased resolution and a re-recorded fully orchestrated soundtrack and supports cross-play and cross-save with the original.

A PlayStation 4 Review Code was provided by Atlus