In Dragoneer’s Aria, you play as Valen (who is ultimately joined by three others), a new Dragoon (think of it as a knight class that defends dragons).  However, at your initiation ceremony, everything goes wrong: the evil black dragon Nidhogg has reawoken and is causing chaos.  It is up to you and your friends to seek out the elemental dragons and protect them from evil to ultimately destroy Nidhogg himself.

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Has there ever been a game with a longer title?  And yet, there’s nothing else I would choose to call this little gem.  This title fits it well.

This review may be a tad retro.  Holy Badman came out in July, but only now did I summon up the courage to tackle it.  For the most part, I avoid tower defense games.  Badman is not the definitive Tower Defense game (I think probably Tower Defense would be, right?), but it falls in the genre due to its process.  I’m not a fan of tower defense.  I enjoy games that I can conquer.  Tower defense games for me have always been unconquerable (mainly because most are).  Sure, you can trudge on until you reach a high score, beat your friends’ scores, beat the worlds’ scores, but is there really an end?  Is there a final level where you’ve beaten the head honcho and saved (or destroyed) the world?  Usually not, at least in none I have ever attempted.  There are exceptions, but for the most part the genre falls into the Pac-Man category of never-ending high scores.  So what makes Badman different?  It turns out, quite a bit.  It still keeps to the same formula of defending an area against enemies, and it still seems to have no end, but it mixes the game up so much that this tower defense skeptic found himself charmed and amused for a surprising amount of time.

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