As mentioned above, the movie license for
Eragon went to the same studio behind the excellent
Lord of the Rings tie-in, and it shows. Not only do the environments look grand, as does the music sound, but Stormfront has done it again in terms of gameplay.
As a young man, you play as Eragon, who is destined to become a great and legendary dragon rider. Along the way, many evil henchmen will try to get into your way. But with the combined forces of Eragon and his accomplices, Brom, Murtagh, and the dragon Saphira, you’ll have no problem whooping up on enemies with an array of combos for both close combat and long-range attacks.
Using the combo system may take a bit of getting used to, but there are so many that you can almost button-mash your way out of tight situations and still be alright. However, certain combos tend to work well on certain types of enemies, so remembering what you did may save a lot of time and effort spent on killing them.
One thing about the gameplay that I wish were a little bit different is the very linear path you must take. A little freedom can go a long way, but Eragon doesn’t offer that up in any way other than the rare choice of paths that ultimately only break you away from the path for a moment. But the good news is that, even as repetitive as it is, the gameplay is quite fun and addictive. You can easily lose yourself for hours, which can be great, but also could be bad. It’s not to say that you’re going to cruise right through Eragon, but the game is relatively short minus all of the restarts.
What makes up for the short hours of pure gameplay is the gameplay itself. You can, of course, play Eragon all by yourself. But the inclusion of a quick-swap style to the 2-player co-op allows anyone to jump into your game at any given time to battle the forces of evil together. Oh, and since this is a game about a dragon rider, you may also realize that you can control Saphira on a few of the levels, as well as use magic to solve puzzles and destroy baddies.
