Dawn of Discovery
Score: 88% ESRB: Everyone Publisher: Ubisoft Entertainment Developer: Keen Games Media: Cartridge/1 Players: 1 Genre: Simulation/ Real-Time Strategy
Graphics & Sound: For years now, city/civilization building games have almost exclusively been PC games. A few have tried to transition to the console market, but not enough for me. Dawn of Discovery is a new civilization building game out for the DS (and Wii). Personally, I think that the DS is a perfect market for these type games, as this one works very well on it! The graphics in Dawn of Discovery are quite well done and very detailed. A lot of times things just don't look as good on the small DS screen, but they did a wonderful job making the places look perfect. Since this game is geared towards the civilization and not a player, you don't really have characters that you play as on the screen. Instead, you'll see still images of the characters in Story mode. They did a really good job of varying the characters' appearances and making them fit in with the period that you play in. I really like the way they did the scenery on the islands as well. There are extra little details like wild animals roaming around the areas before you have built on them. The different land features are also easy to distinguish. This makes it much easier to decide where you want to place your various buildings and roads! Even when you're on the ocean, it's easy to see where you're going. The boat is simply going to follow the line you've marked as its route. You do get actual voices and not just text to read during the cut scenes. I really like this, as it seems that's the first thing left out of a lot of DS games. The voices match their characters and ethnicities very well too. The music is lively and provides a perfect background for this type game.
Gameplay: Dawn of Discovery provides two different modes of gameplay for you to choose from. First there's Story Mode. I highly recommend starting in Story mode as it gives you a wonderfully fun way to learn how to play the game. You will play as Sir William. Your father is the King, and unfortunately his people are in a bad position. They have no room to grow anymore and the lands are getting worn out. You and your brother are in charge of finding new lands to spread your people out to. Your brother is very war-like and believes this should be done through conquest, but you believe that you can work with the new people you find in other lands to learn and grow better. Your challenge is to prove that you can accomplish more through friendship and trade. Each chapter, you will be given a set of goals that you need to accomplish. While these seem like fun things that just progress the game, they also teach you how to build a civilization properly. You'll need to make sure that you have enough housing, food, protection, and still manage to send tributes home to the king to help the people there. Each time you complete a set of goals, you'll get a new part of the story unlocked and sometimes new buildings to work with as well. You'll also meet new people along the way who can help you get to where you need to be. Eventually, you'll have completed the story and know everything there is to playing the game! When you're done with Story mode (or before if you just want to skip the story), you can choose to play in Continuous Play. Here you set all the various factors that you want for your game, like number of opponents and island details. After that, you simply build your civilization however you want to. You can explore the oceans, colonize new islands, and meet other civilizations. Just make sure to keep a good eye on all your islands, or you might have a disaster on your hands!
Difficulty: Overall, I'd say that Dawn of Discovery is a relatively easy game to play, but that's part of the point. It's really hard not to meet the goals in Story Mode, eventually. Since there's no real time limit, you can just keep playing until you get there. Continuous Mode is a bit more difficult since you have other cultures to deal with, but then there are no goals in Continuous mode for you to have to meet. You build your civilization however you want in whatever timeframe you want. One thing that I did find difficult at times was steering the boat, especially to get away from pirates. Basically the ship is going to follow whatever line you trace with the stylus and it will stop at whatever point you pick the stylus up. Quite a few times though, I didn't want it to stop but I guess I didn't keep enough pressure to keep it moving, so it made it a stopping point. Sometimes this resulted in my being overtaken by pirates, but usually I could get it moving again. I found if I just kept the stylus near the edge of the screen and moved it in the direction I wanted the boat to go, I could usually get it to follow quite well.
Game Mechanics: Dawn of Discovery makes use of all the buttons and the touch screen as well. Really, the controls are very easy to get used to. For most things that you want to do, you'll see menu options on the screen. Simply tap the menu and then tap the option that you want. If it is a building, you'll then need to tap the screen to place it. Some buildings, like the church, have a range of influence. You'll see this range represented on the screen, so it makes it very easy to get the most area covered with one building. The road building is slightly weird to me. When you choose to build a road, you'll see one appear with two flags, one on each end. You drag those flags to where you want the ends of the road to be and then choose to build it. It took me a bit to get used to moving the flags instead of just drawing with the stylus. I mentioned before how the boats move around. You can also use the map to move you from place to place so you can check up on your various islands quicker. You simply tap on the map where you want your character to move to. Just remember that this method isn't going to move a boat there as well! It's just very useful to quickly see the other islands. The control pads and buttons are used to cycle through various menus and zoom in and out of the screen. These can be very handy for finding things quickly as there are a lot of different menus the further you get in the game! Dawn of Discovery is a very fun game to play. While it might not be the most complex civilization game that I have played, it is perfect to take on the go with you. I really like being able to have access to it on the DS at anytime. If you like the civilization building games, you should go check this one out today!
-Cyn, GameVortex Communications AKA Sara Earl
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