Genre: Strategy RPG
Developer: Sega
Publisher: Working Designs

The Saturn can push a lot of sprites to the screen while not skipping a beat, and Dragon Force is evidence; the battles portray the combat of up to 200 participants, not to mention the lush, colorful stages, their backgrounds, and the great animation, all with perfect, fluid framerates. The character art is mostly well done, and the game has a clean, polished look.

Sound effects such as the wierd screams, yelps, and moans the combatants make as they die, as well as the short jingle songs that play when you succeed/fail in an action lend Dragon Force a memorable character. The proper songs, which play during menus, combat, and the world map, are catchy fantasy-themed DSP compositions that also contain distinct jazz-funk fusion elements.

In Dragon Force, your objective is to take over all of the castles on the world map and then defeat a final, ultimate boss. Each of your "generals" can command up to 100 soldiers, harpies, zombies, monks, and a variety of other enemy types, as well as cast magic. To take a castle, you must defeat all of the generals in that castle, while defending your strongholds from the sieges of opposing armies. The menus can be a little clunky, but the gameplay otherwise works excellently.

Every five to twenty minutes (depends on how much combat you engage in) you are given an opportunity to "cool down" and engage in acts of awarding your generals larger armies, fortifying or searching your castles, and trying to persuade captured generals to join you. Between the high tempo, real-time combat and the slowed down administrative functions of the game, you are left constantly with a "just one more turn!" situation which, as we all know, is one great way to add addictive properties to a game. Largely, "addictive" is probably the best way to describe Dragon Force!