Dragon Fantasy: The Black Tome of Ice

My first hour with The Black Tome of Ice had me grinning at enemy descriptions that read like someone let a comedy writer loose inside a Dragon Quest ROM, and groaning when the game crashed before I could save. That tension between genuine affection for classic JRPGs and real technical sloppiness defines this whole experience, and you deserve to know about both sides before you click anything. This is the second Dragon Fantasy game from Muteki, and it makes a meaningful structural leap over its predecessor. Where the first game was a loving imitation of early Dragon Quest - random encounters, flat enemy sprites, NES-scale world - The Black Tome of Ice pivots hard toward Chrono Trigger as its reference point. Battles take place directly on the map backdrop without a transition screen, enemies are visible on the overworld so you can dodge most fights, and the combat system introduces spatially aware area-of-effect attacks, meaning enemy positioning actually matters when you choose your moves. The party you travel with - series veteran Ogden, Prince Anders, the woodsman Woodsy, and the ninja stowaway Ramona - each bring enough personality to make the banter worth reading. The writing is the game's most reliable strength: irreverent, occasionally absurd, and consistently warmer than its retro pixel shell suggests. Ship-to-ship cannon battles add a timed mini-game layer that breaks up the dungeon crawl routine nicely. The problems are real and worth naming plainly. Steam user reviews land at Mixed, and the complaints are consistent across every platform this game has shipped on: bugs that can break quest progression, crashes that send you back further than the auto-save would suggest is fair, and inventory management that feels like it was designed by someone who finds menus relaxing. The sidequests are thin - critics have noted that rewards feel copy-pasted throughout - so if filler quests are your personal nemesis, this game will find you. The story also lands without a proper ending, because the Dragon Fantasy series was conceived as episodic and Book III never materialized, leaving Tundaria's demon problem frustratingly unresolved. If narrative closure matters to you, consider that a genuine warning. On the positive side of the ledger, the SNES-styled visuals are genuinely lovely compared to the first game, the soundtrack has actual tunes worth humming, and the adjustable difficulty means you can sidestep the grindier progression walls if you just want to see the story beats. For anyone who grew up on 16-bit JRPGs and has appetite for an indie team earnestly paying tribute to that era, there is real warmth here. For RPG players who expect the writing to carry significant narrative weight past hour 10 - the kind of payoff you get from games where choices branch and consequences ripple - this one does not have that infrastructure. The humor sustains momentum; the plot does not. Bottom line: this is a solid-enough weekend game for players who want Chrono Trigger aesthetics at a budget price point, but it requires tolerance for unpatched bugs, an abrupt non-ending, and a combat system that gestures at depth without fully delivering it. The charm is real. So are the crash reports on the Steam forums.

Monika · Scout Team

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