Im convinced that the people at Jaleco dont know what dragons are. You hatch a dragon egg and out comes Stone Golems? Wasps?? Beetles?? Crabs????

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At first blush, Dragonseeds is an incredibly strange and probably very archaic monster skirmisher. Some weird 2-input turn-based pseudo-fighting game - but once you get a few fights under your belt you learn its actually a much more complicated game of strategy where you have to play rock-paper-scissors 2 moves at a time. Ive been infatuated with memories of this game ever since playing a portion of it on a demo disc over 20 years ago and its actually surprising to find that it was even more interesting than I could have expected.

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------Things I Like

- While entirely unexpected, I do think its kind of funny that a game called “Dragonseeds”, where youre a “Dragonsage” raising and cloning Dragons to fight in tournaments run by the World Dragon Council has Dragons that are….. Crabs, and Beetles, and even animated Golems. Even the most dragon-like class of Dragon is named “Saurian”, which are dinosaurs. There is also a secret, initially enemy-exclusive class of Dragons that are….. Mermaids with bull heads and furnaces possessed by ghosts???? Genuinely wacky. It gives the game alot of personality even if I would have been just as happy if it were actually all dragons. (I like dragons)

- The name “Warm City” is pretty sick.

- Something seemingly unique to Dragonseeds, is that this is a game that requires you to know when you should surrender. If your Dragons HP drains to 0, that Dragon dies and you must make a new one - and so, in order to keep your Dragon, you have to Surrender and concede the match early. Its not a major change but its a more immersive design choice - you are losing the fight in either case but theres no magical reason why your monster continues to fight after taking fatal damage. Because they dont, youre gonna lose your small son (and all the time investment) unless you intervene.

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------Things I Hate

- The fact that the game has two confirm buttons, one select options and one exclusively to forward dialogue text, was annoying as all hell. Not being able to choose a menu option until you full exhaust the multiple cards of NPC text only to be met with more dialogue that requires its own special button is just…. not understandable. Whats the point?? Did the devs think “we have all these buttons, so we should use them for something” and then just arbitrarily break apart functions? Drove me up a wall, especially when you will visit the Training Center 100 times before the game is over and have to re-enter it every single time.

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------Things I Love

- Despite appearances, and despite the fact that every variation of Dragon fights the same way, the combat system is much deeper than you might expect just from looking at it. You can only Swing Sword, Block Magic, Use Magic, Move Forward, Move Back, and Taunt - but because you must queue these actions two at a time, you have come up with some tactics to anticipate what the enemy is going to do. You cant Block melee attacks so you cant let the enemy get into position but not being ready to Block at range means getting smacked with a fireball, and likewise if youre in range to hit an enemy with your Sword attack, youre in range to get hit by their sword also. An interesting dance occurs where youre trying to catch the enemy offguard in the middle of an unfortunate action without getting caught offguard yourself and Im surprised that such a simple system manages to accomplish this so well.

- This game has an absolutely ripping OST with some of the most infectious battle music Ive heard in a long time. Alot of D&B and jazz bass mixed into whimsical (sometimes tribal feeling) fantasy music. The game is turn-based but goddamn do I feel the drama and tension flowing when some of the chorus melody runs start crashing through in the quiet moments between action selections. Well within the hall of fame for Obscure PS1 Banger Soundtracks imo.

- I really love Azami, the apparently incredibly available bachelorette running the Training Center. Hot women characters designed to bait the usually male players of video games in the 90s isnt anything new, but theres something very funny to me about a woman in a world where people fight Dragons for prestige and honor treating her position like a part-time job that she just does to meet people and kill time. In fact, all the NPCs have this funny casual off-handedness about things that give the game a bit of charm.

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------Things I Wanted To Love

- Even tho the game was only 7.5 hours for me and is relatively simple in structure (crush every tournament and become the Champion) the game still managed to approach overstaying its welcome. According to my stats screen I competed in 43 matches, and the fact I only lost 2 means I lead a pretty tight and efficient run through the game. I lost one Dragon very early on and then ran my second Dragon for the entire time after that, but the game gives you 16 slots for dragons and there are a wide variety of Dragon types you can dabble in - including some rare Super and Mutant evolutions if you raise your Dragon right. All these things suggest to me the game is anticipating players taking even longer to complete the game, but 43 matches is alot of matches. Thats not including the 2 or 3 dozen training fights at the Training Center, the place where you increase your Dragons stats, and losing a Dragon halfway through the tournament circuit would be devastating to that time investment. I dont think Id be as hot on the game if it was 9 or 10+ hours long tbh, its fun but not that fun. Im happy to have had the experience I had but it is also a shame that dabbling more in the Dragon cloning system would be an untenable time sink.

Oh, dragonseeds…There’s clearly a great monster raising sim under all this cheap jank. The game is basically a city themed series of menus all around raising and battling monsters. They call them dragons but apparently fairies and golems count too.

There is no professor oak here. No tutorial, no guide, nothing, and it expects you finish cloning, raising, and equipping a dragon on your own No idea what the buttons do in a battle. Raising stats requires esoteric mini games I legitimately cannot figure out. Forced to pick a type and dna strands for your first dragon with zero context at all.

But the gameplay is a turn based fighting game, and that is a wild and cool idea. You issue 2 commands and both monsters do them simultaneously, with speed influencing which resolves and how. There’s a sort of sword/reflect/special rock paper scissors but also a distance measurement where you can move around as one of your two actions. I want to learn how this game works but damn it isn’t easy.