220. Dragon Unit (Athena, Famicom, 1990)

Dragon Unit is a miquetoast Famicom platformer that plays like a clunkier version of game #179, Sword Master, a game that did not feel amazing to begin with. Curiously enough, Sword Master was also developed & published by Athena and was also released in 1990, though Dragon Unit debuted 10 months earlier, so maybe Athena really took that time to tweak the gameplay into something more satisfying.

All you can do in Dragon Unit is jump and swing your sword, and the animation is as choppy as the graphics and music are boring. While in Sword Master you could attack low, medium, or high, here you can only attack regular or low, but neither provides any tactical advantage over the other.

In most levels, you progress along a flat corridor, swatting at / dodging groups of small projectiles until a human-sized enemy appears, at which point you hack away at them until they explode. I would have no problem with this if any of it felt halfway decent, but it's like playing the world's limpest Castlevania. Later levels have some basic platforming, but thankfully it is pretty forgiving since the jumping is downright limp.

Occasionaly, fallen enemies will grant you temporary powerups that are very useful: throwing knives or energy beams give you much needed range, but the coolest was a lighting sword that cut a vertical beam across the whole screen. The 10 seconds or so that I had the lighting sword made me forget what a bland game I was playing.

The worst part about Dragon Unit is that enemies continue to do damage as long as they are touching you, so while there is no knockback, you are getting sapped of health by most enemies, since their AI only has them wanting to glom onto you. Unfortunately, the best (and basically only) strategy for most bosses is to stand or crouch next to them and just whack away until they were dead. Most levels throw a life-restoring fairy at you right before the boss, which is welcome, because otherwise many levels would be way too difficult, but even when I am doing well in Dragon Unit, I am not having much fun.

2/5, a lifeless sword-based action-platformer that Athena would improve on later in 1990