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Not everything that is an epic adventure fairs well nowadays.  In particular epic adventures dealing with dragons.  Last year, the first chapter of the Inheritance Trilogy, Eragon, flopped big time at the box office.  This fall on the Wii, Dragon Blade: Wrath of Fire seemed poised to follow in those footsteps, albeit in the form of a video game rather than a film.  While the title suffers from numerous flaws, Wrath of Fire actually harbors a few diamonds in the rough, and hopefully next time around D3 Publisher can churn out a much better product.

Wrath of Fire puts players in control of Dal, a young boy from a small village on the outskirts of a kingdom overrun by warlords who possess the power of an ancient dragon named Valthorian.  In addition, other dragons guard the many lands of the kingdom, providing some of the most difficult boss battles seen in a long time.  The game is divided into stages, ranging from the small village in the opening, to massively sprawling levels that would put the entire overworld of Twilight Princess to shame.  However, besides the jaw-dropping size of many of the levels and the intense dragon boss battles, there's little else worthy of redeeming this title.

As already mentioned, players navigate through one of many stages, with the game taking at least twenty hours to complete the first time, but probably longer for most.  Well, that is if one can stand the mindnumbing gameplay packed into each level.  Combat plays out much like a hack-and-slash title, only players command Dal and his Dragon Blade (and other unique abilities) using the Wii Remote.  While it is not one-to-one mechanics, the direction the Wii Remote is swuing will result in Dal swinging his blade in that relative direction.  Additionally, there is a combo system that rewards players who string together attacks with bonus life and special ability meter power-ups.  Players can also make Dal manually jump and do aerial combat moves, parry and defend against enemy attacks, and there is also a targeting system.

Unfortunately, the controls are overly complex and the learning curve is very steep to master.  There really is no incentive to have such patience, either, as each stage generally consists of legions of enemies assaulting Dal in wave after wave until the end of the stage.  Occasionally, a cool mini-boss battle will pop-up, but aside from these rare encounters, the meat of the game gets extremely dull after about the fourth level.  By that time, players will have also encountered there first boss, which, sadly, is a joke in terms of difficulty.  However, for those who decide to suck it up and ride the game out, some really difficult boss battles await.  Later, standard boss battles feature tougher, faster and more powerful adversaries, and then there are the mighty dragons themselves.  The encounter with the first dragon provided a challenging experience very reminiscent of old-school action games.  But in the end, even the toughest boss follows a set pattern.   Once that pattern is identified, the battle comes down to endurance as all the dragons have several phases and the difficulty shifts to avoiding making a stupid mistake rather than a genuine challenge.

Though the levels of some stages (like the dam level near the beginning) are enormous, the cost of having such epic levels is horrendous visuals.  Wrath of Fire truly falls into a title that would have been laughed at even on the GameCube, let alone now on the Wii.  The title really suffers from such lackluster visuals and they do detract from the experience.  On the other hand, the audio picks up the slack a bit, with music that suits the levels far better than the visuals.  But even the audio has its limits; many of the tracks are short and looped over and over throughout the stage, and the selection throughout the entire game is very shallow.  Obviously D3 Publisher was planning on this title being a budget title.

Wrath of Fire, though, can be enjoyable in short bursts, but trying to play for longer than an hour or so becomes tiresome and boring.  The controls also have some issues in terms of responsiveness, though for the most part they work pretty well once they are mastered.  There is the option to go through previous stages to collect all hidden items and destroy all enemies and "objects" to get a true 100% completion of the title, but there really is no incentive.  Perhaps if D3 Publisher can provide superior audio, visuals and gameplay to match the massive levels and difficult boss battles, they will have a title worthy of purchase.  However, as it stands now, this is one title players should pass up.