In the past, games made of popular cartoon series usually were a decent affair, but nothing to really get all hot and bothered about. Lately, the trend has turned upward and the games were getting better and more fun to play. Legend of the Dragon brings gamers back to reality as we are treated with a very rushed game that shows that sometimes big companies hurry a game just to have it out there, instead of making the game actually function and remain fun.

In case you have never heard of the show here is a brief synopsis of it. The game takes place in China, where light/dark and Yin/Yang are maintained by a guardian called the Golden Dragon. The guardian of this temple must be chosen from a brother and sister, twins born in the Year of the Dragon, but only one of them can be chosen. Jealous that her brother was chosen, the girl turns to the forces of evil to destroy the 12 lost temples of the Chinese Zodiac in order to gain enough power to defeat her brother. It is up to you to gain enough power to defeat your sibling.

The problem with this game is that the fighting engine is extremely stripped down. There is only one punch and kick button, the rest are grabs, block, and strafe. You must string together various button combinations to create powerful moves in order to defeat your enemies. There is an energy meter called Ki gauge, and if you have enough energy in there you can transform into the character's guardian form and do more devastating attacks. The problem is that the attacks are identical for every player, one is a beam-like attack, another launches fireballs that are easy to dodge, and the last is a six-button combination that you must press, but if your opponent presses them first they will redirect the attack at you. This is all that there is to this fighting game. The most frustrating thing is the poor movement control.

There are several game modes that can keep players occupied, if they deal with the horrendous controls. First off there is the quest mode, which is the main story of the game. This is where you can move Ang or Ling around the map in a “board game” environment. You must then go to various templates and there are various challenges that you must overcome, such as defeat your opponent using only certain attacks, a time limit, and various other things. If the fighting engine was better this would have been fun; instead it ends up being very frustrating for players.

After the quest mode you have quick fight, survival, time attack, practice, team battle, tag battle and versus. In quick fight you can pick who you want to fight with and against and you go at it. In survival mode you select a character and challenge as many characters as you can before you health runs out. Time attack gives you 10 minutes to challenge and defeat as many characters as possible. Practice mode allows you to get familiar with how the game works.

Team battle is similar to a king of the hill; both you and your opponent select a team of characters to fight with. The first two will fight and whoever is left will fight the next character in the other team, until they are knocked out. The way you win is to eliminate all the characters on the other team first. Tag battle is where you form a team of two characters and fight against another team of two; you will be able to tag in and out of battle. Finally, versus mode will allow you a character to go at it with another player.

The graphics for this game are pretty lackluster. Since Legend of the Dragon is based on a show with the same name, players would (and should) expect that the game to look like the show, instead all that players will get is disappointment. Everything in this game is decorated with bland cel-shaded visuals, and what makes this even worse is that the character animations are very weak and pathetic looking. The background lacks serious detail and are just plain ugly to look at on your PSP screen.

Since this game is based off a popular television series one would think that the developers would use all of the resources from the show to let players be immersed in the game’s world. Instead the developers have really alienated gamers in two ways. First off the game does not feature the voice actors from the show or even imitations of them. Instead all players get are grunts and extremely short audio clips, and it even gets worse. Point two collides with point one, because instead of using the voices to carry along the quest plots, all you get is tons of text to read. While this would have been acceptable a couple of years ago, in today’s gaming world this is not acceptable, especially if the game is based off of a television show.

Legend of the Dragon is rated teen and contains violence.

Gameplay: 3.6
The fighting engine, or lack thereof, really hurts this game and makes it very frustrating and unplayable.

Graphics: 4.1
You would think that since this game is based off the cartoon with the same name that the visuals would be representative of the show but in this game they are not.

Sound: 3.2
Since this game is based off a popular cartoon you would think that there would be plenty of voice acting, but instead players are treated with grunts and very heavy text dialog.

Difficulty: Easy
The game is so bad to play that part of the difficulty is actually keeping the game turned on for more than a few minutes.

Concept: 4.5
The only thing good this game has going for it is the plethora of modes to play in.

Overall: 3.7
The most fun you will have with this game is taking it out of your PlayStation Portable and putting it back in its box. Avoid at all costs.