Dragon’s Lair Trilogy is the collection of the original Dragon’s Lair titles – along with Space Ace – that were originally released onto arcade systems back in 1983. This collection was originally released on the Nintendo Wii in 2010, on the PS3 in 2013, and then on the PS4 during 2017. The idea of the game is effectively a choose your own adventure for the player, except each decision will either progress the story or kill the player and force them to start over.
How to Download Dragon’s Lair: Trilogy
This collection of games is available for download on GOG.com. To start downloading click on the Download button at the end of the review.
The Game Review
For the first two Dragon’s Lair games, the story typically revolves around the player taking control of Dirk the Daring who runs into a danger-infested castle to rescue Princess Daphne. Space Ace, on the other hand, follows the adventures of Daxter, who just so happens to like being called “Ace”. Ace’s quest is to defeat the evil Commander Borf, while attempting to rescue his female sidekick, Kimberly.
As previously stated, all three of the games play similarly to a choose your own adventure tale, except there is only ever one correct choice. In all of the games, the gameplay revolves around making a split-second decision with every new room. Depending on the choice that was selected and providing that it was done at the right time, Dirk or Ace will succeed in that room and move onto the next decision. From start to finish, the action doesn’t stop and won’t stop until the player has gone and finished the very final room, thus completing the game.
Originally, the games were known for being brutally hard, to entice people into playing the game more and more until they finally got to the ending. Now that the game is no longer an arcade machine title, resetting a player’s progress after every small mishap could easily get frustrating. To get around this problem, the game provides players with several lives to give them the opportunity to make some mistakes.
The challenge of the game comes from not knowing what lies ahead. Any decision that the player makes could potentially kill them and end their run if they’re not careful. Not knowing what lies ahead or knowing what that decision entails is the whole point of the challenge, so a lot of trial and error goes into all of these games, as the player can’t get them right on their first try – not unless they’ve used a guide of some kind.
Aesthetically, the game’s may not look like a traditional video game, but that hasn’t stopped the visual style from looking absolutely incredible. Just by looking at the aesthetics, it’s easy to see why the game is regularly compared to a Disney animation; with the reasoning behind it being that a lead Disney animator originally worked on the animations for the game, so it should come as no surprise on why it looks so stunning. Even by today’s standards the visuals easily hold up.
All three of the games provided in the trilogy may play exactly the same, but the challenge of not knowing what each decision is about to do next is part of the charm. That, and the fact the animations look like something out of a Walt Disney cartoon. With Dragon’s Lair: Trilogy, the games are all easy to pick-up and play, whilst having enough challenge to prevent the player from getting bored too quickly.
