Dragon Mania Legends for Windows 8

Dragon Mania Legends for Windows 8 is Gameloft's answer to games like Facebook's Dragon City. Fans will quickly discover that Dragon Mania Legends has all the charms and attractions of the other games, with the addition of Gameloft's unique and high-quality spin on the game.

Dragon Mania Legends puts the player in the position of a dragon breeder, raising the fire-breathing creatures who, in turn, will help to guard the village from coming under Viking attack. Each dragon starts out small and helpless, needing to be nurtured, trained and fed until they reach their full size and strength. There are different types of dragons, such as Earth, Fire, Water and so on, and each type needs a specific environment in which to grow to maturity. Any two dragons can be bred to create hybrids and unlock new types of dragons. As well as managing the dragons' environments, the player must manage farms to produce food for them. These tasks, and others, are interesting enough to engage the player until it is time to battle.

Once fully-grown, the dragons are ready to battle, and this is where the main action of the game takes place. Each dragon type has a unique power and the skill of the game lies in the player selecting the most appropriate dragon for the battle at hand. The game skill is mainly tactical, requiring forethought and planning rather than fast reactions and lightning reflexes. Players can battle other online players or compete against the computer.

The game is amusing, but not really an innovation on other similar resource-management type games. The dragons add charm and fans of the mythical beasts will enjoy raising and caring for their team of pedigreed fire-breathers, but players with a more sophisticated palate may quickly become bored and move onto another game.

The graphics, gameplay and music are uniformly good, showing Gameloft's usual high standard of work. Whether this is enough to redeem the play in the eyes of players is purely a personal choice based on the style of games that each individual player prefers.

Pros

• Good graphics, gameplay and soundtrack
• Charming concept, raising dragons to protect the village
• Fun tasks and challenges

Cons

• Not a great deal to the game, it may become tedious in a fairly short time