How to Train Your Dragon

7 Review to this product

• 

  R. Tobin
  March 28th, 2010 on 7:45 am

  Rating

  Hooray, the Game’s Good! I Want a Gronkle!

  My family and I loved the movie so much we decided to take a chance on the Wii game, hoping it would at least provide some fun interaction with the film’s characters.

  First Big Sigh of Relief: The Wii version looks spectacular, with sharp visuals and a great frame rate. No lousy port syndrome here: This is a solid production.

  Second Big Sigh of Relief: The game’s fun.

  So, Wii-owning fans of the movie, you can buy this game without fear of being ripped off. Want to know a bit more? Without repeating everything in the product description, here are my main thoughts:

  Movie games are usually subject to tough time schedules. To turn out a quality product, this game’s developers made a wise choice: They focused on the dragons, created a solid fighting game with tons of customization, then wrapped it in a large, beautiful hub world containing some fun mini games and light adventuring, all tied in to leveling up the central fighting game. They made it rock-solid, glitch-free and spectacular. It’s not the largest or most diverse game around, but what’s here is well done, fun to play and beautifully crafted. Good work.

  The dragon fighting–once you remember that Z jumps and B shoots fire (not the other way around)–is fast-paced, fun and dazzling. You can play as all the large species from the film, each with their own personalities and moves. As soon as I got my first Gronkle, I found the game a must-keep. The animation of the creatures is wonderful, and will often make you laugh at their attitudes and reactions. The customization features are great fun, allowing for the creation of some wild and bizarre variations.

  The adventure mode mainly serves as window-dressing for the fighting game: The quests are simple and so are the mini-challenges. The village of Berk and its surrounding countryside are so spectacular, however, you may simply enjoy wandering around, talking to Stoic and the other Vikings and watching the beautiful waterfalls and ocean views.

  No doubt about it: This is one of the best-looking Wii games available.

  Sound-wise, it’s disappointing they couldn’t use the whole original voice cast or John Powell’s powerful movie score, but the game still sounds terrific with capable replacement actors and effective music. The mix of ambient sounds and music in the village creates a perfect sense of being outdoors on a rocky coastline.

  So, amazingly, a great film gets a solid game…on Wii, yet! I highly recommend it for kids, dragon lovers and fans of the movie. If you aren’t interested in arena fighting games, rent it first: The adventure mode (which takes place after the movie’s events) mainly serves as a colorful way to level up the dragons and unlock customization pieces.

  Considering how many movie tie-ins wind up as generic platform games, I’m very glad they took a different and logical approach with this one. You want dragons? You got dragons! Again…Huge sigh of relief.
• 

  Menagerie
  April 6th, 2010 on 3:02 am

  Rating

  If you like fighting games then you will probably like the game. In both arcade and story mode you spend most of your time training your dragon to fight or fighting in the tournaments. There are some limited other things to do – you have to gather food and herbs to feed and heal your dragon and you do have the option of customizing the way your dragon looks. However your interactions with your dragon are limited to feeding/healing and fighting. If you liked the movie because you liked the personality of Toothless or the other dragons and people and you are hoping to find more of that here, you will be disappointed.
• 

  Bookwormette
  April 7th, 2010 on 12:12 pm

  Rating

  I have to start this off with saying that I have not seen the movie. I bought this game because I love dragons and had a gift card. I have had the game for about a week and have played it a few times (only because my real world, adult responsibilities prevent me from playing more).

  Since I know nothing about the characters, I went straight to Adventure mode. So far, I am having fun finding food and other necessities for my dragon. I have not had a chance to get in a dragon fight, but I am looking forward to it.

  The graphics are great: colorful and fun, and the ability to customize my dragon (just the colors right now) is a nice touch. The controls are easy to learn as well. I would recommend this game to any dragon lovers.
• 

  Lisa aka
  April 28th, 2010 on 8:30 pm

  Rating

  (Dictated by my 9 year old son). This game is fun because you get to explore and you get to train your dragon(s). You can earn up to four dragons. The graphics are similar to the movie, which is pretty cool. Overall, it was pretty much what I thought, a lot of fun. I would recommend to buy it. The only complaint I had was having to wait a whole week to receive the game. Mom’s comment: this was a great deal considering GameStop wanted $49.99 for the exact same game on Amazon at $29.99. I think it was worth the wait (IMHO).
• 

  Margie
  May 11th, 2010 on 5:06 am

  Rating

  My Grandchildren are just loving this game. Worth every penny. Also appreciate that I get fast service and good prices from Amazon.
• 

  Angelette K.
  May 14th, 2010 on 11:02 am

  Rating

  After playing games that make you think and work really hard to stay alive, this simple mixed RPG and fighter game is great for children and adults who would like to have fun, relax, and stay stress free. With so many games focused on just staying alive, it’s refreshing to be able to sit back and just play a simple RPG-style game by digging for food and plants, catching animals, and talking to other characters.

  The problem is that it is TOO simple. Because the world is so tiny and the varieties so limited, it gets tedious after a few hours of gameplay.
  
  Most of the game is training (as in the game title) your dragon to level up to fight in the tournaments. The training is very step by step and guided, as are the quests.
  
  Fortunately, you can customize your dragon, but it is again, very limited. There are mostly only four different styles per dragon part. The best part of dragon customization are the stats, which actually do make a difference.

  There are also minigames which are a much more fun way to train your dragon. But again, they do get slightly monotonous when training all four dragons on the same ~6 minigames.

  All-in-all, still a fun game, especially when not wanting to exert oneself. And when finished with the story mode, you can switch over to arcade mode, and fight some dragons, hopefully having unlocked all the extra ones through the story mode.
• 

  Sheri Shaffer
  May 29th, 2010 on 7:42 am

  Rating

  This is a good quest game trainer for anyone advancing from littlest pet shop. Customize your dragon with colorful spikes, wings, etc. Choose to be Hiccup or Astrid, and care for up to four dragons at once, but only use one at a time.

  You must fulfill endless search and gather tasks to advance, the backgorund music is tolerable for adults, and you can never “die”–since you are only ever fighting in an arena(s) and cannot jump the hero off the cliffs.

  The graphics and sound are the best part about this game. Wii platform plays seamlessly. A simple game rushed to market for this fad.