Dragon Sinker (PlayStation 4) Review

Dragon Sinker looks very reminiscent of early NES-era RPGs. In fact, it's easy to mistake it for the original Dragon Quest, at first glance. It's got standard, predictable, turn-based combat, and a massive overworld map chock full of random encounters. It's very clearly trying to tap into the nostalgia market, but also very coyly sneaking its hand into the cookie jar of modern-day microtransactions.

Dragon Sinker has a pseudo-lootbox system that's available from the onset. While most of the rewards are just consumable items or basic equipment for the party, there are also some ridiculously powerful exclusive party members that can be obtained from this system. While you are presented with a handful of tickets early on, it takes quite a bit more grinding to earn more, so a good roll early on can set you miles ahead in the adventure.

Given that, it's almost optimal to restart the game until one of these characters drops. This is an absolutely bizarre mechanic for a game that's priced the way it is. These characters can literally carry an entire playthrough of the game on higher difficulty settings with ease. It's the most offensive kind of lootbox, really; the kind that has a major impact on how this can be played.

The characters obtained through normal gameplay are still serviceable, but quite a bit more grinding will need to be done with them to keep them up to speed. Dragon Sinker uses a multi-party system comprised of three four-person parties, and they will all need to be moderately levelled up to perform from dungeon to dungeon.

Each party has one leader, from one of the three main tribes included (Humans, Elves, Dwarves). Any of the side characters that join the party can be levelled up and switched from job to job. As they learn new skills and master jobs, they can pass some of those skills to the party leaders. It's a nice addition to an otherwise very stale job system, but it's extremely grindy, so most characters will stay in their starting jobs for a very long time.

Despite the high level of customisation, there's no real incentive to keep playing, as the dungeons aren't really interesting and the characters and story read like a bad 2000s anime. It's so full of classic fantasy and anime tropes that it's hard not to groan at every stereotypical character that joins the party. It's seriously tiring and borders on unpleasant at times.

There's very little good to say about Dragon Sinker. It's a very basic JRPG that's shot itself in the foot by including an absolutely asinine lootbox system. While it's totally possible to play without using it, it's rather obviously a mechanic that was meant to be used and, frankly, the rest of the game isn't very interesting. With a little luck early on, the game completely loses all semblance of balance, and that's really all it had going for it.