Dragonyhm

• Genre: RPG
• Spoiler Free Review: Yes.
• Time Played: Not really sure, it doesn't track it in any way, and I played it while doing other stuff frequently, and generally short bursts. My best guess is... ~15 hours?
• Too Short/Long: It's pretty much just right for what it was. It may require a bit too much grinding to pad the time, but that would be expected for a game of the era it's trying to imitate.
• Soundtrack: Mostly game boy beep boop sounds, but it's fitting.
• Why I played: Via some ad or something I found out about modretro doing a bunch of "new" game boy games. Game Boy-esque indie games are nothing new, but this was exclusively a physical release.
• Did I cry: No.
• Jank: There is a little jank here. Despite being a pretty simple game. I'm not sure if this is on purpose to imitate the era, or just poor game design. Considering I had to restart the game boy a few times to fix the issues, I wouldn't quite chalk it up to intentional jank.
• Difficulty: As a turn-based rpg with only one playable character, you constantly need to heal via some method or another. I wouldn't say it's explicitly difficult, but in my mind, how much I need to heal equates with difficulty and the game requires you to heal a lot.
• Recommend to others: It was a cute game, and I enjoyed it. But it's only available via physical Gameboy cart, despite being a relatively new game. There is a demo on itch, so there is little reason for it to be only on this cart outside the gimmick, so I can't really recommend it to people on that alone. If everyone had their gameboys and was playing those? I might recommend it if we were still actually in original gameboy era.

No screenshots for Dragonyhm as it was played on my GBA SP. Which is a shame, because like Estique, it has some really cool old-school art. Technically I probably could have played this on my Retron because it also has a gameboy slot and taken some screenshots there, but I'm not going to now. I went for the full original experience I guess.

Dragonyhm is one of a good handful of games that ModRetro has as exclusively physical games I guess to further support their new Gameboy-like console. Similar to the Analogue Pocket, but more loyal to the original style. Hard for me to drop a couple hundred bucks on a a console that only plays original game boy/game boy color games in the year 2025. Thankfully they're designed to play on original hardware, and I do have a handful of GBA SPs laying around. I wish I had the extra bright SP, or DS played regular gameboy games. The lack of saturation in the front light display which I have not used for quite some time was quite noticable and maybe cause a little eye strain. I don't know how we managed without even that prior to the SPs release.

Back to Dragonyhm specifically though. It was a cute game. I really appreciated the detail to getting the whole old school experience. The instruction booklet we great. Cool art, details on how to play, how to advance. It was very nostalgic. The game really feels like something that could have come out 30 years ago. It's a turn-based rpg somewhere between an Final Fantasy Legends or Pokemon Red/Blue. 

The biggest downside with this turned based system is it's too much like a traditional turned based system and there is only one character, so you always need to heal him and there are very few way to mitigate needing to heal. You can increase your defense and lower the enemies attack, but that takes several turns. Generally speaking enemies are doing about 1/3 of your health at any given time, so a lot of battles end up being attack, heal, attack, heal, attack, heal.

I find you can do single character turned based rpg mechanics, with some kind of gimmick the prevents damage entirely a bit better. Still, as long as you're willing to endure that aspect, it's a fun little game. I enjoyed exploring it's world, leaning it's story and the writing and character interactions were mostly decent/cute/nostalgic. It's not going to blow anyone's mind, but it was fun for what it was.