It seems almost churlish to point this out, as this is a game which also features a homage to the killer rabbit scene in Monty Python's Holy Grail and parodies Disney's Fantasia by having a magical mouse appealing to you for assistance when a spell goes wrong. ![]() ![]() I apologize to those who were made uncomfortable by the art’s appearance, and did not see the same light-hearted fantasy in my designs. I exaggerated the silhouettes of all the masculine features in the male characters, the feminine features in female characters, and the monster-like features in the monsters from many different angles until each had a unique feel to them. I decided to exaggerate all of my character designs in a cartoonish fashion. ![]() Indeed, in his response to Kotaku's Jason Schreler, Kamitani made it clear that the graphics shouldn't be taken too seriously: Not only have I massively enjoyed my time with Vanillaware's latest epic, but I was surprised to find that I wasn't totally and utterly repulsed by the visuals, as some of my fellow critics had been. It's highly likely that subconsciously, the drama surrounding the game's art style had put a dampener on my enthusiasm, but when Dragon's Crown became part of Europe's PlayStation Plus collection and I heard others talking about it, I decided it was time for me to give it a second chance and fully devote myself to the title. I played the game briefly when it was first released and for some reason or another wasn't able to give it the attention it deserved - ironic when you consider how excited I was pre-launch. While the majority of reviewers could agree that the game had merit (we gave both the PS3 and Vita editions 8/10 scores), there was little doubt that the questionable visuals had tempered the appeal somewhat. Quite rightly, many of the reviews which appeared when the game was first released gave a significant amount of attention to the character design, with many pointing out that the impossibly burly appearance of the some of the male characters was equally disturbing. The two playable female characters - the Sorceress and Amazon - boast physiques which would make Jessica Rabbit blush the former has a pair of breasts which look like they could tear free of her chest at any moment, while the latter is blessed with trunk-like thighs and a derrière so massive it presumably requires her to book two seats instead of one whenever she takes a horse-drawn carriage ride through the leafy suburbs of Hydeland. While Kamitani has never shied away from such overly-sexulaised portrayals of women in the past (even the impossibly cute Princess Crown turned its wide-eyed protagonist into an S&M freak towards the end of the adventure), Dragon's Crown takes things to an entirely new level of absurdity. ![]() Then the storm hit critics started to point out - quite rightly, too - how ridiculous the female playable characters looked, with their massive, heaving bosoms and impossibly proportioned behinds. Odin Sphere, GrimGrimoire and Muramasa: The Demon Blade all followed, and when Dragon's Crown was announced, it quickly became my most wanted release. From the moment I saw screenshots of Princess Crown on the Sega Saturn in a copy of GameFan magazine back in the late '90s, I fell in love with the 2D art style which would become the studio's trademark. Firstly, let me state that I'm a massive, massive fan of the work of Vanillaware and its founder, George Kamitani.
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