Recent reviews by Techmaster

Sungazer Software has all the markings of an indie darling. Their games are all wildly different genres that are connected by their use of species and the undefinable charm of their passion. Four people (and a couple beta testers) made this entire game, and I'm willing to bet that's about how big the team was for their other projects.
The only thing holding them back was, at least in my opinion on The Tenth Line and (from personal observation and anecdotes of my best friend) Eden's Last Sunrise, their gameplay. It had an equally undefinable 'clunkiness' to it, born from developers without the experience required to make combat in either game feel properly seamless.
So naturally, when I saw their next game was an Ace Attorney like, I was very excited. Their one obstacle from making great games, circumvented by another genre shift.

I wanted to love this game so badly as a result. I've played similar 'attorney-likes' as I'll henceforth refer to them, and the two I'd like to bring up are Aviary Attorney and Staffer Case. TLDR on both, Aviary Attorney is a short but excellent encapsulation of the high points of the Ace Attorney series, with a final case that diverts into 3 distinct endings depending on your choices. (A damn shame what happened to Jeremy, though.) Staffer Case is, upon my initial experience, "atrocious weebshit" that slowly grew on me during each case until my opinion on the game was positive to the point that I'm excited to see where the sequel goes.

I'll avoid spoilers, but Dragon Detective (DD) lacks the high moments that turn a decent attorney-like into a great one. Its cases are fine, the characters are fine, the overarching plot is fine.

I do have a couple specific nitpicks, though.

Character portraits are flipped instead of having one for each direction, so for example a character with a scar over his left eye when looking to the left side of the screen has the scar over his right eye when looking to the right side of the screen. The portraits are also animated in what I can only describe as "Pokemon generation 5 sprites". Characters breathe, blink and have slight limb movements. They're clunky, but are charming in their own way and look better on some characters than on others.

DD often uses a 'composure' dueling system in which you present evidence, utilize logic or (most annoyingly) respond to social dynamics in the correct way to increase your side of a 'composure' bar. It's presented as a tug of war, but functionally is just a health bar that gets narrower the closer you get to the end of the scene. I can see the intention of penalizing the player more for mistakes that they make while closer to the end in order to simulate a flow state, but I've found the trickiest parts of attorney-likes are ironing out the minute details in the middle, and typically just need to find a way for the game to accept the solution I have already formulated. Moreover, the 'social' questions involve the opponent attempting to discredit you or end the conversation, and when combined with the responses you're given being truncated rather than full length, more often than not meant I was just guessing which response the game wanted me to pick. They're not required to be answered correctly, by the way, getting it "wrong" only results in a loss in composure.

While the plot was fine, I believe it had the opportunity to be much better. The following are a collection of missed opportunities that could've had serious plot, character and/or case ramifications but weren't used to their full effect, if at all:
Dragons being native to the continent compared to other species, as well as potentially going feral when near blood
Miasma dragons becoming frenzied by mass death
The suggestion that miasma dragons may actually be related to life instead of death
The ♥♥♥♥♥♥♥ moon disappearing when the moon dragons were genocided to extinction
Pale dragons not having any magic (I thought they would actually be moon dragons)
Foreign countries and their relationships with Rivulette (both Solblanc and the Felfather Empire)
Rivulette actually being fantasy industrial revolution North Korea instead of fantasy industrial revolution England

Instead the plot we get briefly touches on a couple of these subjects and offers a choice at the end of the game which results in two different endings. I can literally sense how these un(der)utilized aspects could have strengthened the story and its characters, but their implementation resulted in a serviceable story. Just serviceable.

I don't have the heart to Not Recommend this game, but it's on the same level as Ace Attorney Investigations 1. Aggressively mediocre.

I hoped for a better outing from you, Sungazer. Here's to the next one.
5/10

I beat Flyknight.
It's now my favorite Dark Souls game.
It's only about 4 hours (I took 6.5 to 100% it) but is an excellently compact and enjoyable experience.
While there's only a single attack as opposed to Soulsborne light/heavy attacks, inputs are directional. Couple that with limb damage (which is important for certain types of enemies and overall just a really fun mechanic), some weapons swapping damage types depending on direction (my halberd pierces with a thrust, but cuts with a sidestep or overhead slash) and a bit of weapon physics (I often had to switch to a simple spear in tight corridors to avoid side swiping into the wall) and you've got a phenomenal foundation that the dev is already planning a sequel for.
It's Pseudoregalia for Soulsborne games, what more can I say?