Review:
  First off, let me start this review by saying this is a pretty cool game.  The first time I played it was many years after it originally came out, and I am a little ashamed that I never played it "back in the day" when it first came out, although this is one of the last titles released in the US.  As a spiritual successor to Dragon's Curse, Dynastic Hero follows up nicely as an adventure game with a lot of cool RPG elements thrown in.  The game's title is also indicative that the game is part of a long line of classics.  Dynastic is defined as: "A succession of rulers from the same family or line."

Well done.  There isn't a heavy use of fancy stuff like parallax scrolling and junk, however the environments in this game are very detailed, colorful and quite dynamic.  They definitely make good use of the system's color capabilities and are a pleasure on the eyes.
The addition I am not to crazy about is the giant status section (which takes up, like, the top half of screen real estate).  I would have liked to see a transparent background for this section as it really does take a lot of room and it isn't necessary for it to have a background all it's own.  It's also a little silly when you compare against Dragon Curse's status section as it is quite a bit smaller, yet an older game.  All the same, the status section shows a lot of good information such as health level, gold, and a spell/item assignment view.  You can have two items/spells equipped at the same time.

Also well done.  The opening intro theme is pretty cheesy, and some (in fact most) would even say bad.  Having said that, there aren't too many games out there with a vocalized theme song that don't come off cheesy.  I hate when developers do this because the music will become obsolete a few years after the game is released.  This is especially true when the song isn't very good to begin with, like what we have here.  

There is also the interesting phenomenon I am dubbing "Video Game Music Definition Syndrome" (or VGMDS for short) which I will briefly explain: because the music is vocalized, it falls into a realm where most people will try and classify it as a particular genre of music (country or rock) instead of just shrugging it off as "video game music".  Unfortunately, most video game music is rarely as good as commercially produced music, and because of this it should be judged in comparison to other video game music and not popular music (which I am trying to do here).  In the case of Dynastic Hero, I'd have to classify it as cheesy Japanese pop - but that could be because the game is more than a decade old.

Enough about the intro theme, the rest of the sound is quite good.  The level music is catchy and I often find myself humming a tune or two from the game throughout the day.  The sound FX are well done too.

This is the best part of the game.  I am a HUGE fan of Dragon's Curse, and generally love the Wonderboy/Adventure Island series in their own right.  Dynastic Hero does a good job of fitting into the Dragon's Curse mold, but still bringing in some new stuff of it's own.  This feels like an Adventure Island game, but also feels like more than that.

As I said earlier, this is the spiritual successor to Dragon's Curse and as such carries forth the Wonderboy/Adventure Island fun that has entertained us for years.  Throw into the mix some RPG elements, great graphics, CD music, and some good storyline, you've got yourself a winner!

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