ATLUS has now launched the fifth and final patch for Dragon's Crown. Whereas some other games might need that many patches just to be playable (coughBATTLEFIELDcough) each Dragon's Crown's update is adding feature after feature. This last patch will raise the level cap, add a new, harder difficulty, and give you literally tens of thousands of new levels to play through.
How can they get away with that last claim? By including a randomly generated dungeon named "The Tower of MIracles". This is only playable in the new "Ultimate" difficulty level. If you thought the side-scrolling brawler was hard before (oh, and it is) you can only imagine what it's like at this level. You can change the difficulty in the Temple after clearing the ninth layer in the Labryinth of Chaos. That's the final dungeon that's unlocked as soon as you finish the game by finding the nine talismans and deafeating the Ancient Dragon and now it's not the end of the game.
To encourage you to continue playing the game they've raised the level cap from its previous cap of 99 all the way up to a staggering 255. Considering it takes about 20 hours to merely complete the game with each of the five included characters, let alone max out their level, you can see how much replay value this gives you.
Here's the full list of everything you can find in the patch and note that this is for both PS3 and Vita versions of the game!
[Bug Fixes]
- Gameplay stability is improved.
[New Features]
- Clearing the ninth layer in the Labyrinth of Chaos unlocks a new "Ultimate" difficulty level. This difficulty can be selected at the Temple.
- When in Ultimate difficulty, a new randomly generated dungeon named the "Tower of Mirages" is added.
- Ultimate difficulty raises the level cap from LV 99 to LV 255.
- Item shortcuts can now be assigned and used separately by holding L1 and the Up directional button.
- Damage values can now be displayed as a running total instead of per-hit.
- To help increase player character visibility, characters can be shown with transparencies when they are on top of one another. This feature is available in the Options menu and can be toggled on or off.
- Save files that have cleared Story mode can skip the first quests leading to the Talisman collection when creating a new character.
- Guild Quests that have already been cleared may now be skipped in subsequent playthroughs.
[Feature Modifications]
- Character class skills have received a number of adjustments.
- NPC behavior has been adjusted.
- Rules and effects regarding equipment, items, and skills in the Colosseum have been adjusted.
- Other tuning and minor improvements to various gameplay elements have been made.
This will be the last patch to Dragon's Crown, sadly, but what more could you ask for? Do you know how long it will take to go to the 255th level? Especially with all five characters (Fighter, Dwarf, Amazon, Elf, Sorceress, Wizard)? You could play this game exclusively for a year before getting there, and with the randomly generated dungeons you might want to.
Besides that, they've already an absolutely massive number of tweaks and game improvements in the first four patches accordance with player's wishes, biggest being Cross-play support that allows PS3 and Vita owners to play online together, Being able to continue playing your leveled-up character on the go with the Vita is truly an amazing feature, especially considering how amazing the game looks on the Vita's OLED screen. It's rare to see this kind of support for a game after release and Vanillaware and ATLUS are to be commended for it. See you in the Tower.
