Trials of the Blood Dragon Reviews
Trials of the Blood Dragon shows promise when it's allowed to be a Trials game. The rest of the time, it's just bad.
Trials of the Blood Dragon serves both properties well in its design and story, but the gameplay is overall inconsistent as the title tries to expand beyond basic Trials.
Much like you'd see in a seedy 1980s movie, Trials of the Blood Dragon is like a pretty good first hit of a drug. The buzz is short and mostly enjoyable, but it's so different that you might get hooked on the series. It's got a great gateway due to the story's ties to Far Cry 3: Blood Dragon, the flashy neon art, the constant pop-culture references, and fantastic techno score. Just realize that the shooting is bad and that you may come down from this high way earlier than you'd expect. But if this is your first Trial, know that there's lots more to consume.
A woeful continuation of the Blood Dragon universe that splices Trials' brilliant handling with some torturously bad subgames.
Two great flavors that go pretty well together.
Trials of the Blood Dragon is a tale of many games.
This is a disaster, and the biggest surprise about it is that Ubisoft thought it worth releasing.
This feels like a very capable studio being told to annualise a series that really didn't need to be yearly, because it bypasses everything that makes Trials great.
In the end this feels like an attempt to sell Trials to new players, but newcomers aren't going to learn what makes the core games so much fun and old-timers will be wondering what is going on.
Truly, the best thing to come out of Trials of the Blood Dragon is that we get a continuation of the Blood Dragon story and a setup for a possible proper sequel. Other than that, it's a forgettable jumble of things that don't live up to either the Trials or the Blood Dragon names. It's kind of ironic that Far Cry 3: Blood Dragon is one of the best-executed novel gimmicks in recent memory, because taking that idea and tweaking it to a new extreme has made Trials of the Blood Dragon one of the worst.
Despite being a standalone game, Trials of the Blood Dragon is at best a quirky aside to Trials Fusion. With so many truly ridiculous ideas in the story, they’ve given themselves free license to experiment and try new things, but so many of them simply don’t come off and aren’t that much fun. Let’s cross our fingers that RedLynx get back to what the series is so good at with their next game.
Redlynx's Trials serie meets, actually crashes, with the Far Cry's Blood Dragon style. The results are totally rambling, hurray!
Review in Italian | Read full review
Trials of the Blood Dragon gets some things very right and other things very wrong, and unfortunately it ends up being a mixed bag. Hopefully we get a true Blood Dragon sequel at some point, because this would be an unfortunate sendoff for this promising series.
RedLynx and Ubisoft's weird mashup could have worked, but it gets derailed whenever it goes off the track
A highly lacklustre standalone addition to both the Trials and the Blood Dragon series. Trials of the Blood Dragon is a pointless exercise that suffers from far too much awful platforming, and a very tight-fisted use of the Trials set up. It has nothing worthwhile to say for either franchise, and frankly doesn’t deserve your money or your attention.
Trials of the Blood Dragon is massively disappointing. Its story is muddled and confusing, its jokes fall flat, and its gameplay is frustrating. Fantastic presentation and well-tuned motorbike physics don't make up for what is ultimately a failed experiment.
Trials of the Blood Dragon is a confused concoction. The Trials gameplay is as solid as ever—RedLynx know their craft—but the side-scrolling levels are clunky and out of place. The whole thing feels like a waste of the Blood Dragon IP.
When it comes down to it, Trials of the Blood Dragon feels like some fans wanted to do something with the story and somehow incorporate it into a game. That game was a motocross game. If the entire game was more platforming and less motorcycles and vehicles, it had potential to be entertaining. The game only offers a single player experience, as well. Hopefully, the release of this game will jolt Ubisoft into doing an actual sequel or a prequel to the actual Far Cry 3: Blood Dragon game. Trials of the Blood Dragon is available on PlayStation 4, Xbox One, and Steam for $14.99, which is a fair price.
Certainly not the greatest Trials game ever made, but definitely the most experimental entry in the series that showcases a ton of personality as players return to the gloriously over the top Blood Dragon universe.
Trials of the Blood Dragon offers a fantastic challenge and features an outrageously funny storyline. However, the lousy platforming shooting elements and frustratingly difficult levels can seriously drag the gameplay experience down.