The book and movie Eragon tell the story of a dragon rider, so it’s pretty fitting that the game version focus on dragon riding. In fact you can almost consider the game to be a dragon simulator of sorts. So is it good to be the dragon?

The game opens with a tutorial level that lets you get the hang of being Saphira, and it’s hard to imagine being able to play much at all if it weren’t for the tutorial. There are a lot of things that you can do with Saphira including breath fire, spit fireballs, strafe, zoom grab, eat, bomb, and more. This would require a challenging enough control scheme on a PC, but on the PSP it can be like playing Twister with your fingers – especially when the action starts to heat up a bit. Luckily you can do alright by mostly sticking to the basics.

Play in Eragon proceeds along two parallel tracts. On one you have the story-based missions while the other consists of special challenge levels. Completing either the current challenge or story mission will unlock the next pair in the sequence. The story missions draw their inspiration from events in the film and have you protecting some of the characters in the story from above or defeating enemies with Eragon riding on your back.

When you’re on your own you can breathe fire and cast fireballs, fly down and grab an enemy in your talons, or pick up boulders to drop as bombs on unlucky enemies below. When fighting enemies on the ground I found it difficult to maneuver Saphira into a position to properly align her fire breath. Part of the problem was that it is really tough to spot individuals and single monsters on the ground even when the radar tells you that they are there. Bombing them with rocks is equally tough as when in bombing mode Saphira handles a bit like a B-17 and you need to go through some lengths to align yourself with your target and then come in slow and steady for the bombing run. These types of enemies are all more effectively handled by the talon grab as you just need to get yourself close enough to hit the grab button and initiate the animated and automated grab sequence. With larger enemies on the ground such as war wagons I found the direct approach to be necessary. Basically I’d crash land into the enemy and then sit on the ground belching out a stream of fire. Swoop, crash, and burn will get you past most of the ground enemies in the game.

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