Tales from the Dragon Mountain 2: the Lair (iOs) Review

The Strix is back, and he is definitely not going to play nice.

G5 Entertainment brings fans the second installment in the Tales from the Dragon Mountain series. In the first game, we met Mina Lockhart, a gifted young lady who is suddenly thrust into a battle for the very world. As she battled with an evil entity called the Strix, Mina grew in power at each confrontation – but the Strix managed to escape, and things looked as though they had settled down for the foreseeable future.

As we begin the Lair, we again meet the Strix, and watch as he prepares with his troll general to invade the world. It is again up to Mina to set things right, and banish the Strix once more before he can enslave the world. She’ll have a little help along the way, in the form of a little green elf guy named Malik. Malik was sent by a wizard named Umberto to find Mina, and the two of you will travel this world and another in their quest to stop the Strix.

For the most part, the action in Tales from the Dragon Mountain 2: the Lair is a combination of mini games and object searching. There are a lot of mini games interspersed throughout the game play, and they range in variety from reassembling torn items to moving block puzzles to a Bejeweled-like combat sequence, and they add a lot of interest to the gameplay while serving well to advance the story. If you get stuck, or just don’t enjoy that sort of thing, the mini games are all able to be skipped after a short wait using the hint feature. The hint button will also help you out in other portions of the game by pointing you in the right direction if you get lost as to what to do next.

The rest of the game play mainly consists of wandering around a number of environments, picking up usable items along the way, and figuring out where and how they can be used. These items vary greatly, and generally coincide with your current mission. Umberto has left the magical stones that will open the portal to the Strix with several of his friends, and each of them will require you to perform some sort of deed for them before they hand over the stone. As you wander around planting gardens and baking bread, you’ll do an awful lot of wandering back and forth. There is no handy map feature in the Lair to help you out with this, so all of the wandering is done in real time – which to honest can get quite tedious at times.

Tales from the Dragon Mountain 2: the Lair continues you the adventure of Mina Lockhart and her confrontations with the evil Strix as they battle for the fate of the world. A wide variety of mini games helps keep things challenging and fresh, and there are plenty of interesting environments to explore on your journey (though it does become tedious to wander back and forth between them). Overall, the Lair offers engaging game play and a unique story line for a passably good time.