One of Psikyo's best shooters of the era, and an all-round great bullet hell with 4 characters, 7 stages and 2 loops. The scoring system is simple to grasp but difficult to master, while the difficulty scales well. There's a fair bit of variety between the characters and all require different paths and strategies. The music is excellent, as is the art design across all seven stages, the first 4 of which are chosen by random, which adds a degree of difficulty and variety to the first half of each playthrough.

The central mechanic of Dragon Blaze is the ability to separate the rider from the dragon, called the Dragon Shot. When engaged your dragon will dash forward quickly doing a great amount of damage to anything directly in front of it, before returning to a stationary position. Any enemy killed with the d-shot will release gold coins, which can be picked up by dragon or rider. Also, it's worth noting that while separated your character's charge shot (which is powered by the regenerating magic bar) takes on different characteristics.

As well as opening up avenues for greater scoring, the d-shot is also useful against bosses in two ways: firstly, placing the dragon down as a turret allows you to keep damaging the boss while avoiding bullets, and secondly each boss (except the last) will reveal a central core for a few frames during one of their attacks. This is well worth looking out for, as hitting the core in the brief window it's visible with a Dragon Shot will kill the boss instantly and score you a fat bonus. Mastering the d-shot is key to Dragon Blaze, not only for dealing and avoiding damage, but also for creating coins and collecting them.

The port seems pretty bare bones, but it has controller support and works well enough. Definitely recommended if you're a fan of shmups, especially Bullet Hell games.

You'll have a blast with this one! Dragon Blaze stands for me as the pinnacle of 2D Shoot'em Up's (Shmup) by the developers once known under the brand of Psikyo. This game finally made them a legendary brand. Dragon Blaze hit the Arcades in 2000 and likewise hit me as the fire storm the dragon unleashes in the game. While Arcades where already dying everywhere apart from Asia at the time, this game was mostly missed by many and only years later in 2005 made it to a japanese-only release on the PS2 for most people to enjoy.

Most striking in this title is the perfect pace and balance between shooting enemies and avoiding bullets and the versatility of characters to choose from. It feels so good to play as if the Shmup gods send it down as a farewell to the golden age of arcades and their games. It's not too fast but very fluid in it's speed to play. Very intense but never overwhelming with bullets. It's an old breed of games in it's highest sophistication, where it's not impossible to watch bullets and enjoy the beautifully drawn and colored bitmap graphics at the same time. That's how this classic genre should feel, when you are made aware the long way it came from Space Invaders to Galaxian and Xevious to the 16-bit era in the mid 1980ies.

A pure gem grinded by the master's hands, Dragon Blaze offers the players a culmination of skill and weapon power, that brings you immediate joy from the first pixel to the last chip tune.And in 2020 the best of all: with Steam and Valve Proton it runs well on Linux. This is one of the best Shmups of all time. Have a blast!

Yet another outstanding arcade to PC transfer by city connection.

Honestly, from the menus to the gameplay it's just so darn good.

Would love to see City Connection handle more arcade to Steam releases.

An essential recommend for any arcade shoot'emup fan.

There aren't many options for medieval fantasy shmups on Steam but thankfully we have Dragon Blaze, one of Psikyo's best shmups.

Sending your dragon out to slash the enemies for mega damage and bonus points is quite satisfying, allowing for a frantic but rewarding game play style. Each of the four character has unique stats that effect how they feel to play and unique bomb abilities, so none of them feel the same to play. The stages are short and sweet and don't overstay their welcome and an entire run is under 15 minutes. The story isn't much to brag about, though it could definitely use a better translation.

As with all Psikyo shmups, expect quite a difficult game if you are playing on anything above Difficulty 1.

Unfortunately Dragon Blaze still doesn't support Remote Play Together, so if you want to play with a friend I guess you have to play local. That's my only real negative about this port.