Romancing Dragons

Angels with Scaly Wings is a visual novel experience mixed with dating sim elements developed by Radical Phi and produced by Ratalaika Games.

I saw this game first on Twitter, loved the art, and decided to give it a try on the Nintendo Switch. What I received, though, was much more than I had initially thought. The tone and events of this game can get downright dark, and either from not reading / researching enough I had no idea there was a dating simulator aspect. Neither of these are a bad thing, and in honesty I was very pleased with what this game offered and how it presented itself. I haven’t played many visual novel style games, but out of the ones I have I would say this ranks close to, if not the top of my list.

The story is superbly written and hooked me mere minutes after starting the game. Humanity came across a mysterious portal device, and through various tests found that there appeared to be sentient beings on the other side. After sending an initial volunteer, the government is now sending you, the player, to the new world as an ambassador with a trade mission. From here you start meeting the various denizens of the new world and forming relationships with each. Did I mention that they’re all dragons?

This story has many twists and turns so I won’t delve too deep, but I will say that throughout the entirety of its 3ish or so hour runtime I was heavily invested in each and every character I interacted with.

Gameplay wise, this is a straight up visual novel / dating sim. Each choice has weight in either relationships or dictating how the story unfolds. There are a few puzzles littered throughout which was a welcome break from the usual dialog segments. None of these were too difficult and I didn’t find that they detract any from the immersion. I’m going to add replayability in this section, because it’s actually a huge part of the end game content. In order to see the “true” ending you need to go back and play through each of the main character’s storylines.

This may sound tedious considering I gave a single playthrough around a 3 hour runtime, but the game brilliantly implements a smart skip system. You have the ability to fast forward any previously read text and in cases where you made the best decisions for an entire block of story you are allowed to skip them completely. These do not skip over important story decisions for endings, but they do have the capability to skip side story sections you would need to complete for achievements and such, so you need to be a little careful. Being able to change subtle aspects of events efficiently gives this game an immense amount of replayablitly, but after the final ending this starts to drop off.

While I’ve been writing this I have been listening to the soundtrack, and so far it’s great! Some of the tracks have a heavy emphasis on jazzy synth, while others implement a bit of chip-tune, or even some that go for standard musical instruments such as piano and acoustic guitar. The variety is very pleasing and I could see myself listening to this during work or writing. On another sound note, sadly there is no official voice acting track. There are, however, fan made tracks available on youtube if you feel you really need a voice to each of these characters.

Even though I wasn’t expecting what I was given, I’ve very grateful for the experience of this game. I still need to work to get the final ending and I can’t wait to delve more deeply into the other relationships. I agree that some people may be turned off by the aspect of dating a dragon, but overall I would recommend this game especially if you enjoy a well written visual novel experience.