User blog comment:IamJakuhoRaikoben/Chapter 377 & 378: Imperial Wrath of the Heavenly Dragon & With Friends, Always, Review./@comment-17764746-20140329001023/@comment-7418318-20140329014243

Natsu brushing aside their Unison Raid without even using his LFD mode was just pure bullshit, on that I agree.

Him not going into DF from eating Atlas Flame's fire did disappoint me too at first, but there are some theories floating around that maybe Natsu can't go into Dragon Force as "easily" as before, because the lightning he arsorbed is interfering with the process. If that turns out to be true, at least this one critique point will be solved in a (hopefully) sensible way.

When Natsu, Sting, Rogue and Wendy went into DF, Mashima made a big deal of it, either by the comments of the onlookers or the thoughts of the person who achieved it, but with Laxus and Cobra it wasn't even mentioned to be Dragon Force, so I think it wasn't.

Maybe their spawing of scales was something similar to Sting and Rogue's white/black drive, rather than true Dragon Force. Or it could be a far weaker version of DF due to them only getting their DS magic from Lacrima, instead of training from a real Dragon. I wish Mashima would give us a bit more info on this and the similarities and differences between the three generations of Dragon Slayers in general.