Dragon Nest First Impressions Review

Usually when I start playing a game, whether it be for a review or because I simply want to, I usually have a pretty good idea of what I’m in for. However with Dragon Nest, aside from some of the news and updates about it, I never really bothered learning anything about the actual game or gameplay mechanics.

The reason being is that I’m just not a fan of the art style of Dragon Nest. The characters look like a bunch of children which just makes me feel like I’m playing a kids game and a little dirty to be honest. That’s not to say the graphics are bad, they are actually quite good and make great use out of the blur effect to enhance depth-of-field, I just don’t like the way the characters look.

As I began my journey I was expecting something more along the lines of, oh I don’t know, a WoW clone. Sorry, but with so many others out there, I just assumed. Rest assure, Dragon Nest is no clone, but it is also definitely not what you would think of as a traditional MMORPG. Think if Fable was a MMO and add combat combos.

Everything in Dragon Nest is instanced and connected by portals. There’s no open world to explore and really the only open zones are the towns, everything else puts you on a linear track. While I don’t necessarily mind instances (I liked Rusty Hearts which was all instanced as well), I don’t like it in Dragon Nest because there are far too many of them. Every zone is tiny, even the big zones are small when comparing it to any other MMO game out there, so you’re constantly staring at loading screens. Even if I loved everything else about the game, the loading screens alone would be enough for me to stop playing.

Earlier I stated I felt the art style of Dragon Nest made me feel like I was playing a kids game and now that I’ve had the chance of playing it, I’m not so sure kids aren’t Nexon’s target audience. Dragon Nest is probably the easiest to learn MMO game I’ve ever played. Combat is point and click like you would in any 3rd person shooter, then to cast more advanced spells or skills, it’s simple matter of hitting 1-9 on your keyboard.

The skill trees are very simple, at least so far, and once you learn a new skill it’ll automatically appear in your skill bar for easy access. Quests automatically appear in the sidebar with a arrow pointing in the direction you need to go and even a distance measurement showing how far you have left to travel.

Once you have some quests and head out of town, you’ll run into PvE portals. Upon entering one you’re presented with a loading screen, which is filled with information along with multiple areas within that zone. Each area has 5 levels of difficulty ranging from easy to abyss and shows you how much XP you’ll get depending on what difficulty level you select. It also shows what rewards you’ll get, what level you need to be, which quests you have in which area and what achievements you can get.

Something like this isn’t possible with a non-instanced MMO, but fits perfectly in with Dragon Nest and is one of it’s best features. Having all that information right on one screen just makes everything so much easier.

Getting to the actual quests, so far they’re your run of the mill kill this, collect that type of quests. However if you want a challenge you can jack-up the difficulty in each zone which not only gives you more XP, but better item drops and once you get to Master or Abyss, it does get very hard. One thing I don’t like is that you end up running the same zones multiple times for different quests, so it does get a bit repetitive, but every area has a boss fight, so that’s a plus.

Overall my first impressions are mixed. I’m not a fan of the art style, the fact that there are so many instanced zones or the fact you have to re-run the same zones multiple times, but the combat is fun and the UI is great. The point and click combat is spot on and fun, which beats the click and wait mechanism most MMORPG use today. I’ll be continuing my journey through the world of Dragon Nest so check back in a few weeks for our full review.

Source : http://www.mmocrunch.com/2011/10/10/dragon-nest-first-impressions-review