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

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Dragon Nest

Gaming genres are a funny thing, they normally give potential players a quick idea of the type of game it is, however it seems that these days the MMORPG genre just doesn’t want to follow the rules. This no more apparent than with Nexon’s latest MMORPG, Dragon Nest.

Of course Dragon Nest has all the aspects of being a RPG game, you have leveling, gear, skill trees and of course quests to complete, but the funny thing is they forgot to add the “massive” part into the game.  You won’t find any persistent world here as every part of the game is instanced with the towns acting as social hubs for players to gather and form groups. What Dragon Nest really is is a single player game with multiple-player features as there’s nothing that ties the game together.

So in order to give Dragon Nest a fair review, I will not be reviewing it as a MMORPG, because it’s simply not. Instead I will review it as a multiplayer online RPG.

Dragon Nest begins with you selecting from one of four pre-made classes, warrior, cleric, archer and sorceress, however there is very little customization available. Once you have your class selected you begin the game in one of the two starting towns, depending on your class.

The first thing you’ll notice is just how simple everything is. Combat is point and click, spells are automatically laid out for you in your 1-9 hot-bar as you acquire them and quests not only point in you in the direction you have to go, but tell you exactly how far they are. The interface is so simple, yet informative that there really is no need for a tutorial, although there is one. Dragon Nest’s simplicity continues throughout the entire game including its crafting system, enchantments, skill trees, and quest themselves. While this may be a plus in some areas, such as combat and the UI, others might find the game entirely too simply to hold their attention.

As I mentioned earlier ever part of the game is instanced, so anytime you want to leave town and venture out, you’ll be greeted by one of many portals (loading screens). This is by far the biggest issue I had with Dragon Nest. There are so many loading screens you’ll be spending a good amount of time staring at DN wallpapers. To make things worse, each main town has a few extensions that are kinda part of the town and have NPCs in them, but are connected by a  portal. Every once in a while you’ll get an NPC in one of these extensions asking you to talk to another NPC in the main town, so you’ll end up going through the loading screen a half dozen times before you complete the quest. Very frustrating and I don’t understand why they didn’t just make these extensions part of the main town to eliminate the loading screen.

On to quests, which are instanced as well with each one being broken down into 2 – 5 sections, regardless of how small the dungeon is. Guess what that means…more loading screens. Some of these dungeons are so small, yet still have 2-3 loading screens. It’s just baffling as to why they would break them up into such small sections.

Quests are also very linear and once you get into the high teens levels get extremely repetitive. You’ll end up doing the same dungeon 6 or 7 times, maybe more, just to complete all the quests for it and with no other way to gain XP, it’s not like you can skip it and go do something else.

However there are plenty of other things to do in Dragon Nest aside from questing. There’s the Daredevil Faire, Rozin Sanctuary and of course the PvP arena, each one having their own tokens to collect to unlock items, weapons and gear. The Faire and Sanctuary are sort of mini-games and challenges that you can do solo or in groups, which are pretty fun and a nice addition to the game to break up the questing. There’s also a faction system and achievement list for additional collecting purposes.

The PvP arena is currently very limited with only two gameplay mods to choose from, deathmatch or rounds. There’s also some major balancing issue between classes. Its seems melee and range are evenly matched up against the same class type, but when matched up against each other, melee dominates. For example my sorceress may as well bend over when up against a warrior class. Once I’m knocked down, which isn’t hard, they’re able to combo me to death most of the time. Granted I didn’t build my character for PvP, but it’s not even close in a fight between the two.

Combat however is actually quite fun in both PvE and PvP. There’s no tab targeting so you’ll have to aim at your target if you want to hit it, which is refreshing and is one of Dragon Nest’s best features. The game uses a standard skill tree system, with the option to select from one of two advance classes once you hit level 14.

The graphics are fairly good, although I’m not a fan of the character design, as everyone looks like a bunch of kids to me, but if that doesn’t bother you, then you’ll find the graphics are up to par with many of today’s MMO games. The story-line as well is pretty good and there’s a lot of humor throughout the game to keep things light and enjoyable.

Overall the extremely intuitive user interface and fun combat were not enough to save Dragon Nest. The constant loading screens, linear gameplay and repetitive questing, not to mention a lack of PvP modes, makes Dragon Nest a pass in my book when it comes to online RPGs. This is definitely not a game for the hardcore or even slightly hardcore player, but if you’re new to the genre or just want something simple, then you should check it out. I hope this Dragon Nest review was useful.

source : http://www.mmocrunch.com/2011/10/25/dragon-nest-review/

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