Hey everyone this is CoolSam, and lately I've been thinking about this a lot. I've made tons of videos on Dragon Saga, but I wanna admit to one thing I've never been asked before; What do I really think of Dragon Saga?
Now I've played this game for nearly six years now. And while there are others who have played longer than I, I've experienced quite a bit in my time playing it. Both time and money invested as well. So here's just an honest opinion about things in this game. A lot of stuff here you may have heard before, but I've never really given a full honest opinion about this game. People know me as "CoolSam! Love your vids!" and "You helped me come back to DS!" and etc's. but well I never really gave the full review of the game. So let's get started:
Dragon Saga, or Dragonica as it was known before server changes had conflicts with who owns the damn name, is a Mass-Multiplayer Online RPG. It's style is a 3D Platformer/Beat-em-up. Something at the time I discovered it, was very interesting. Transitioning from a turn-based MMORPG.
Now early on, you can definitely determine whether or not this game is...your thing. Gameplay, not something like a typical Turn-based MMO or just another WoW clone like tons of other games. It's not by all means original as there are games like it out there. I often get the Dragon Nest comparison arguments and having played both games to a somewhat end-game level, it's clear they're not exactly the same: Early on maybe, but further inspection, far apart.
Visually, it's a very cartoony, chibi-style. The characters are probably early-teens at best. Making those outfits with giant-cleavages disturbing. The backgrounds have a lot going on. The maps look nice, have varying music tracks and environmental hazards. Nothing out of the ordinary. It adds to the 3D platforming this game offers. NPC's are all adults and few children. Many animal-races. Sadly no exploration into classes based on interesting races like Mist-Elves or Algon's (Humanoid dragons). One problem is the old MMO problem of using constant reskins. Dragon Saga is a huge offender of that. Re-using monster frames/attacks and just adding a different coat of paint.
Now for Lore; many years ago. The World of Dragonica was a peaceful land where Dragons ruled the skies and humans and other races lived below. Then a group of dragons grew rebellious and wanted to subjugate the entire world thinking that Dragons are the strongest race. Humans fended them off sending champions to defend the lands and good Dragons also helped. Balanced was restored until 1,000 years before present day in game, The Black Dragon Lord Elga launched his own attack. But was stopped by five heroes; Skypie, Miniare (Or MilkyWay as the translation goes), Parmir, Belkan and Paris. But before the finishing blow was struck, Paris betrayed the heroes due to Elga's dark temptation to revive her dying sister. Elga was sealed in Drakos Tower, a massive labyrinth that supposedly houses the Gem of Truth that can answer all questions. 1,000 years have passed and Paris has returned, on a mission to release Elga to cover the world in darkness again. Then there's this whole fiasco about a vengeful goddess Origin who's supposedly possessing Paris to end up controlling Elga to open the path to the dark realm she resides in so she can break free and wipe everything out. I don't know honestly things get pushed in and taken out with every patch and the bad translation doesn't help. To bring things up to speed, you're the descendent of one of the legendary heroes or some Dragonkin trainee caught up in a war with dark monsters on a quest to join the Dragon Fellowship and stop Paris' dark magic which corrupted people and created monsters then stop Elga. Elga ends up breaking out and the heroes reseal him in a black hole thanks to your help. Then a meteor hits Port of Winds and you become defenders of the constellations. Not joking on that one.
Now let's focus on the gameplay. Level 1-40, is very hero quest focused. A lot of them are required for things like promotions and dungeons. Inbetween them you usually do a mission map spam or dailies to level. But after 40, it's abandoned. You still have to do some, but for mostly dungeon unlocking and set-building. I hated this honestly, ditching the questing and dungeon crawling to play Tower Defense for 45 more levels only to stop for promotions, gold farming, or set building is pretty quick to be accused of boring.
So, like me, you'll try other stuff inbetween leveling sessions:
- PvP? An imbalanced, gear-dependent mess. And while Dragon Saga, thank God, is no longer P2Win, it is still P2SpeedThingsUp. And while skill is a factor, it's shadowed by the fact that you can end up 1-shotted. Even at End-game where players fight with full PoS sets and max element damages turn into a rousing game of "Whoever's caught get's Insta-gibbed." This can happen at any level range.
- Battlesquare? Same as PvP, but it gets worse as you level up: Early on you will get driven out by perma-caps. Who are basically Twink characters Pimped out to be near-unkillable by their level range and to a series of level ranges above it. A skilled Perma-capped 50 can fight decently geared 70s. This persists until about the 65-70 range, where players basically choose the level they cap at and focus on PvP'ing people in that range. Again very gear-dependent game. What doesn't help is Battlesquare's horrifically flawed system of stall-for-points. Promoting running and infinite healing.
- Professions? Prepare to AFK your ass off. Oh it needs multiple items from multiple professions to make anything. Oh we banned multi-clienting there as well. Also it's very RNG on what you will get.
- Dungeons? That's fine and dandy, but often there's rewards that get tossed in the trash due to useless stats. And some high-demand endgame armors/weapons are crafting based and account bound.
One problem I have with Dragon Saga is the orientation of stats. Let's go over them;
- Strength: Very small boost in attack and defense. Almost unnoticeable unless you've stacked 1,000+ of it. Being an Overlord main for my entire time playing Dragon Saga, you can imagine the frustration of our core stat not being useful.
- Intellect: Mana and Magic Attack/Defense. Like Strength, doesn't do much else. Mages can get a ton of it. But it doesn't help that much.
- Health: Max HP. You're gonna need a lot of it. Especially for PvP.
- Agility: So many functions. Evade (Which was reworked to a laughable status), Aim (Almost pointless since evade rework), Critical Rate and for some classes it also does minor effects on stats.
Yea so very likely you'll just focus on health and maybe agility. Even then that's just the beginning. There's also Attack/Magic Attack, Defense/Magic Defense, Critical Rate, Critical Damage, Aim and Evade, Hp Recovery, Mp recovery, Block Rate, Damage % reduced from blocking, element damage, element resistances.
The stat problems are that some are often declared useless regardless of class. Some got screwed over by reworks so even the core classes can't benefit from them anymore.
I haven't even explored the classes yet. Let's dive into that;
Warrior: Swords and close-range melee. Hammers for status effects. Got two promotion options:
- Knight>Paladin>Dragoon: Higher Defenses, more skill-chain crazy than its counterpart. Notorious for locks, both ground and air, in PvP. Was uber-nerfed with the Block Rate rework and is now one of the least popular classes.
- Gladiator>Myrmidon>Overlord: My main class of choice. Burst-damage heavy, skyrocketed physical attack, never really buffed/nerfed and universally agreed to be utterly balanced. Despite its "higher damage." other classes obliterate it damage-wise. Very High-Risk, High-Reward PvP wise. Countered really easily.
Magician: Healing and Offensive/Status Inducing Spells. Ranged combat. Two promotion choices:
- Monk>Priest>Invoker: Rapid-tap the X-key and use healing/buffs on everyone including yourself. One of the higher "tier" classes. Very popular because of the infinite healing and locking combined with DPS that's best summarized as "Mash one button with this buff active."
- Wizard>Warlock>Sorcerer: More spell-focused. Lots of freezing and good damage. It's a black-sheep class due to its difficulty compared to Priests. It can be really difficult to master PvP wise if you prefer 1vs1s.
Archer: Honestly, were it not for Invokers and Dragonkin, this would be the most popular class. Ranged combat, good sustained damage, two promotion choices:
- Hunter>Pathfinder>Sentinel: Using Traps and Animal Spirits combined with archery. Your standard bow-class. Only annoying thing is its core is movement speed so a lot of Sentinels I see tend to stick to the hit-and-run style until they trap someone in a Freeze+Netbind lock.
- Marksman>Specialist>Destroyer: Swap to a crossbow, gain guns and explosives. Tons of damage! Can also use X-spam with steroid toggles to alter effects such as double-shooting and fire that spreads into multiple bolts on contact. Movespeed heavy, but not as much as Sentinels.
Thief: More difficult to start out than the other three; Close-range, lacks early damage, great Promotion options:
- Bandit>Rogue>Savage: Spin2Wins, Dancing, Crazy skills. Very popular after their buff. A decent beginner class to PvP. Very good super-armor which is a godsend in either PvP or PvE.
- Infiltrator>Assassin>Ninja: High damage, fast movement, a very powerful class. More skill-oriented now than before thanks to evade and block reworks.
Now for the other race, Dragonkin. To make a Dragonkin class, you have to have a level 20 human class character. There's two Dragonkin classes.
Summoner: Mixes summons and magic together. Very difficult early-on. One promotion path only:
- Summoner>Elementalist>Spirit Lord: Early on, difficult to get a hang of. Later, the God's of end-game. Wanna solo the ultimate end-game boss in five minutes? (Which takes eight of any other class triple that if trying?) Stack a summoner. Wanna be the bane of every class in PvP? Learn how to play a stacked summoner. Love the X-spam of Invokers but wish it had higher damage? Play an attack-speed smar-shot summoner. Only thing they don't have, is great healing.
Twin: Uses a spirit-counterpart to combine skills. Mixes your own skills with your twin's skills for combination attacks. One promotion path:
- Gemini>Mirage>Jumeaux: Like Summoners, difficult early. Later, again, very high-tier end-game. Only more PvP focused. You troll every other class, ignore super armor and have a means to counter anything that isn't yourself or a Summoner. Definitely requires some reworking.
So yea, the classes are imbalanced. To a degree where healing/support out-damages DPS Classes. Seems backwards am I right?
Now gameplay-wise. It's a mixture of attacking and using skills to fight your way through maps. The cool thing about that is, you manually avoid enemy attacks as well. This means with some reflexes and pattern learning, you can lower or completely avoid damage
.
This game heavily focuses on an instance system. Meaning you break from the fields, which are debatable in size, to more linear mission maps and dungeons. I don't mind it since the game has a very arcade-like feel.
But really if I were to be asked; "Would I recommend Dragon Saga?" My answer would be this;
Give it a shot. Try it out and see if you like it. Just be forewarned; There's currently a development team transferring. So it could be a very long time before any major content patches. You'll get events and such. Seasonal stuff as well. But be prepared for a waiting game and a power struggle of stacking yourself up once you hit endgame. Sure the PvP is unbalanced but most MMO's have that issue. It's not nearly as Pay2Win as before as well. You could stack yourself up with $0 invested if done right.
It's entertaining, fast paced and can be pretty funny at times. The playerbase, although having a few bad apples is mostly very friendly and vastly improved now that WarpPortal is an international server. The game is by no means dying but it's slowly working itself back up.
