In the early hours of this morning, after spending the first few hours gathering the gold to form the faction, 5 out of the many addicts in Dragonica met up to bring the dream of a mysterious institution alive (There were many other members who donated however). This was the first of many highlights that The Addicts will have in Dragonica. So you may ask what exactly is an addict? Well, here is a Q&A….
“Note: For the Dragonica Review, click on (Read More)”
What is an Addict?:
Why, what do you think an addict is?
Can I become an Addict?
Well at this time, no. We will actively be seeking out members that we think shine and display the correct attributes that we think describe and Addict. No, that does not mean playing the game 24/7 or having the strongest account on the server. An addict is different….
Who are the Addicts?
Use your eyes and observe your surroundings ingame.
What is your purpose?
The purpose of the Addicts will remain a mystery. It may be a faction that offers support to new players? It may be a faction that just lounges around to chat or it may be one that shall become a strong force in the world of Dragonica.
Now… to the review!
Character Name: Sam
Class: Mage –> Acolyte (Healer)
Level: Currently High 20’s
Guild: TheAddicts
Costume Set: Child’s Set (Soulbound Mages Set – Very High Stats)
This is my main character for Dragonica. I named it Sam, which will be carried over to the full release of the game, so you will always be able to contact me via it. I chose Acolyte so I would not have to deal with all the heavy fighting and instead focus on sideline attacking (It does have some good attacks) and healing, which is a critical thing in Dragonica, especially in the higher levels, with it costing a few gold to resurrect after around 20-30 levels)
Overall, I found the experience very enjoyable. Here is just a little review:
Graphics: Graphics of Dragonica have improved greatly! With many more costumes than what was in the previous versions, as well as several more landscapes and levels to battle in. They really do a great job in bringing the 3D Anime Genre into a Sidescrolling game and is looking very promising in the future! Skills have also come back with several grapically hillarious skills such as mages being able to spawn a naked man which can freeze enemies to being able to transform their head into a neko head, which gives them a boost in magic stats.
Music: There still isnt a diverse variety like in Granado Espada, but for a game of its time, the music and sound effects are brilliant! It sets a mood and it sets it well!
Gameplay: May I say, in comparison to the alpha tests of Dragonica, the gameplay has increased tenfold. Me, expecting the same levels as in Alpha walked out of the starting town (The only area of the game that remains the same) and got lost looking for the mission map. There was so much added to it, no longer was there one portal for the four beginner towns but they were located all around two maps, with each having its own individual mission map portal outside and was in close proximity of other towns so they could do missions with their friends. The mage I found was nicely balanced however I did find that classes such as Archers were still too imbalanced towards the mage, and in fact, all the other classes.
The Community: Of course, with the community being equipped with microphones, megaphones and a considerably sized Cash Shop wallet of 10,000 coins, there were a lot of questions that popped up on screen, which despite me being a mod, made me aggitated that the same questions kept popping up every 5 minutes, when all the answers were a click away in the forums. Despite that, the community was very friendly, with many of them working together to progress further and they always said hello to me when I passed and asked me politely if I would like to join their party. I know it is potentially because I am a mod, but it is still very polite how they asked, and I always like polite people 🙂
Difficulty: The difficulty ranges a great deal. Most levels are easy at the beginning when you have a party of 2-3 people, but the difficulty changes greatly, with there being a need to have around 3-4 members in a party 5-6 levels above the map to get through it quickly. This is of course nothing in comparison to defeating Dr Farrell for the job change quest. Prepare to bring a lot of potions with you, maybe some phoenix wings (I brought 135 which I only used around 20 of thanks to my great addicted party) and a lot of spare time as it is definately a big jump in difficulty, with not only the boss at the end being challenging but the trials to get there, with4 mini-bosses and challenges following all the ones that are faced in mission maps, only harder!
Quality as a Game: There are still some bugs that needed to be ironed out. For example, localisation hasn’t been 100% perfected and in the event of the following example:
They are both supposed to have either “1st Acolyte Promotion Test” or “1st BattleMage Promotion Test” (or something like that) and instead they both get stuck on what you see above. Just for the record, the top one is for Acolyte and the bottom one is for Battlemage incase you do get stuck.
Besides that and a few isolated bugs which have been fixed in a new (Optional ??) client, everything is working rather well! I think it should be ready in a few weeks maximum.
Staff Presence: May I say, I was really impressed with how much time the GM’s and CM’s spent in the game. I know Jin was working tirelessly throughout the day to help new players with any concerns they have as well as many others hanging around, showing off higher level content to aspire people to keep levelling and offering assistance. Overall, very well done!
Quests: As with all games, quests play an important role in the game. This game has a wide variety of different types. The types are as follows:
- Normal Quests: These are quests that you can do to earn items or money. These include kill X Number of these monsters, get this grade on this level etc.
- Hero Quests: These are main storyline quests that build up to you getting your first job promotions (and beyond??). These include rescuing the daughter, and later the dog of the mayor of your starter town to saving two orcs (I can’t remember their proper names) in love who have been turned evil by the devious Dr Farrell, who you end up killing in your job quest.
- Repeatable Quests: Quests you can repeat over and over again to get items such as potions for free. These are usually relatively easy to do such as collect X of this item.
- Daily Quests: These are special quests that change daily. They are missions that people can sign up to do each day, and they include collecting a high level of an item dropped by an uncommon monster for example. They are relatively challenging and can give some great rewards, if you have the time.
- Monster Quests: Posted on sign boards around the game, they usually ask you to kill a certain number of rare monsters for items and gold.
There will be more coming in future releases.
Cash Shop: All new members who registered within a certain time (Around 3 days ago from now), were credited 10,000 coins into their account. Whilst the cash shop didn’t have much in it at this time, since it was only a sample of what was going to be in it, the costumes were really good (I walked around in a white tuxedo for the first 20 levels) and the items were helpful such as Eternity Pots which held a certain amount of health and you could pick at it whenever you like and Phoenix Wings (Feathers ??) which resurrect you when you die instead of the financial penalty. They were all very reasonably priced for how much we were allocated, however it is hard to tell if this is cheap for the price of coins. There is also a board ranking the top spenders, which is optional for everyone to sign up to.
PvP: I am not into PvP that much, however I did have one and a half games (My internet cut out in the second) and I must say, it was really fun, even if it was Acolyte VS Acolyte that I was doing. Allows changable map styles and many other features, including battle rank and PvP item shop, with high level items available for a number of points. Not sure if I will be using it much due to my class choice…
Guild-Life: Guilds wern’t a big part of this test. Except for Addicts, there was an IAH Staff guild called The Coven and another one I saw taking a guild photo minutes before the server closed. I hope we can investigate guild life later on. But so far, it is looking very nice!
Other Little Features:
- The ranking board is once again back, once again sorting out the strongest players in that level, provided they are of the correct level.
- Home System preview has been implemented, which shows an example of what the housing system will look like in the full release!
- Achievement System where you can earn medals for doing certain tasks. These can cause text to appear above your head corresponding to the achievement and they also provide with some good stat increases.
- Many more which I cannot think of at this time…..
Bugs in Testing:
I will be honest, I never experienced any of the problems, but some of the problems that people suffered were:
- Getting kicked out of the server at random times when too many people tried to login at the same time. I did actually experience this once but whilst everyone got sent to the login screen, my cash shop menu opened.
- Difficulties logging in, which was due to the amount of people logging in. This however was mentioned in the original preview notes.
- Some people mentioned missing Cash Shop coins.
- A fair number of quests hadn’t completely undergone localization yet, such as the problem mentioned above.
- Graphics driver conflicts which caused some people to not be able to view the game properly. If you do experience these, go over to the Technical Problems section of the forum.
Overall: Even if you don’t like sidescrollers, I would seriously recommend that you try out Dragonica, it brings everything you love about sidescrollers and normal Online games and merges them into one, and honestly, you don’t even remember it is a sidescroller most of the time, all I was left thinking was…. my what a fine game this is.
Now, after reading this, would you like to sign up to the Dragonica Pre-CBT as well as getting a guaranteed spot in the real CBT? Well, there are still accounts going out for the test however you had better be quick. These codes will be exactly the same except for the few first week bonuses such as level ups and the 10,0000 coins but the level 10 name save policy will still be available! The link to all the information is here:
http://forum.iahgames.com/dragonica/showthread.php?t=3428
However, time is of essence, as if you don’t act fast, you will miss out on getting a key for this test, and potentially have to wait until the OBT to play Dragonica, which would be a real shame.
Special Thanks To:
Kaye: For always being a great Community Manager.
Nuglar & Sakamoto: For both levelling with me AND killing Dr Farrell with me!
IAH Games: For the countless hours of effort they have put into releasing this produce for the english community.
The Addicts: For obvious reasons! Especially the other four in the picture mentioned above, as well as everyone who donated! Of course, special mention to every single member for remaining a true addict.
The Dragonica Community: A lot of you hung around for 9 months in the forums before getting to this moment of a Beta (Despite the two Alpha Tests). Honestly, where would this game be without you? Also, I thank all the new gamers for taking the time to test this out and hopefully fall in love with it!
Well then, see you all next week hopefully!
Sakamoto approves~
I am glad you approve 😀