Dragonica Online

Those who are familiar with 80s beat'em ups will be right at home. You move along and use your attacks and abilities to defeat swarms of enemies. Seems simple enough, but they add in one little twist: combos. Combos are easily done by chaining together hits without taking a break. This applies to regular hits and abilities, and serves to grant bonuses in the form of experience modifiers. The longer the combo is, the higher the experience mod. Some classes have an advantage in this over others, but in a group any class should be capable of chaining together hundred hit combos or more. As a free-to-play game, Dragonica Online really breaks the mold. Too often companies are putting game breaking items into the item mall, or ways to get the best items in the game far easier than running out and earning them. Every item in the item mall is balanced and does not really cause an unbalance. Weapons and armor that can be bought are purely for appearance purposes only. Consumable items exist, but are things such as slightly better potions or experience boosters. There are scrolls for sale that assist in the enchanting process, but all they do is prevent an item from being destroyed in the enchant fails. Some may complain about this, but I think it is not going to cause any drastic imbalance. The graphics in the game are really a cut above even some subscription based titles. 

While you are in a sidescrolling world, the attention to detail is top notch. Characters are detailed from head to toe in armor. The weapons all have their own appearances, though there are limited options. Each skill has their own special effects attached to it, and some are extremely impressive. Even the least impressive ones are easily noticed. One thing to take note of is the use of instances to reduce the annoyance factor in Dragonica Online. Most sidescrolling MMOs force you to compete with other players to get experience, especially due to bots that are setup to farm experience. While there are indeed overworld areas that most of the travelling happens in, most of the actual fighting to level happens in mission maps which are instanced. From what I noticed, each area has mission maps that put a player or party into an instance, typically with four or five difficulty settings. Each mission difficulty needs to be done to unlock the next most difficult one. After completing a map, you get ranked based upon a variety of factors such as time, hits, hits taken, and combos. Higher ranks result in better rewards, typically in the form of a greater number of items given. This obviously means that as you get more skilled with the game you will be able to complete tougher missions more efficiently, resulting in better rewards and more experience earned for less time invested. 

One complaint about Dragonica Online is that there is a substantial grind involved with the game, and there does not really appear to be much done to hide it. 10 hours into the game and I found myself sitting at only level 12. Granted I take my time and read all the quest text, and really try to get a feel for the game, but it still is a bit longer than it should be. With the focus on the game being the more advanced job classes, one would figure that the early levels would fly by in an attempt to usher the player to their subclass of choice. It still is not a major deterrent, and there are games with a much worse grind. I highly recommend giving Dragonica Online a try to see if it is something that you enjoy.

To read a review (with images) by our Community Member, Thyrene, click here.

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