Duo Review First Impressions - Dragons Nest

Character Creation

Brandon

Honestly, I wouldn't even really call this "creation". They give you about 4 choices for hair color, hair style, and clothing style. That's about as in depth as they go. I find this to be a huge issue considering most people that I find enjoy these kinds of games enjoy immersion in their character and being able to make that character unique to their tastes.

Josh

I agree with Brandon. The choices are really, really weak! The face models are bland and all look the same. They even limit what color you can choose for eyes and hair. In its defense, though, most dungeon crawl hack 'n' slash style games don't focus on customization for some unknown reason.

Graphics

Josh

The graphics have a Nintendo 64 feel too them, but it isn't a bad thing. The game is visually appealing and some of the map designs are really good. It could use more types of monsters and character models. This really hurts the game because nothing really seems to change, even the "main" town is just the starter town with another starter town glued to it.

Brandon

The graphics were not that bad actually, for this caliber of video game they did a lot of things right. I'd agree with Josh that there is something about them that bring you back to the old Nintendo 64 days; A much simpler time in video gaming when you didn't have the rainbow graphics we have now to hide game play flaws. So, at first it was refreshing to see that old style of graphics but after a while they started to show some major issues with frame rates and character movement. All in all they weren't bad, but I would not call them great.

Sound

Brandon

The music, what can I say about this kind of music that hasn't been said already? It always starts out great, it gives you a terrific feeling of adventure; You're off to save the girl! And then it happens: you realize THIS IS THE ONLY FREAKING SONG THEY HAVE! Oh my god, I can't stand it when they do this crap. Very few games (Zelda) have been able to achieve the one song per zone and have a success. and the battle song, oh the battle song. Really? They only put one song in the whole freaking game for a battle!?!?!?! Depressing as it is, I think this game is better off played muted.

Josh

The music to the game is really good, at first. It isn't long before that epic battle music starts to just become background noise. The NPCs are annoying, and I'm not sure why games have characters shout one liners after special attacks. "TAKE THIS!" "HERE WE GO!" Honestly, you'll probably just mute the sound.

Gameplay

Brandon

We have made it finally the game play, oh, the game play. Now, this game does everything right at the start. It's appealing; The controls are fluid, the music starts good, you even get a bit of story. Things most of these free MMO's fail at being able to accomplish. But then it happens: you start realizing that that dungeon you just ran is pretty much the entire game. Yup, that's right. Dungeon grinding, that's all you do. I really was hoping that this game would not fall into that abyss that most free to play games fall into.

So, let's start with the dungeons. At first glance these dungeons seem to have a little thought to them and some decent artwork, even a boss at the end so it starts off well. The thing we started to realize, though, is in order to complete the different quests you had to go back to the same dungeon multiple times, so the dungeons began to get really old really fast. On top of all of that, you have to complete a dungeon on the easiest difficulty to get the next difficulty, so you end up having to play each dungeon a million times before you're able go to the next one.

The questing in the game was really not that good and the story behind it made no real sense at all. There was a girl and she got captured; Go save her... REAL ORIGINAL. I mean come on, you can do better than that if you're going with that story line. Your game play best be dam near flawless and we all know that this ones isn't.

Difficulty of the game started to become a huge issue for me because it was just too damn easy. Like seriously brainlessly easy. Mechanic-less bosses, boring trash mobs; You pretty much just end up spamming your click button through every entire dungeon. That gets real old, real fast. And on top of all of that, this game punishes you for trying something more difficult.

Josh and I found a dungeon that we could do in abyss. We were level 10 or so and the recommended level was 15. There was only two of us, and the recommended party was 4. So we figured that meant that this would be difficult for two people, and we were right. It started out fine and dandy, we were having a blast having to actually dodge the enemies because their damage output was high, and having to kite things was a blast and we were having a wonderful time until Josh said over vent "Hey Brandon, did you notice we are not getting any exp?" I was so furious I was about to just hit alt+f4 right then and there. May I ask the readers and possibly anyone that makes games: Why in the HELL would you punish someone for wanting more of a challenge?! That's about as dumb as an idea gets.

So at this point we really couldn't take any more of the PvE part of the game so we decided to dive into the PvP side of it. We figured, hey maybe they focus more on PvP and that part of the game will be better. NARRP! PvP blew. Maybe even worse than the PvE. The lobby was hard to navigate through and  the games took forever to connect (thanks to their awful servers). Once we finally got to play, we did a 1v1 match to see who was the HIGHLANDER (and I, of course, won but that's besides the point).  And we couldn't really hit each other because of the extreme server lag, so we both looked to each other as if we were skipping around on the ground.

Overall this game just disappointed. It looked cool, started off cool, and we both had really high hopes, but give this game about 5 hours of your time and flaws start flying at you left and right. It makes me sad to say that I don't think I will be going back and playing Dragon Nest again any time soon.

I give dragon nest a sad 5/10

Josh

This is the only thing that is making the game stand out and making it worth trying. The gameplay is really fun! I enjoy the combat a lot but the artificial hard modes are upsetting. Tacking on extra HP does not make a fight tougher. Fights tend to drag on in later levels, which makes me think the game is more focused on partying.

The reward sensors in my body did not go off like they should when I play an online RPG. The end bonus chests are usually filled with garbage and the drops are garbage. When you finally get a good piece of loot it's for a level 16 when you're running a level 11 dungeon. Everything is just backwards and seems to work against you.

The sense of wonder and not knowing what to expect is taken out of the game, too. Everything is the same, same, same with quests having you do the same dungeon 3 times. Nothing changes, not even with the different difficulty. Hell, give me some different colors at least. This really, really, really, hurts the game because if I'm going to be grinding the same dungeons, at least make them visually stimulating, or challenging! 

Speaking of a challenge; if you want one be prepared to be penalized. The clear XP from a dungeon far surpasses that of any mob. The "challenge" is that the enemies have more health. No new game mechanics, no new strong, cool looking enemies (unless you count new looking as having a purple name instead of white - Ooooh neat!) It's what will make the game dull. Click, click click. No reward, nothing, just a pointless grind.

The grind is killer, the game will just have you run the quickest dungeon for XP over, and over, and over again. Usually there will be a level 30 person there helping, at least there was for me every time. Things to break up the monotony of the grind simply do not exist. PvP is for the end game crowd, it's not for the lowbie, which really sucks because it could be a fun way to break up the grind. Who am I kidding? The PvP is horrible, too. The fights last way too long, the system is terrible, the UI is terrible.

Dragon Nest is a game I realllllly wanted to like and get into, but for everything that I liked (which wasn't much) there were 5 things to make me smash my head on the keyboard. If you are looking for a game like this, pick up Phantasy Star Universe on the PSP, but seriously I'd sit this one out.

5/10

With all the negatives Josh and I both expressed about the game, we both still think that if you have some free time and are bored like we are most of the time, you should go give this game a shot; It might be your cup of tea. You never know, you might just fall in love. See for yourself and tell us what you think. Thanks for reading guys, see you next time.

Click here to check out the game that was just reviewed: Nexon's Dragon Nest