"MapleStory fans eat your heart out."

Pop Quiz – What's more exciting than spending 4 years playing MapleStory? The answer? Wait for it…wait for it…absolutely everything! I don't care how you slice it, the game's complexity ends at 'Press button to make bad thing die' and it was never enough for me, not even close. Hell, I think I remember arguing with my brother about the game's success once, saying that it wouldn't make it out of beta. Well, 60 million players and 20 bucks later proved that I don't always make the best judgement calls. MapleStory turned out to be the best thing since Oil Deposits and influenced an era of terrible MMO clones that I'm still forced to suffer today.

Luckily, and I mean that in ever sense on the word, Dragonica is not just another run-of-mill MapleStory clone, it is the product of what I like to call creative cloning – cloning only the idea of the game and evolving the rest. This is by the way a good thing, as it is how you expand on a genre. Dragonica is essentially a 2.5D Side-scroller, that will see you killing cutesy creatures, completing an assortment of quests, and grinding hours of your life away. As I mentioned above, I'm not a huge fan of this style of MMO, I find it just a little too repetitive and although Dragonica does try to improve on the genre in some places, it retains many of the same features in others – something that may turn out to be it's downfall.

The Joys of an Alpha Test.
There are two things that can make reviewing a game in Alpha hard, the lack of players and the amount of bugs. While I'm sure in the end Dragonica will be a great game for fans of the style, the Alpha doesn't appear to be going so well. Currently there seem to be more bugs in the game than there are working features, and I am still yet to find another player. Having played MMOs for over 5 years, the lack of other players usually wouldn't be something I was worried with, I'm a social guy but a little peace and quiet never hurt anyone either. However, it seems that in Dragonica the second you enter a map, all enemies in the area are alerted to your presence and not because they want to give you candy. No, they as most other animals in games such as this are hell-bent on your total annihilation and given the 20:1 ratio and a bad case of hit detection you will more often than be drawing the short straw, leading to a small exp loss and a one-way ticket back to town. The hit detection is a serious problem, one that needs immediate attention. But the 'me getting owned every 8 seconds' problem should fix itself once the new players arrive.

The other game-breaker bug that had me literally throwing a Big Mac at my monitor (don't ask…just don't) was the quest system. I honestly believe that it was done on purpose for a laugh; I mean you just couldn't possibly screw up this badly by accident. Everything from the Quest Log not displaying progress properly to the Quest Helper downright lying to me is broken. Some quests will ask you to bring back an item after you have modified it…but forget to give you the item, others will have the quest mark on their head but refuse to give it to you. Some would have the quest marker sowing complete, with the required items in your inventory – and still they would refuse to talk to you. Hell, some even as simple as "go speak with so-and-so" wouldn't allow you to complete it. This, by the way is all before level 10, broken is an understatement…fix it soon or scrap the game altogether, this goes beyond appalling. There were several other bugs in Dragonica that I managed to dig up, see the end of the review for a complete list.

So it begins…
Like almost every MMO before it (god dammit, someone needs to change this) you begin the game by selecting your character. You'll be choosing between a Warrior, Mage, Archer or Thief – nothing really exiting here. You'll also be given the super awesome choice between some eyes, hair, and hair colour. Okay sorry, I shouldn't be using Dragonica as an outlet to vent my frustrations on the stupidly uncreative minds that litter our games industry. It just drives me up the wall…I'll do an article about it one day. Back to Dragonica, I was pleasantly surprised after I made my character, as there is actually class specific back-story that follows. I was Neramaar, the Thief Guildmaster and protector of all things sneaky - that was until a rival thief guild attacked and captured us. They gave me a choice, die alongside my fellow guildies, or slay a dragon and we would all be freed. So off I sailed across the open sea, dragon slaying book in hand, to a new and exciting land…or so I thought.

I began playing the game by completing a small tutorial, one that if not for the horrible control scheme provided would have been half decent. Fortunately the controls are completely customisable, unfortunately it takes forever and the all of the hints will still be shown as their original keys. After completing my tutorial I soon faced the reality that I wouldn’t be slaying any dragons or saving my guildies in any great hurry, I would instead be grinding for hours on boring mobs, getting killed every few minutes, and trying aimlessly to complete pointless quests. This hurt more than usual with Dragonica because of the awesome build-up, why would slaying a dragon, saving my people, and then running a small thief guild be such a horrible alternative to grinding forever with no real reason? Why give me such an awesome build-up and no payoff? It’s like having your parents walk in on you during sex, its uncomfortable and unrewarding.


Looks have to count for something.
While Dragonica does get many things wrong, it did the right thing with the graphical updates. Not only does this mean that you’ll be running up and down as well as left to right, but it’s just so much easier on the eyes. The animations are all top notch, from my poison attack featuring some kind of green smoke spewing gun and a gas mask, to my standard claw attack combos having my claw grow huge with the finishing moves. Occasionally you’ll even see one of your victims fly away and smash into the screen leaving a crack. It really adds a lot to the grind, and makes it feel less painful. Alongside the graphics you have the music, which once again is top notch. Relaxing when in town and hardened in battle, it usually always fits and sounds great to boot.

That’s all folks.
Whilst I’ve yet to see above level 15, party with another player, complete a mission in a group, or get me some good looking gear I can safely say that Dragonica has a long road ahead of it. There is an assortment of bugs and kinks that need to be worked out, and if I had my way then there would be a total rework on the first few hours you spend playing it. If you’re a fan of MapleStory then you’re going to have a great time with this one, it has a lot to offer and with time I’m sure we’ll be seeing it. But if you, like myself found MapleStory as interesting as watching paint dry then I’d recommend you steer clear of this one too, there’s plenty of alternatives out there much better suited to our gaming needs.