Dragonica, the highly anticipated action mmorpg, published by IHA games (South-East Asian players) and G-potato (North American players) has finally entered a pre-open beta state, meaning everyone can hop in and join the game. However, that’s not all, as there will be no character wipes before either open beta or the official release, meaning gamers can actually keep the characters they create now. Doesn’t that just rock? Yeah, I thought so. Anyway, let’s have a look at the game now that it has finally entered the final states in preparation for release.  

Alright, you register on the site, log in and get ready to start. Here you are prompted to create your character, yet unlike other MMOs, there is no apprentice stage, you choose your class right from the start (I’ll come back to classes a little later on). You can change the appearance of your character, but options, to this end, are a little limited. This might change later, who knows. Once this is done, you’re thrust into the game. You get the option of playing through a tutorial stage and if this is your first time, it couldn’t hurt. There is a nice little CGI movie, giving you the basic foundation of the story. Watch it; it’s pretty cool, even my mum thought so.

Drogonica is an action based game and although many people will say that it’s 3-D, it plays out more like a 2-D side scrolling MMO, somewhat like Maple Story, but more closely linked to games like GhostX. The controls are pretty easy, but you can change them if you want. Movement is through the arrow keys, x for attack, c for jump and v for charged attack. As you level up, you will gain skills which can be equipped to hot keys and items to the number keys. You can also dash by tapping forward twice and some skills will require the touch of more than just one button.

Classes in Drogonica are pretty cool. You can choose a warrior, archer, magician or a thief. Each class has further levels. For example, when you hit a specific level, a thief can become either an assassin or a clown (I think it’s called a jester in the SEA version.) Later on, you can level up again and become something else. Essentially, each class has its own unique set of skills which is expanded through class advancement, giving quite the arsenal of skills and special abilities to choose from.

Like all MMOs, there are two ways to gain experience and thus level up – you can either kill countless score of monsters, or you can go about doing questions which normally includes killing countless score of monsters, so in my opinion, it’s always better to go with the latter option. I mean if you’re going to do it anyway, you might as well get the extra experience from it, am I right? You can find NPC in both town and scattered throughout the other maps in the game. Just press space bar to talk to them and they will then go on to tell you what you need to know.

The monsters in the game range from your normal looking living hunks of wood, to really massive and very impressive looking dragon fiends that will kill you sooner than look at you. Sometimes, it is really important to meet up with a few others players and go about in parties, which helps you gain experience, too, I might add. And yes, you can repeat some missions, but not quests and yes, there are ‘boss’ type monsters which are very big and some of them, very hard to kill without a decent team.

Through killing monsters and completing both quests and missions you will gain items, equipment and money. If you can wear or use the equipment yourself, then do so, if not, then you can either sell it to an NPC or you can dismantle it and use the parts for upgrading your own stuff through the soul system (refining) thus, improving the status of your stuff and of your character. This is pretty cool because most of the time if you get some item you don’t want or can’t use, you can break it up and improve your own which is often much better than simply selling it off.

One thing you will have to remember regarding this game, is that it is story based and though there are heaps of quests, there are only so many main missions. Thus, unlike most MMORPG games, you can actually finish Drogonica.  However, this will take a very long time and you can have fun in the mean time, so why worry about it.

I enjoyed playing this game. I liked collecting bits and pieces, doing the missions, finding the bosses and of course, slaying heaps on monsters. The game is fast, furious and plays out like the side-scrolling fighters of times gone by. There is also PvP, sorry if I forgot to mention that before. Graphics are decent, sound and music matches the game nicely and the controls are easy to learn. Heaps of skills and heaps of fun. 7.5 – 10.