My ongoing Review and take on both IAH and THQ, who wins?

Ahh Dragonica! And where to start.

Well I guess I can start by saying this game is not perfect, Its a good game! It does have more pros than cons and thats a nice start.

I have been playing dragonica  on both the THQ and IAH servers with my daughter. The big plus of this game is well, a casual game. there are no hour + instances or raids to attend this is just a glorified button masher which takes the good ol 1990 arcade style feel and does bring nostalgia to the good ol days when i would chug quaters down those darn games like TMNT.

The big pro is that is simple to pick up, the controls are great and well the humor and world itself. The game does feel alive, many things in the backround move and you can clearly say this game does not take itself seriously, which is good.

From one npc scratching his butt then sniffing his hand to some of the wacky spells and abilities your characters have, Many appreances  and references show up like bruce lee, a pic of the mona lisa to name a few.

With a special app like Joytokey, you can even get your ps3, xbox360 or pc controler to map they keys of your keyboard and give you even more control over your movements.

The action also can get intence as this game promotes comboing like a mad man, your rating for mission maps are determined by the time it takes you to complete it, the combos you make, the hits you take and the times you die, scoring high nets you more items and the chance to get rare ones to boot.

There are only 4 classes Swordsman , archer, mage and thief. Now these do branch off to 8 more classes at lvl 20 and 8 more at lvl 40.  This is true of the state of the game as of 08/18/09. more class changes are comming for lvl 60 but we dont know which ones they are yet.

Grouping is simple, up to 4 people can group up to do mission maps and well these can last from 5 to 15 min depending the group setup. There are also hidden maps and "Dark" maps that offer good rewards.

The cash shop so far is all about fluff, there are no items that give you an advantage over others and well only to unlock one of the rare weps requires a recerpie to make.  Now you can trade items for cash shop money in the iah version I will update once i inspect what route the thq version is going.

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Preformance will be mentioned in the versus section.

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well thats enough of the good well now lets check the bad.

The grind, yep its there and i wont hide it , however it does seem so far that THQ has lowered their grind compared to iah. But as you do progress it does become obious there is a grind.

Some classes are better in pvp yet poor in pve and visa versa.  So far if you decide to go as a knight or ninja  and a few others , you wont be able to clear missions as fast as other classes but you do shine vs bosses and well in pvp. I hope they can make it that all classes can be competitive more in pve.

The character creation is atrocious. very few hairstyles and faces to choose, heck even few colors of hair. To make it worse you cannot change your skintone . To make yourself different you will be encourage to mix and match in the cash shop. now there are plenty of armor sets later on but early on some armor sets get reused .

Auction house greed is huge in the iah version. i cannot comment on the thq version as it did start today. but will update.

You will be doing some mission maps more than others as some are considered maze maps which offer little exp. those do tend to be less favorable as you cannot combo enemys well which = bad rewards at the end.

Non instance bosses will be camped to hell and back wich is sad.

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Now one thing Dragonica did right was the Healer class. you not only heal. you kick ass at point blank. healers are also called boss killers due to their very high dmg output with their regular attack. Heals are done quickly in aoe form, you can even drop a heal on the ground for people to hide in and revover. Now heals are usually on focus in boss fights and not so much in the mission map run to the boss allowing you to dps to your hearts content.

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I give it an overall 7.5 out of 10 The arcade style gameplay won me over. It also a very good casual family game as what little time you do put into the game your progressing. The big plus is you can beat the game without the need of the cash shop. The cash shop only makes people beat missions quicker as they can pay for insurance scrolls to make their weps stronger. But its not mandatory.  Grouping does up the difficulty of the missions yet hell breaks loose arcade style. There is grind which will turn some people away from the game, but as always nothing makes an mmorpg funner than being with friends. This game i is one i can spend time with my daughter and its her very first mmorpg.

well now for the vs part:

IAH =

+ big community , lots of players and servers are jam packed.

+Gift box given at start giving you some cash items to assist you like hp pots and the like.

- IAH  does not notify of any updates, people find them from the Gpotatoe version of dragonica (not compares as its kinda region locked.)

- Latency issues due to the servers being utterly far away. this does cause problems when comboing with the thief class and archer class.

-Lag and loads of it. Enemies disapear or take no dmg then suddenly you die..

-ah is full of cash sale items.

- the community itself does have alot of instant gratification type of players and elitisim, if you dont have a lavalon wep you may be deprived from a party. Some classes are discrimitated to hell and back. It even noticeable with new toons which is sad.

- you CANNOT rez yourself with your ingame gold. This forces ya to buy feathers from the cash shop or  hug a healer to death.

In the Iah version i played untill the thq version of open beta came out. I did read one review here that did reccomend that provider over Thq. However i disagree with him about how IAH handles their version of dragonica. One they fail to inform their playerbase about the creators patch notes. 2 The lag is horrable even for singapore players. Also the exp is terribad and it is utterly pointless to do quests due to the crappy exp rate given opon completing the quests. Only reason people will do the quests is for the title that grants more speed in your attacks.

Due to me living in the US. Latency and lag issues I DO not reccomend trying this game out there.

THQ

+They have been updating constantly and informing their playerbase.

+today the servers started and the launch of open beta was smooth and even lagless.

+No latency issues and very slight lag.

+You can rez with your ingame money.

+ Quests yield bigger exp rewards , especially the yellow ones which are ignored in the iah version.

+exp curve does seem less so far but will update that as i lvl more in the THQ version.

+Dispite that open beta started much later than the IAH version. the game is up to date.

+couples can use the warp scroll to warp to one another.

- no gift box when you start out.

- only one server and so far its jammed.

- many people rushing thru content.

*I cannot comment yet on the community's stance to some classes. I just hope on this version they dont discriminate some classes like in the iah version.

THQ so far has done a very good job on the NA version of the game. more exp per quest completed does make you do them and well no latency issues and very little lag is a huge plus. If your planning to try out this game do yourself a favor and start on their servers.