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Dragon Nest: Dont Let the Cute Fool You
SBFord
Former Associate EditorMember LegendaryPosts: 33,129
One of the things that can turn off players to any given game is if it's considered "cute". But, at least in Dragon Nest's case, the cute is only the surface of what MMORPG.com Managing Editor Bill Murphy says is a deceptively deep and engaging game. Check out Bill's impressions of Nexon's Dragon Nest and then let us know what you think in the comments!
During my first few hours with the game, I slaughtered a charging troll boss, a massive shielded orc, and took out a so-big-I-got-nervous-at-first minotaur in the depths of some creepy ruins. The setting and enemies of Dragon Nest are cliché, but the art work and presentation are anything but. With fantastically captured cinematic segues during the game’s dungeons, the games does a fantastic job of giving players a tale to follow without forcing them to read thousands of lines of text. Don’t get me wrong, there’s still plenty of text during the accepting and turning in of quests in town, but this “movie” approach to the action during dungeon-romps is a pretty cool way to add some flair even if it’s not 100% new.
Read more of Bill Murphy's Dragon Nest: Don’t Let the Cute Fool You.
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Comments
The lack of good character customization and gender-locked classes is enough of a turn off that I will likely never try this game.
This is how I feel, I really dont like gender locked classes.
I played till lvl 15 as a archer, its a pretty good game alot of people will love it, but its not for me. Simply because i like open worlds and traditional mmo gameplay. Best of wish's to this game.Its made by nexon so im sure it will do fine.
Is this "I won't play it because I can't be a X gender class" a newer generation gamer thing? I'm not saying gender locking is a great selling point but games for ages have locked genders namely in original RPG's before the new wave of MMO's. Yes in these times gender choice is pretty standard but writing off a game (which is a great one in this case) because you can't be a guy mage seems a bit immature.
He knows what he want and what he does not, and you call that imature ?
There is plenty of nice F2P out there. Including this one.
What original RPG on the PC has locked gender classes? I can't name one to be honest. (Diablo series maybe?) but all the classics that I consider true rpg's don't lock gender. Its a weak thing to do now a days and people want choices. Part of the reason even DnD evolved from all races can be anything now from before.
There's a difference between single player RPG's, and MMORPG's. I play MMO's to play as a character I created and level/skill/gear up as that character. I dont' want to play as a pre-determined character for 100's of hours on an MMO, playing through a single player story, etc.
If there is enough gear variety that the lack of customization is made up by it, then it might not be so bad, but still, it sounds basically like a single player game where they tacked on a multiplayer component.
Definatley not a new generation player, I started with AO and played eq when luclin came out. Its just a personal preference of mine. I didnt care for it either when it was in Diablo 2 either. It wasnt intended as a whine, it was more about saying, I've seen this feature come around abit recently (vindictus most notably), and I don't care for it.
Yeah I hated it in Diablo games as well. I didn't play a Sorceress or Assassin (I think that's what it was) or Amazon because I couldn't play as a male. So I stuck with the rest.
I did look passed the Paladin being black, though, and I'm white. So I don't care about EVERY little detail. But I hate playing as girl characters!
Yeah, gender lock and overal cuteness were turn offs for me. I saw enough videos I had to try it and yes the combat is great. The textures and effects are well done for a cartoon style though.
But, while I don't mind playing female characters per se, the cuteness is too silly, I just can't stretch my RP that way. The male characters look like little girls to me too.
"Never met a pack of humans that were any different. Look at the idiots that get elected every couple of years. You really consider those guys more mature than us? The only difference between us and them is, when they gank some noobs and take their stuff, the noobs actually die." - Madimorga
I dont play things if I dont like what I see, and I dont like cute looking mmos, no matter how good they are.
I don't care how good the game play is, if I cant stand to look at it for more than 30 minutes at a time its not going to be fun. Games that are not fun don't get played, or at least for me.
I took a look see at it all, and if you like all that eastern style anime stuff then your going to love this game, or if you like me you get turned off the first 5 minutes.
You have to remember that the MMORPG.com population is a little different. By that I mean you're going to find a much higher percentage of players who want to role-play in their games, and some who want a second life. If you're like me, and just want to play a fun videogame, this is great.
You don't want to play as a female because you aren't a female? You're not a swordsman either...
One thing I HIGHLY recommend is to turn off the character voice - the game is much better without the constant "HIYAH"s
so there is no open world?
I started this game yesterday expecting to hate it. Gender locked classes are something I usually cannot stand, but I looked past it just to see how the gameplay was. The game itself is very engaging which is odd, because it's a dungeon grinding game, I ended up playing all day and not getting bored once. I saw the PWR meter at the bottom of the screen and thought, "Oh that's how they get you" because every time you enter a dungeon it takes a little bit of PWR away and the meter eventually hits 0. Which I mean, I automatically assumed once it hits 0 you no longer could enter dungeons for that day or you had to pay or something. But I guess that just means you no longer get the bonus EXP from the monsters? Because I could still enter dungeons and everything was fine. As far as I can tell this game is not pay to win even in the slightest, so that's always a plus with a free to play game. Also the population is extremely high on the older west coast server, I think I tried to go to every single channel in the second town because it was somewhat laggy, but even channel 29 was completely packed. You can purchase all of the cash shop items in the auction house, and they even give you some of them for leveling up. All in all, I really enjoy this game so far and people who don't mind gender locked classes should really give it a try, it's like vindictus but a little more engrossing?
I agree wtih Panther, I didn't really go in expecting to like this game. I didn't really mind the gender locked classes because that's how alot of the past dungeon grind games work, but I was a little apprehensive of the cutesy art style and "non-open" world.
Well I was pretty much dead wrong lol. The combat is one of the best systems I've played in awhile on the PC. It's so fast paced that it's literally impossible to get bored while you are running a dungeon. It might be a little grindy of a game but you hardly notice it once your in a 4 or 8 person party fighting for your life in one of the most intense dungeon based battle systems we've probably dealt with. As for the non-open world, it's very much akin to Phantasy Star Online if any of you have played that. It really broke back memories of dreamcast for me, porting down to ruins on my fonewm and kicking the crap out of a bunch of mobs with some random people. Plus, the dungeons in this game get alot more open as you progress, so you still get that kind of "roaming" feel as you get higher.
Overall it's a great game to pass the time when you're bored, and many people will find it great enough to play when they are not. I will at least keep making my archer --> acrobat stronger until something better comes along.
What the above gamers describe is not limited to age or generation, it is just a phychological barrier that they cannot overcome when attempting to play games.
I witnessed it once while I was playing with a friend of mine who refused to play with women. He thought it was beneath him and just plain 'weird'. As an oldschool RPER, this never crossed my mind.
The story was the story... think of all the Final Fantasies, all the Dragon Warriors, Chrono Trigger, Breath of Fire series, Torchlight - even games like Gears of War and Assassin's creed. These are all games that have in depth stories about characters in them and focused specifically on a character that was a male or a female (black or whatever) in the story teller's mind and that was it. How can some people be so caught up by a particular gender or even color? I have my hunches on my friend, but everyone is very different, obviously. The reaction can be mystifying to those of us who do not identify so strongly with one gender or another.
Predominately, this is a male reaction, too. I would be willing to bet (an unfair bet, for sure, on a gaming website) that every poster complaining above is a male. I've seen my wife play male characters over and over without an issue and every other female gamer has been forced to sit through being a boy time and again during pretty much every game that came out of the 80's and 90's and they still played, mostly without a fuss. Not saying it's excusively male... but the major percentage is.
I would recommend you all to try the game, however. If you can't get past the gender, play your own! The cleric is a fun class! So is the archer. I haven't played the little fighter or the sorceress yet. It's a fun little game and worth a look, even if only for a few hours. I guarantee it to be fun.
There are a few things Nexon needs to work out, like lag during quests and any inventory action, but it's in beta (extended, i see) so nothing to worry about just yet...
vaguely interested. gender locked classes don't matter to me in games like this. i only start miding them when my character looks idiotic (e.g.: the un-armor that a lot of female character models tend to get stuck with). anyway. maybe i'll give it a swing.
EDIT:
QFT
Im exactly the opposite. I started into this game expecting to find a diamond in the rough. Vindictus had its good points and also some very bad ones. It seems Nexon took all that was wrong with Vindictus, made it worse and dropped it here. I know everyone will have thier own opinions, and i encourage people to try the game for themselves, but after reading this article Im left wondering if you played the same game i just did.
Putting aside the whole gender locked issue, since that seems to be most of the comments here, thats a very small and almost insignificant part of the problems this game faces. The controls for starters are horrible. Moving around the world is painful, with no distinction between turning and strafing. Your combat is locked to the center of your screen, based on a target reticle that doesnt move, so you must turn your camera constantly. The mouse-fights are the same as in Vindictus, you will spend 90% of your time clicking the left and sometimes right mouse keys, only rarely using the hotkeys (numbers) for skills. And worst of all, i found no way to customize my own hotkeys, so you are stuck with the scheme they give you.
The only part of the game i found enjoyable or 'new' was the friendship ability with the NPCs. It is a very well done way to make you interact with various NPCs and to earn special rewards from getting them to like you. The rest of the game fails. The graphics being 'cute' will turn many people away, the gender locked classes will turn more off. The combat and controls will run off most of those left, leaving a very small, niche community of players. If you are looking for a fun, action-MMO, look elsewhere. Vindictus is miles ahead of this game, but to be brutally honest, Rusty Hearts is the best in the genre i have ever played. It goes so far as to allow a gamepad (I use my PS3 controller, my brother likes the Xbox 360 one). Allowing gamepad usage for this game would be a small step in the right direction, but as it is, this game is barely a 2 out of 10 for me.
Meh, if a class I enjoy playing in an MMO is locked to a female toon and I can't find a class I like as much then I won't play the MMO. Single player games are different. MMO's are social games and I simply don't want to socialize with others dressed in drag. I'd rather pick my online representation.
Now I understand my avatar isn't me but it does represent me.
If you find that immature so be it, I don't really care.
As far as this being a younger generation thing, not by a long shot. I have grandkids lol. My first actual MMO was UO, before that it was Muds and Table top games.
In any case I agree with others, if I can't play a class or w/e I enjoy with the gender I prefer and I can't find anything else available that is as enjoyable then it's a pass.
lol... another game with asian girls in knee-highs..?
This game is so cute, that every 12 year old boy will want to play it. Problem is, not too many 12 year old have jobs..
"No they are not charity. That is where the whales come in. (I play for free. Whales pays.) Devs get a business. That is how it works."
-Nariusseldon
This uses the same engine and has the same feel of Outparks - Divine Souls.
since when do u need a job to play a F2p game?
Make sure you enhance your gear - it makes greens better than blues until you farm enough to upgrade them.
i played it for a few days. not a fan. ima stick to rusty hearts,