Dragon Nest is the newest Free to Play MMO from Nexon. It was to come out of beta in August but it still remains in beta…i think. It’s hard to judge as the main page doesn’t tell you this, but the news mentions nothing about it actually officially releasing. Open beta started at the end of July 2011. It was released first in Korea in March 2010.
What is Dragon Nest? It reminds me a bit of Vindictus but its not quite as action oriented as it uses a hot bar to activate moves, but it still has an action feel to it as you dont target specific mobs…it’s all in your aim. The characters are cutesy and gender locked. You can be a Warrior or Cleric (male) – Archer or Sorceress (female). It is heavily instanced with portals leading to more portals which give you choices of areas to quest in. They are all linear. I did tend to get tired of all the zoning portals…which take from 10 to 30 seconds to load but are a bit quicker once inside a specific instance.
The towns are hopping with people running about. You can pick the channel/instance of the town you are in like many other games. NPCs hand out quests depending on your level and send you into one of the instances to get items, find people, or kill creatures. There are 2 starting zones specific to the classes you pick and all 4 classes meet up at the next town and merge the main storyline of the game.
There is a cash shop for clothing, enhancement protection jellies, storage add-ons, and marketplace enhancements. There is also an auction house for player selling and buying. The crafting system isn’t very extensive, its more of an enhancing/upgrade system similar to Hellgate where you can risk enhancing your items up to +12 with loot that drops from mobs and each time there is a chance to make it worse or destroy the item….thus the need to buy protection jellies from the cash shop.
Game play is very fun. There are destructible items throughout the instances and some chests to pop open. Mobs kinda hang out in their little groups until you approach and pick on whoever they feel like. They aren’t too bright but they don’t just stand there either. When you enter an instance you get to pick its difficulty – Easy, Normal, Hard, Master, or Abyss. Each increase adds more mobs to the instance and makes them harder and add new abilities to the tougher mobs.
I have been playing an Archer and a Sorceress (females of course)…both are a blast to play with their AoE’s and dodging abilities. As you level – you gain skill points which you then sink into the skills you want to specialize in. At level 15 you get to pick 1 of 2 paths in your class to specialize further. The Sorceress starting storyline is very funny…a rebellious teenage smart-ass. It is solo-able or you can group with up a few people.
There are PvP battlegrounds which were quite fun. They were voted best PvP of E3 this year – you set up the number of players and where you want to fight and how the winner is determined. There are some rewards you can purchase with your wins.
And onto the bad: Gold Farmers. Half the people in town are named uiahdfgyf and they are all clerics, and you can see them zoning in and out, infesting the exits. There are always 2 or 3 yelling websites to buy gold and all this has made every item on the auction house priced so high you can’t afford anything. Plus you can sell some items from the cash shop in game to become rich. This also has the unwanted effect of lagging the zone so it can take over a minute to enter or leave. WHY do game companies allow this? I can’t be the only one to see the negative effect this has on their games! Storage is very small and upgrades cost a whopping $13 for 30 spots. You do get at least one bank slot upgrade at around 15 of 10 more spaces added to your initial 10. This doesn’t sit well with the packrat in me.
Recommendation: The game isn’t finished, they still need to boost the level cap and open other areas I assume – currently the cap is 24 but it is plenty of fun and I heard they are upping it to 32 soon. I would give it a try if you aren’t heavily involved in anything. I play on the Ellena server. Get it here!
UPDATE: They have just raised the level cap and added new content! 🙂
And for your enjoyment – here is a dance video from the game! The dance animations are very well done. 🙂
Tags: dragon nest, Free to Play, Gaming, MMO, nexon, Review
