With the North America and Europe servers hitting Closed Beta next week on the 19th, I thought I would keep this article fairly short. Developed by Taiwanese studio, Runewaker, Dragon’s Prophet is its second big-scale MMORPG after Runes of Magic. The focus this time is of course on dragons, and more dragons.
A rare feature these days in online games, players can manually add stats for their characters as they level up. These points should be added carefully, as there are a couple of stats which will actually benefit every class in the game. Before I go on, there are currently 2 different continents players can choose to start from.
Let us talk about combat. While it is nowhere near the level of Vindictus or Dragon Nest, it is indeed a full non-target system, with players able to hit multiple targets while aiming manually. There is no combat allowed while moving, jumping or swimming though.
Much of the combat system relies on its combo system. For example, after clicking on a skill, players can follow up using the left and right mouse clicks to activate chain skills. These chain skills are automatically learn as players level up, pretty much the same as the main skills. The problem here might be the lack of main skills, and with many combos needing to be memorized.
While questing in the early levels is pretty much about killing mobs, gathering stuff and cleaning dungeons, there are open world events as well, similar to Guild Wars 2’s. I expect the number of such events to ramp up as players progress deeper into the game, and I will be disappointed if this does not happen. Dungeons have 3 different modes, which is fairly common.
Now, for the main feature, dragons. The first step is to capture them, which involves a little mini-game where players have to keep the icon within the circle given the time limit. Not an easy feat at first, but as you can see in the video below, it took me less than a minute during my 2nd try.
A couple of other dragon-features are in the game, such as a storage NPC (like the Pokemon Center), but I shall not touch on them too much. There are 2 modes for all dragons:
Mount mode – They are simply used as mounts, and there is no mounted combat.
Combat mode – They can be summoned as combat pets with their own skills, although the duration they stay in combat relies on the amount of Dragon Soul points the character has, which is the 3rd bar seen in the videos. When the points run out, the dragon is un-summoned. The base Dragon Soul points can be increased by adding stats to it upon leveling.
Dragons can also be used to gather materials a a later stage. There is no word on assistance during PvP now, although I am seeing it as a confirmed possibility.
There are various types of dragons, some move faster on land, some move faster in water, some gets un-summoned after touching the water, some can fly etc. According to the developers, players will gradually need to choose carefully which dragon to use for different maps, dungeons and occasions. And no, there are no signs of dragons evolving like Pokemons or Digimons.
As you can tell, the game is pretty unpolished, with monsters becoming invulnerable when stuck at certain corners and the floaty combat. Runewaker did warn of the game’s incomplete state, and that is what counts. I am not sure if the Western servers are ready for its beta phase next week, but we shall see. Cash costume below by the way, with a toad mob giving a disturbing gaze…
