Dragonica Hands On

Page 2 of 2. Page 1

The focus is on chaining attacks together, maintaining the sort of combos more at home in a Dynasty Warriors title than a fantasy MMO. The link window to connect hits is unusually generous, allowing you to move from defeated enemy to defeated enemy while maintaining the combo, an experience point multiplier increasing in step with the hit chain. One of the game's developers is reported to have achieved a 1200-hit combo.

At level up, you're awarded a clutch of skill points that can be used to learn new combat skills or, alternatively, improve your current favourites. Combat is incentivised throughout the game, players encouraged to slaughter 100 enemies in any general field area in exchange for a valuable treasure chest, or to master timing in order to execute a recovery roll, jumping out of a fall when thrown to the ground with a precision-timed input.

Item drops are frequent and most pieces of equipment that you scavenge can be dismantled, the resulting "soul" points then used to upgrade other items. This ensures that nothing you pick up is worthless, armour and weaponry exclusive to other character classes still a valuable resource for upgrading your own inventory. In towns, the local blacksmith will be able to repair and enchant items, restoring them to full strength or modifying them to exceed their current potential. It's here too that you'll find a customizable home space, which comes complete with a bed, bank vault, mailbox and an attentive maid.

While we were unable to test the multiplayer aspects to the game, their prominence throughout the tutorials and menu screens makes clear that co-operative play is at Dragonica's core. Guilds can be created by anyone once they reach level 10 (and have the requisite 20 gold pieces), but you don't need to be a guild member to quest mission instances with strangers. To encourage teamwork, many missions offer increased quality item drops the higher the number of members in the party, a neat design decision that will no doubt have the intended effect.

The soundtrack, scored by renowned Korean film composer Lee Byung-Woo complements the experience very well.

The game world is already gigantic, but its discrete areas are generally small and manageable, and there's an overabundance of warp scrolls to facilitate travel between the game's far-flung locations. Online relationships with significant others are also encouraged in this regard, couples offered a "Love Love Buff" skill in addition to being able to summon and warp each other at any point.

Dragonica's free-to-play model is to be financed by the sale of exclusive in-game items such as clothing and weapons. The light-hearted, comedic visual approach allows the developer to inject some real style and creativity here, aiming to make items desirable through comedic effect just as much as pure usefulness.

This close to launch - Dragonica is expected to go into open beta next month - the poor quality of the translation, which is littered with typos and incorrect tenses, is of concern, but Dragonica's spunkiness and exuberance otherwise stand it in good stead. For all the game's breezy humour and outlandish silliness it's clear that Dragonica's various global investors and publishers are deadly serious about creating and bankrolling a world-dominating MMO. It would be foolish to mistake its frivolity for flippancy.