Exploring Lagendia: Dragon Nest SEA Review

Over the long weekend, Arckham and I decided to try out Dragon Nest aka DN. It's an MMORPG game, developed by EYEDENTITY and published by Shanda Games. We are both officially hooked and we wanted to give you guys a preview of our DN experience so far.



Arckham having more time to play is already level 22 and I happy to announce that I've reached level 15 as of this weekend [Yes, work and everything else in between.] I think we're still pretty much on a pretty fast pace seeing that this game's current level cap is only at 32. We currently are on one of the Southeast Asia Servers, namely Springwood. The three others are:  Westwood, Holywood, and Greenwood .

Xylith's Character

This games gives you four classes: Warrior, Cleric, Archer and Sorceress. Each class has two paths or job changes which you achieve once you complete the job quest at Level 15. Something we like is once you've chosen you next job you're given a chance to try out the different skills to kind of have a feel of how you'll build up your character. Then you are given a ticket to reset your Skill Points and finalize you skill tree. One thing I wasn't too happy about was that the classes are gender locked. What that means is that all Warriors and Clerics are male while all Archers and Sorceresses are female. Since I am are used to playing my own gender as my main character, I feel a bit boxed in.

Xylith Showing Off Some Moves

The Skill Points are earned as you move up. What we like about the DN skill tree is that if you right click the particular skill, a tiny window pops out and runs a short clip on what the skill would look like which helps with the decision making process. Stat Growth is not character specific like in Ragnarok. Character Stat Growth is directly proportional to your level, you can only augment you stats with in game gear and the titles or achievements you get to complete.



The controls is something that I needed to get used to since it heavily relies on WASD for movement and the mouse for direction. What I appreciate about this game is that the interface is not hard to understand, you have everything you need to see on screen and at the same time there's not a lot of clicking since everything is keyboard dependent. Despite it being a keyboard dependent game, it's actually very keyboard friendly. For example, if you need to run around for a long time you don't have to constantly hit W, you can hit E and it's on auto run. Another is that if you need to go to a particular place on the map, all you have to do is to pull the map up and right click where you want to go and the character makes its way there similar to Pet Forest. Since, I play on my laptop these functions help prevent me from wearing down my keyboard.

 

Arckham's Character

Gameplay is dungeon based and very similar to Grand Chase. The story line is intricate and you really learn a lot about Lagendia's (the fictional world of this game)  history. I appreciate the dungeon based game play since it helps lessen the lag for the different players which has always been a given in MMORPGs. It also caters to those that want to play solo and those that constantly want to party.

Arckham Showing Off Some Moves

Graphics is something I am very picky about but I am glad to say that DN does deliver. It may not be the best out there in terms of graphics but it isn't a sore eye either. The skill sprites are smooth and the movement runs smoothly as well. The character designs despite being Chibi don't give you the feel of controlling a child on screen. They were able to put in a bit of maturity into the characters that would also not alienate children.


What we like about this game is that it seemed to learn and take the best functions from all the other MMOPRGs out there and blended in to a nice smooth system. Whether you're a casual gamer or a hard core one, this game caters to both with the different dungeon difficulties and in game achievements. Safe to say that we both are enjoying this game very much and we hope to see you guys around Lagendia.