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Dragona: The Official MMORPG.com Dragona Review
SBFord
Former Associate EditorMember LegendaryPosts: 33,129
Dragona Online is self-described as a world where swords, sorcery, dragons and monsters exist. It sounds like a high-fantasy gamer's paradise. See how Dragona measures up in our latest review. Leave us your comments when finished.
There’s been a trend of MMO burnout recently, and games like Dragona are part of the reason why. The game plays it safe taking cues from all the big MMOs on the market and while there is a few interesting ideas, the execution is rushed and lacklustre. I suppose I just summed up this review in the first two sentences, so I should take a moment to praise some highlights with more details on them later in the proper sections. The art direction is very well done, especially the environments, but character models are disgustingly fan service, an auto travel feature, while badly implemented, is a nice try at the very least and classes do feel distinct from each other even though ability gain is far too slow. I suppose each of those points came with criticism but get used to that, it will be the entire tone of this review. Pour a glass of wine for this one, you may need it.
Read more of Phil Bickle's Dragona: The Official MMORPG.com Dragona Review.
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Comments
"Maybe I'm just jaded and my review is more harsh than usual because of it, but Dragona does nothing to set itself apart from anything else on the market"
While I agree and actually think this is a fair review, I don't understand how the exact same things were said about SWTOR, even by reviews on this site, and yet it got nearly perfect scores. But yanno...dead horse...so whatever.
Nice to see a reviewer that isn't afraid to give an average game an average score. Or, close to it.
"Forums aren't for intelligent discussion; they're for blow-hards with unwavering opinions."
I dont agree with the scores and personally discredit this review for not mentioning PvP once while reviewing a PvP game. Anime artstyle now gets your game a 5 for having unrealistic characters? Will TERA be given the same score as it's models are exactly the same style with better textures and polycount to show off even more.
There is no consistency in the reviews on this site at all because of the above mentioned, same things mentioned about SWTOR but it is somehow an MMO vastly superior to this one.
If the reviewers can not be objective in their reviews, they should not be writing them at all.
Money, thats the ONLY reason swtor got over 6's, because I'd barely rate swtor 5/10 myself, mostly because the gameplay is garbage, the game gets boring very fast, and little to no replay value to the game.
Being a pessimist is a win-win pattern of thinking. If you're a pessimist (I'll admit that I am!) you're either:
A. Proven right (if something bad happens)
or
B. Pleasantly surprised (if something good happens)
Either way, you can't lose! Try it out sometime!
You're generous with your scoring, I'd have given the game lower overall scores. Played it for a few weeks, forcing myself to continue after the first day just to give it an honest shot (first day I didn't like it much already). Yeah, it's samesy generic bullshit and it's just bad. As you said, it runs, but beyond that it's so unbelieveabley flat and boring that I had issues forcing myself to log in.
You can tell by your very short descriptions that you didn't put much into this review, and likely not much into the game. That's the perspective from someone like me who knows writing but has never played this game.
You gave polish a 5 but had nothing bad to say about it. You gave aesthetics a 5 even though your only gripe was one of taste preference.
And since when is innovation a scoring factor in MMO's? Was it in SWTOR, or any of the other WoW cloned MMO's MMORPG.com has reviewed? Asinine.
Horrible review, Phil Bickle, whoever the hell you are.
I agree that this was a bad review. Why even bother? When reviewing these types of games you need to review the PVP because that is their entire purpose. SWTOR should have gotten a similar review.
Are you a Pavlovian Fish Biscuit Addict? Get Help Now!
I will play no more MMORPGs until somethign good comes out!
They not pay for their advertising or something?
I just remember their adds because they had little tiny heads on gigantic bodies.
Use a spell-checker and fix your grammar. An official review shouldn't look like a hastily-typed forum post.
If it's not buggy and plays quite well, then why only a 5 for polish? If you're going to give separate ratings to different components of the game, then not liking one piece (or several pieces) shouldn't drag down the scores for all the rest. A game can be highly polished and still terrible.
How can you be a writer for a major gaming website when:
1. You use run-on sentences.
2. You do not understand that punctuation goes inside quotation marks.
3. You occasionally seem oblivious to subject/verb agreement (misuse of is/are.)
4. Some words apparently do not mean what you think they mean. (An intravenous of quests?)
5. Try spell-checking every now and then.
6. Hire an editor.
Hedonismbot: Your latest performance was as delectable as dipping my bottom over and over into a bath of the silkiest oils and creams.
review is generic, no mention about pvp or crafting, housing or mounts.
Btw this one fit to TOR well
how is that tor got 8+ 
Apart from the atrocious writing, I have to disagree with a couple other points. First of all, you give the game a 5 for polish but go on to say that it "works" and there is nothing wrong with it. How does that work? Polish is a very narrow area for video games and it specifically includes annoyances like bugs, performance and other things that do not work as intented. It seems like the score was brought down for no apparent reason.
Secondly, I understand 100% objectivity is an impossible feat for us humans but a good journalist to me is a journalist who knows where to draw the line to his expression of subjectivity. A journalist that knows when to control subjectivity and approach objectivity, and that is something you clearly lack. Therefore you have given me no reasonable answer to why the aesthetics are bad. I'm someone who generally does not care how the game looks and plays anything and everything, I don't prefer the eastern style some games present but I'm not allergic to it. I have seen "anime" games that look good and many that look bad. By saying the game looks eastern and the characters are not realistically proportioned therefore it sucks, I don't know what to make of it.
Something else; I hope you are aware most asian games are almost entirely based around PvP, how is it that you make no mention of it?
Points wrong or misleading about this review.
Transformation buffs - They are passives and they are toggled on and off for both partial and full transforms. Full transforms give you a complete set of new abilities only usable while in that state but you can not use your normal skills. Transformations burn your energy which can be regained by collecting cores that may spawn after defeating monsters. If a player is out of energy they can no longer use any type of transformation.
PvP - Dragona is a PvP driven game. Open PK starts in the mid to late 20's and every hour a type of PvP battleground will be started for level 20+ players to join. One of these PvP arena's is a basic rush to destroy the other teams crystals before they destroy yours. The map is designed in such a manner that it leaves players multiple options to choice from in attempts to win the match. There are 3 minor objectives and 1 main for both sides. The 3 minors will give their team a buff as long as they are not destroyed while the main objective has much higher HP than the minors and gives a very hit on the score required to win the match. Players rush to destroy everything while defending their own structures. I've played this match a few times and it can be quite enjoyable.
Character progression - In Dragona players gain points every level that they use to level skills in two types of skill tree's. Every class has a class specific skill tree with abilties and buffs exculsive to their class and a passive skill tree with a variety of passive buffs to various stats. Some passives will be shared and some not. While some passives are shared, such as HP/HP regen, Tank classes will get a higher scaling passive than a dps class would. By level 10 a character if he choices so can have a very wide set of skills to be using or few if they decided to focus their points into certain skills. Characters will get more points per level as they reach higher character levels upwards of 20.
Dragona is not the MMO savior but it is not an MMO so poorly made it deserves a 4.5. This is not my personal opinion but going off the standards used to give this game a 4.5, other games should not have been given the higher scores they have. The complete omittance of PvP in the review leads one to believe the reviewer did not even get into the meat of what Dragona is all about. Again, a review about an MMO done within hours of playing it instead of over the course of a week or maybe two.
MMO's are not single player games. You can not pull an all nigther and know everything there is to know about an MMO and write a piece on it ripping it to shreds or praising it as a masterpiece. A review should not be approached in the same manner as a first look or a sneak-peak.
I can't hate on the reviewers bad use of english as my own is pretty bad but I'm tired of people misleading others with these shameful articles.
What is it with eastern developers and all-but-exposed breasts? Not that I dont like boobs, I just see a pattern in eastern developed games and wonder if that is a cultural thing.
You know the review is going to be bad when the review didnt even take the time to spell check. But then again it would be representative of how they felt about the game. Why bother?
Why bother? Because this is someone's game. This is someone's work. This is the culmination of a full team of passionate designers. That's why you bother.
There are a group of people out there who poured their everything into this game. There are artists, programmers, sound engineers, and so many more who put who-knows-how-much time into this game. This isn't "just another MMO" to them, it's representative of the best that they have to offer. They set out to give the player the absolute best experience they could, and they put themselves into that effort completely.
That's why you bother. That's why you should have enough respect for the game that you give it the time it deserves. That's why you play long enough to get a real feel for the world; it's why you play PvP in a PvP game; it's why you should view the gameplay through some other lens other than "how does this stack up to WoW."
I don't know why I keep reading things on this site. All they do is enrage me. If a reviewer already has their mind made up about a game before they ever play it for review, then they shouldn't be reviewing it. If a reviewer isn't willing to play the game for a reasonable amount of time (to get a full understanding of the experience that the game is offering), then they shouldn't be reviewing it. If the reviewer is going to inject personal opinion in such a way that it interferes with a proper review, then they shouldn't be reviewing it. ... But that's all that I find on here. That's all I ever read. This site has been repeatedly guilty of neglecting both the development and player communities of MMORPGs. If you really cared, we would know when we read your reviews. It's because of these reviews that we can know with such certainty that the only real priority here is advertising revenue.
I'm done here. This was the straw that broke the camel's back. I'm done with all sites that don't care about games enough to put out a decent product that respects my intelligence and my passion for gaming.
Sad when forum members give a more indepth review of a game than the person paid to review it. It seems like he just looked at the screenshots and decided he didn't like the game.
I was going to add my two cents on how I felt about the article, but most of the posters have done it already for me. This one above is particularly accurate.
I do have to comment on this notably egregious comment: "Trying to make NPCs less of an annoyance is a goal I can understand. No one really likes NPCs in their MMOs."
Seriously, WTH? 'No one likes NPCs in their MMOs." Really? Have you spoken to all MMO players and taken a consensus?
This is definitely one of the worst written reviews I've ever read, and I find it slightly shocking for it to be posted by a so-called writer on this site.
Huh? Most of these games all look and play alike. Most are mindless like this game. It deserved all the criticism it got in the review. Again it looks the same and plays the same as 25 others in this genre. Play one, you have played them all. Why should anyone reward mediocrity?
The idea of a review is to provide your opinion. May not be the same as someone elses. Nothing wrong with providing a negative review, at least it warns those that try it, it might not be what they want.. You should also realize what one person dislikes, maybe someone elses real joy.
There are a lot of sites out there that sugarcoat everything. You won't get an honest review on them, They can make a piece of crap look like a gem for their advertisers. At least this site does not pull it's punches.
damn, you guys are ripping into him. My "people at mmorpg.com are journalist wannabes and not gamers" theory doesn't hold true for everyone.
But seriously, they need to stop doing reviews and leave it to the people who will actually play this game for playing the game and not just to review it. they need to stick to the news. Their reviews for the most part just hurt because 99% seem to have never played an MMO let alone a game.
Wait so Tor recieved high marks yet this...
Not saying of course this game is perfect or anything but this is far from a really good review. I believe the term 'jaded' was used and I can safely say the review is pretty jaded. A lot of the scores are so low that I really don't get at all. They got pretty much identical comments from another game and yet the numbers are so vastly different... so little is even remotely slipped in as reasoning.
This reads more like a hater review then an actual good review, hater reviews being vague and not giving very good reasons. Seriously... polish section... if your doing 3 sentances, short ones at that, and your giving it a score like a 5 without very good reasoning... Lets just say I just can't take the review seriously.
I always thought MMORPG.com had a standard for rating games. I guess I was wrong.
The gameplay got a 4 for being grindy and repetitive, yet there are many, many games out there that have gotten better scores - 6s, 7s, even 8s - for combat that is worse than what I've experienced in Dragona, especially since Dragona, a very PvP-centric game just by glancing at the forums, isn't all about PvE.
As for the polish, apparently this game isn't buggy to hell. I guess that's what the reviewer meant when he typed "At leasr it runs well." (seriously, at least have the sense to use a simple spell-check). And what else is polish supposed to do? It means the game runs as intended. You can't fall through the ground and get stuck on rocks. Polish should be much higher than a 5 then, because from playing World of Warcraft, I've gotten stuck in rocks and fallen through the ground multiple times (and any attempt to report this is responded to with "That's why you have a hearthstone.").
I don't know what MMORPG.com is doing. I don't know what this reviewer is doing. The reason I like TotalBiscuit is because when he reviews games, he admits that he has strong biases certain directions, and that's why he doesn't ever give games numerical ratings. He'll even retract videos if people offer valid counters to his claims against certain games because they're not informative enough. And what he never does is what this reviewer here did: take a quick look at a game, make very generic negative statements about the game, and slap on poor scores before experiencing half of anything (especially PvP).
I agree with the reviewer. This is the same as all the junk MMO's we get out of Korea. They don't even try and rework the game's websites for these games either, a dead giveaway the game is crap.
As for commenters attacking the writer/site, reviews are opinions, especialy when it comes to games. If you don't agree with the opinions fine, you're free to play the game and no ones going to stop you. Just don't go all nerd rage when someone doesn't see your chosen game the way you do.
what the? I've been playing dragona for almost 1 and a half months now, and all I've ever been seeing is FUN! everything is so FUN! I'm not even sure if these people who did the review for this game, even got to lvl 20 and experienced their fist dragon transformation? I mean, what the hell? are you people for real? have you even created your own character yet??
STOP this nonsense get in-game for dragona.ph and I'm gonna pawn your asses!
yah, seriously? negative reviews? probably you nega people could not even kill another character on a single PK mode! or probably you haven't even got your own +4 items! not to mention, I have a godly set and i'm freaking loving it! the colors of my aura and the sparks of my armors are simply DOMINATING!!
reviewers! better watch out what you say on this funny forum, there might be a freedom for speech but your review sucks! it annoys me I wanna delete this damn website and announce it all throughout my serve using a BIJOU! ahahhah dumbass people