I'm only giving it a recommend because, 9 dragons is one of my favorite games of all time (both for nostalgic reasons & else) and one of my very first MMORPGs after OSRS and Silkroad back in the day so I don't have the heart to give it a thumbs down.
However, as is right now, I admit this game is nothing but a mere shadow of its former self. This game was at its peak back when it was managed by Acclaim and I'll mention why shortly.
Also don't bother with my steam play time as almost all of my time played for this game was off steam and I do recommend you go for the non steam version as I've found the steam version to have more technical problems running the game back when I tried the steam version.
At the beginning, let me answer a few questions that might be popping in your heads, yes, this game is P2W, yes this game follows the same drill most dead/dying old school MMORPGs follow nowadays as in constant milking with cash events, etc.
However, this game does still have a nice community even on RF version back when I played it like a year or 2 ago and I was on the PVE server which I believe was Tao. Everytime I revisit the game's official RF server, I feel they're kind of trying to "modernize" the game with new features but they're doing it wrong. They keep adding systems that makes this game feel like more modern WoW clones so stuff like pets and weapons with skills and such which, ofc, boil down to P2W if you want the best to compete.
But this was never what 9 dragons was about. 9 dragons was never trying to be WoW and it always had its own unique thing going on so they're totally doing it wrong, IMO as a player who've been playing 9 dragons on and off since its Acclaim days. I've played this game when it was managed by Acclaim and later when it was managed by Game Campus and then later when it was managed by RF and so far, I think RF has done some of the worst changes to the game. Literally "updating" it in the wrong direction and slowly killing what made this game stand out as a unique experience in the market back then.
Before sharing more of my thoughts, let me clear out that magic in this game is called chi kung which I'm going to refer to as CK during my review.
So you can have a good picture of what made 9 dragons special and why I say RF are "modernizing" it the wrong way, I'll have to tell you how 9 dragons was on acclaim days.
For starters, 9 dragons style and atmosphere and mobs and vibes were that of a dark wuxia not your common run of the mill bright looking happy wuxia. The game was the dark souls of the wuxia genre, IMO in terms of vibes and style not difficulty which is very rare to see for this genre and I have a whole essay on how amazing its style specially for mobs was I don't even know if it will fit this review's word limit.
During Acclaim days, the tutorial was basically a small linear map that familiarized you with the game basics and had you save some girl NPCs and fight off some gang of bad guys then you were presented with your first choice in the game which was your faction and clan choice then once choosing your clan, you were thrown into the chosen clan's map as a neutral vagabond and you have to figure your way from there and discover things slowly by doing quests in the clan map and figuring out how to join that clan while learning more of their lore and all that immersive jazz.
The pacing for all that was simply AMAZING eventhough the experience rates were abysmally slow specially as you hit higher levels later on but the start of the game had those amazing Gothic 2 vibes where there was a sense of discovery and progression and slowly figuring your way through the game.
You have 2 factions in 9 dragons which are white clans and black clans. Each faction has 3 playable clans totaling in 6 playable clans which you could choose one of.
The playable white clans are Wutang (WT), Shaolin (Shao) and League of Beggars (LoB/Beggar) while the black clans are Heavenly Demon (HD), Sacred Flower (SF) and Brotherhood of Thieves (BoT)
Each clan had its own big map with its own quests, music and its own lore and its own style whether in skills or clothes and its own weapons and passives (known as masteries) which gave lots of variety and gave higher replay value to see what each clan has to offer. Each had a whole different vibe.
The hardest to join back then were HD and WT specially HD and the easiest to join were Beggars and SF
For HD and WT, you had to be around level 20 or so to receive their entry test. For WT, the entry test required you to master some WT kung fu their quests give you before joining them up to a certain level which meant just time because, the way you level kungfu and CK and skills in general in this game is by doing them over and over think Runescape skilling for example but you do that for all skills and each skill can go up to lv 10 then you need to get books (which are loot) later to get them up to level 12
As for HD, their entry test was a real one, it had you thrown into chimera mobs nest amidst lava. The place was full of hostile chimera mobs that are around 3 or 5 levels higher than your character if you're doing it at lv 20 and you needed to kill as much of them as you could to get some RNG drop. Is that all?
Nope, all that is also within a time limit. The closer your level to the mobs, the worse the rng becomes for that item drop.
It was so hard joining that back then specially with the game's pacing back then and it created lots of fond memories of comradery back then among players trying to join that clan and tryharding that quest. The game's early levels back then were a JOURNEY. Everything was so finely crafted and it was made to work with the game's pacing back then.
So later when the game changed hands and Acclaim were no longer managing it, you can imagine what happened to that amazing pacing. The experience rates were way faster now. That's supposed to be a good thing, right? Nope, not for this game and not in the way they applied it because, now, you are forced to skip all this amazing early journey in the clan map as you leveled the early most fun levels in a breeze then you're quickly thrown into the higher levels where its more and more about the grind and the P2W and progression becomes less interesting as you get less and less skills.
The experience rates were made faster yet the P2W remained and got worse over the years as the game slowly loses its initial identity that made it special and unique in comparison to other asian grinder MMORPGs of the time.
Later the tutorial area was expanded to be a whole map "Bamboo Village" where you start in and level doing generic quest story line where you save Bamboo Village from a bandit overlord and it basically replaces the various clan maps where new players started their journey in back then and had different story and made the clan choice feel more impactful and immersive.
Now, its just that 1 common starter area to have you have a nice quick handholdy start and make you op quickly so you reach the boring grind paywall faster instead of enjoying the moments and the journey together with the players early on.
But did it stop there? Nope. You see 9 dragons has 4 classes: Strategist (healer), Holist (hybrid), Warriors and CK users (nukers/mages)
Each clan had those same classes and almost same skills in terms of functionality but where they differed were weapon types, animations, style and look of skills and most importantly the passives (called mastery in the game)
Warriors used the clan's main weapon while healers and hybrids used the clan's secondary weapon. Nukers always use bracers as a weapon regardless of clan.
There is a catch here, however, healers used to have CK (magic) which gave them build variety as some could build them as niche mage with bracers instead of secondary clan weapon but RF decided to remove that. This is just one example of so many undesirable changes. Unfortunately, word limit so bye.
