Short summary:
At this point in time, Draconia is not fun to play due to its overly detailed character customization that lacks basic features such as knowing where your cursor is when using the eyedropper. The map is underwhelming while controls are clunky and are unintuitive. Currently there isn't a gameplay loop of any kind, nor can I recommend spending precious time interacting with the various barebone features due to there not being a story or reason to do so outside "guess I'll check it out". Playing on Multiplayer at the time of this review is also not fun due to rubber banding.
All of these issues would NORMALLY be a excusable if the game was 1-3 years into active game-development, however this game has been in development for nearly 10 years and hasn't progressed in any way outside of expanding on customization and adding more RPG elements.
A longer summary:
I have been watching this game develop since it was announced to the public. So far back you had to donate to Patreon to get a playable copy. I can't recall if it was a steam key or if it was a standalone file.
Mind you this was all the waaaay back in 2017/1018. At that time it offered the 1 or 2 creatures to play as, some pretty substantial customization options, a bare bones map, some crafting and building, and a very rudimentary beginning to leveling up.
As of writing this review (nearly 10 years doing some off and on playing), I can say the game has not changed much in that time. It has expanded on its character selection and revamped some of the older models. The leveling system is enhanced and there are more rpg like qualities such as quests, npc, etc... . However the current build is still very much in a tech demo phase and I would argue plays worse than the older versions.
To start, Character Customization is an overwhelming chore while also being limiting. Because the models being made with UDMI's to allow clean and crisp details, each model is broken into parts such as Head, body, wings, tail, legs, teeth, eyes, and mouth. Each one of these parts can have 4- 9 colors to individually customize. Then add on small model changes to add to customization such as teeth, tongue, claws, horns, spikes, etc.., you are then presented with 2-6 additional colors to pick out.
You get a full color wheel to play with and the ability to create color themes. You also get an eyedropper tool where you can select any color your cursor is currently at....provided you can FIND your cursor.
This is my biggest nit pick with the current customization and one that hasn't been fixed in YEARS. With how the UDMI's on the model are set up, there are awkward seams in the model while you are customizing colors. If you don't save your colors, trying to select an existing color to match an existing color is impossible as once you hit the eyedropper tool, your cursor gives you the peace out sign and disappears, leaving you to hopelessly struggle to figure out where it is based on the colors you're seeing the color wheel run through like a slot machine.
As mentioned, this has been a reported issue for years. In recent times you have been able to create a color theme that lets you save colors to make your life easier, but with how clunky and expansive the creation system is, having to continually select the same colors over and over again across your creatures body is its own tedious mini-game. The reward: terrible gameplay.
Once you spawn into the world, you are met with a graphically underwhelming game. On the ground, The game looks like an early tech demo. The terrain textures are detailed, the models are casting shadows, there is light catching on your dragon. But the further you look from your character, the worse it gets as you are met with saturated greens, browns, and greys. I suspect they haven't added any volumetric fog to help make the world feel more realistic because rendering volumetric fog can cause optimization issues.
The controls are significantly worse. Most games use WASD to move with the mouse operating the camera, though should you be pressing W, you will move in the direction of the camera. In this game, your mouse is both your camera and the direction of movement, meaning if you want to see what's to the left of your character, your whole character will turn left. You cannot freely look around your character UNLESS you are sitting down. So there went all that hard work creating your cool skin.
If you choose to have a flying creature, then the intuitive thing to do would be to have your large creature be running at a full sprint, you press Space to jump and then Space again to start flying. This is a pretty standard and immersive way to start flying. But for this game, you don't need to run or jump or even move. You press "F" and your character just jumps into the air and starts flying.
You also don't need to bother with landing or slowing down your descent so you can land safely without taking damage, you simply press "F" and your character slowly falls out of the sky and safely lands, regardless the height you fell from. You can also have your character literally touching the ground with its feet, and it will not land naturally. It comes off as a very clunky feature which I would normally forgive a game for having in a Pre-Alpha build if it also wasn't nearly 10 years old.
Much like ground movement, when in flight you have WASD to move, with A and S acting more to strafe than to actually move. Meanwhile your mouse controls the camera and direction of movement. While this is a common control scheme for flying, it feels robotic and sluggish here. This problem is partially contributed by there being one single speed while moving in any direction.
If you choose to stop pressing W to move forward, your character instantly stops and starts to hover instead of gliding. If you choose to dive down from the clouds, your character will slowly fall from the sky while it unrealistically drifts around on your screen and you get trails of "moving air" in your field of view to make it feel like you're going faster....but you aren't. Once you come out of a dive, you will still move forward at the same speed and you could even full on stop your character mid dive to just hover and you will simply drift downward.
As for mechanics like combat, crafting, and building, I couldn't be bothered to interact with them for one reason: Rubber banding.
Rubber banding was ONLY a problem when playing in a multiplayer server. In a server with 65 other people, every single time you stopped moving, you awkwardly stuttered back a few feet. Your character wouldn't move at a smooth frame rate. Other players would glitch around you at 6 frames per second, and this was persistent regardless how far away you were from other people. I realize upon reviewing, this is fresh off the new European dragon model in addition to new quests, map changes, and a lot of other thing. Likely there were issues with multiplayer optimization as a result of the fresh launch as things ran considerably smoother in solo.
Keep in mind, all of these things would be acceptable and understandable for a game that just began its pre-alpha build. BUT IT ISN'T! As stated, this game has been in some stage of relatively active development for nearly 10 YEARS. I am unaware of how many developers are working on this game, so its likely a handful of people working on this in their free time. However 10 years is a LONG time and to not have a game more in the late Alpha build with a small team is somewhat concerning.
I don't recommend playing this game at all. It may be best to wait for its full release, should it ever get there. However based on this long development time and what has changed in the span of that time, I do not for see this game ever getting to 1.0 status. Should it do so, I do not imagine the game will be much different from what we currently have.
