DragonSword : Awakening

[h1] A Deeply Strange Experience [/h1] Dragonsword awakening, from what little I managed to dig out of google's enshittified caverns, is a sequel to both an MMO I've never heard of, and about ten mobile games that I have heard even less about. Which could go some way to explaining why the story feels so incomplete, as it seems to be structured as a prologue or origin story for several of the central characters, which as a standalone story is understandably Insufficient, and I have no desire to play a bunch of gatcha slop in order to have greater context or investment. When I say that the story feels incomplete, it's not that I'm dropped into the middle of ongoing proceedings without sufficient context, it's that this story simply doesn't end, not even in a cliffhanger sense but in an "there is quite literally an unresolved Final Boss who showed up at a funeral to swear destruction on the kingdom midway through the game and all we did was take out two of his subordinates and fail to re-assemble the previous hero squad" This is act one, all setup and no payoff, all balls and no shaft. And that is a real problem, because it throws into sharp relief how badly other elements of the game hold up. The core combat is sound but simplistic enough to get repetative, the korean voice-acting is probably good, I'm not really equipped to judge, the stylisation mostly works, but some of the texturing and colour palette work looks uncanny, the canned animations during dialogue get repetative and play into how a lot of the characters are broad stock archetypes without much development. The story progression is static and lifeless, and often involves walking between three people in the same room to talk to all of them rather than just play a single cutscene, or banal "pick this up and put it down over there" environment interaction that feels like a default system that came free with the engine, that is never iterated on in any interesting way. Other complaints feel like emergent properties of the kind of game this is, clearly heavily inspired by the Genshin Impact subgenre of gatcha open-world games, but with the gatcha elements stripped out. But the flaws in storytelling and game design that are inherited from that particular Gatcha Slop subgenre remains, the absurd amount of things to level up, resources to collect, upgrades and crafting to simply jog in place power wise, the simplicity of the combat meant to function on phones or with minimal cognitive investment, the absolute pre-school tier "puzzles" in the environment, the relentless busywork of hundreds of generic chests guarded by 3-5 basic enemies throughout the world, the grind, oh lord the grind. The most fatal (and fascinating) flaw is how Characters work beyond the starters the game deigns to give you, this is from my hazy knowledge, a common problem in this lineage of gatcha games that attempt to have actual stories. Any character you *can* recruit has to remain in a state of quantum superposition throughout the story, where they *exist* but aren't necessarily allied with your team or not allied with your team, because you could recruit them in any order, this game choosing to parcel them out via tickets rather than how Gatcha's would do it. This is an example of the true unforgivable sin, in a supposedly *character-driven* story, the designers made an unforced error of letting the player grab characters randomly, which means it was written to ignore them. One quest early on quite literally unlocked a specific character rather than giving me a generic ticket, which means that they could have accounted for that in the story, have that character formally be part of the mercenary crew, or at least working alongside them, but the entire rest of the game they're treated like ships passing in the night. Sane story-driven RPGs weave squadmates into the storyline, they Know when certain characters will be included because they put the characters there and planned around when they would be recruited, even in games where you have the option of say, a couple of different characters being in a scene and having something to say, recruiting or not recruiting an optional character, getting characters in a couple of different orders, deciding if a given character has a lot or a little to say about a given mission or story beat. I'm not saying every team-based RPG needs to do it Bioware style, but it is an example of a pretty Solved formula at this point, one that gives the writers and designers the ability to have characters be both tightly wound into the main story, and to have access to their personal storylines paced out. In this game there are questlines specifically relating to some of the recruitable characters that go into their history, motivations and skills, helping to flesh them out, sounds good right? Well... yes and no, none of these character quests relate to the core characters who are canonically always with you and show up in the main story cutscenes wisecracking, I know about as much about the inner life of Aria now than I did when starting the game, but even this level of effort ends up wasted because of the aforementioned disconnect Recruited characters still end up having from the main story, their backstory quests exist in a narrative cul-de-sac, a gulag of characterization, an oubliette of development, and they play out less as you helping a sister-in-arms than justifying the DLC costume they change into during. This is generational copy loss, this is dedication to design decisions that are actively detrimental outside of a gatchaslop environment, added thoughtlessly without understanding what they do or why to use or not use them, just because another game was successful while having them. It's cargo culting, and I genuinely fear for a generation of designers that think the exploitative psiop mechanics of Gatcha games are *good design* worth importing into other types of games, and for that matter, the surprising number of people who apparently enjoyed this game at the time of this review's posting.

This game was fun but I just lost 47 hours worth of play because my save game was randomly corrupted. I tried the common fixes such as "verifying integrity" and I can't seem to recover it.

Genshin Impact without the Genshin and with way more impact Quite good game

If you come from playing Wuthering waves, Neverness to Everness or such modern gacha games, your not going to like this all that much. It feels like the devs started making this after genshin impact came out which means theres barely any QoL features in it. It had one of the worst UI I have ever seen with very roundabout ways. The devs knew this game would not sell on Gacha market thus decided that rather then to rework the whole thing, to just release it on steam with a set price and I do think that was a very smart move. If this game came out as a gacha game with games like WuWa, NTE, Genshin, HSR, ZZZ and so on the game would flop really hard and die out very quick. First, you cant climb unless your on a mount. Your mount cannot speed up during climbing. literally. its a very slow paced walk. 2nd, your character could get stopped by a inch of wrongly placed wood. I had a time where I had to reassemble a statue of a goddess. I had to bring 3 missing pieces. I grabbed the head and was heading back only to get stuck by a wrongly placed bridge that stopped my walking and it was like 30cm off the ground. You cannot run while carrying the pieces of the statue too. And the statue is on a hill while the other piece is on another hill. Pretty far. Very annoying IMO. 3rd, The dodge roll is very very weird. Your going to still get hit when your dodge animation is playing. There are no Iframes. But in exchange enemies cannot change their attack direction or projectile direction. its not going to home in to you. 4th, There is currently ONE character that heals. And the heal absolutely sucks. its a healing circle that heals whoever is on the circle. But the duration is so ♥♥♥♥♥♥♥ short that only MC and whoever comes next can heal and its not even a time ticked heal, its just 1 heal. Is it lots of heal? No, its so miniscule you can ignore it. 5th, world feels empty. But its not only DS:A problem. it has been a problem for alot of other gacha games. WuWa had them too during its early days and they filled it more after 2.0 update, which I barely expect this game to do so. 6th, The MC honestly sucks. He looks generic, has a very generic MC attitude, personality and looks. And he gets overshadowed by his "Mercenary captain" who acts like a spoiled child. He seems more main character-y then the MC. It honestly sucks. I can commend decent combat, but everything else feels very lacking or under developed. Is it worth your money? Probably. for 30$ its not that bad. As a gacha game? Terrible. Devs are smart not to release this as one. And would like to commend them for not being another "predatory" company. If you do not enjoy Genshin Impact all that much, your probably not going to enjoy this all that much as well. Though give it a shot and play for 120 minutes and see if its good. Refund it if you hate it. Afterall its just a review. You have to try it for yourself to actually feel what the game is about. 2 hours is about enough to see how the game is going to be moving forward. Honestly expected more, but its okay. 5/10. Would I refund the game if I played less then 2 hours? Naa. Its not that bad. If the developers are going to continue updates and push out some reworks on mechanics I think the game could be way better then it is. Its a good enough of a game to enjoy when you have no games to play. I would not say its a 30$ well spent but I also wouldn't say its a 30$ better thrown to fire. Its [b] 30$ normally spent [/b]

该游戏作者喜欢删评论，凡是喜欢删评论的作品通通差评，你可以再给我一个黄信，我就要说

Generic soulless garbage. Just play anything else.

I'm 30 hours in and having so much genuine fun. I also want to clarify that the fact that it has no gacha mechanic is not the strongest aspect of this game by far. Make no mistake that is nice, but the story has far surpassed my expectations, and the characters are great and have unique personalities. Additionally, the combat system is extremely fun and addictive, I honestly have no problem grinding for resources because playing the game itself is just fun. I literally just want more and more content because I am enjoying it that much.

结合了手机游戏和次品动作游戏的所有缺点。只是因为开发商无力维持原有的手游计划而被迫单机化的早产儿。 -手游中你的角色命座/突破不高，你可以去抽卡，而这个游戏因为取消了Gacha，如果你练错人，主线卡了你突破/命座进度，你练错人只能忍。 -手游中的弱势角色无法上场，它也一样，然而手游中的弱势角色往往白送满突破不会练错人。 -单机劣质游戏最劣质的，不通关主线解限任务关卡，就不能刷更高级内容的日本共斗游戏糟粕，它把糟粕学的炉火纯青。 -相当于恢复药品的料理在《原神》并不是必须，而它强制要求你满地捡东西，还学了配方不公开无提示让你慢慢摸索，我寻思现实上技术学校考厨师证也不是一个人瞎琢磨的下来的吧？所以几乎所有认真玩的人都在作弊修改999食物。 -敌人的迷之hitbox和空气判定到处都是，这个游戏根本没指望你认真玩动作游戏，就是希望你叠够高攻击力去硬撞比谁先秒杀对方。 -我知道游戏被迫放弃盈利计划而改成止损用的单机版会让制作组满脑子和重仓投资过LUNA币一样的怨气，但是把自己代入怪去看着玩家倒霉属于基本品控都烂掉的行为。 -所以后期玩法单调，地图太小，容易跳出其实一点也不出意外，这款游戏除了二次元的美术素材外，很多合格的独立游戏都比它做的好。 -你可以说二游加单机加开放世界天然等于正确，但这不是评论游戏质量的标准。 It combines all the drawbacks of mobile games and crappy action games. It’s basically a premature baby forced into a single-player format to stop losses because the developer couldn’t maintain the original mobile game plan. - In mobile games, if your character isn’t highly ranked, you can go for a gacha summon, but this game scrapped the gacha. If you train the wrong character, get stuck in the main story, you just have to deal with it. - Weak characters that can’t be used in mobile games are the same here, but in mobile games, weak characters often get maxed out for free, so you don’t usually mess up. - The worst of bad single-player games is the Japanese co-op game trash where you can’t farm higher-level content unless you clear the main story and unlock tasks; this game has mastered that trash completely. - Recovery food in Genshin isn’t required, but this game forces you to pick up everything and makes you figure out recipes with no hints. I mean, in real life, you don’t just wing getting a chef certificate at a tech school, right? So almost everyone who plays seriously ends up cheating and editing food to 999. - Enemies have weird hitboxes and ghost detection everywhere; this game doesn’t expect you to seriously play an action game, it just wants you to stack enough attack power to see who can one-shot first. - I get it, the devs were forced to scrap the monetization plan and release a single-player stop-loss version, so they’re probably bitter like someone heavily invested in LUNA coin. But taking it out on players and watching them suffer is basic quality control failing. - So the later gameplay is monotonous, the maps are tiny, and it’s easy to CTD—it’s really no surprise. Apart from some decent anime-style art, many competent indie games do this better. - You can say ‘no gacha plus anime-game plus open world naturally equals political correctness,’ but that’s not how you judge game quality.

Avete mai desiderato il gameplay loop di Genshin Impact\Wuthering Waves ma privo della monnezza gacha? Se no, significa che avete ancora un briciolo di sanità mentale e sono molto contento per voi. In caso contrario, benvenuti nel club di quelli che si sono bruciati l'ultimo neurone e trovano divertente il farmare a iosa per potenziare i propri personaggi. Dragonsword: Awakening non sarà il titolo che ricorderete negli anni a venire, ma sicuramente quella che ho il piacere di definire una gradita sorpresa. Nato da uno scambio di screzi tra Hound 13 e il vecchio publisher, il gioco inizialmente doveva essere l'ennesimo live service gacha, ma così non è stato: il gioco, come già accennato, è una versione offline di un mobage open world e in quanto tale presenta la medesima struttura dei titoli citati in capo di recensione, ma priva di qualsivoglia limitazione derivante dalla monetizzazione aggressiva che spesso inficia queste produzioni. Quindi in soldoni, si affrontano quest, si esplora il mondo e si combattono mostri con un combat system che mi ha piacevolmente sorpreso pur non presentando i tecnicismi a cui roba come WuWa mi ha abituato. Il tutto mentre si cerca di portare su la propria squadra farmando boss e mini-dungeon per ottenere materiali utili e pezzi di equipaggiamento le cui statistiche sono dettate dall'rng (non temete però, c'è modo di controllarne i risultati e in caso rerollare per una build ottimale). Tutti i personaggi sono sbloccabili in-game e non sono presenti microtransazioni di sorta, il gioco è godibile nella sua interezza senza spendere un centesimo oltre ai soldi sborsati per l'acquisto. C'è chi magari potrebbe storcere il naso di fronte un numero di dlc cosmetici abbastanza importante, ma a conti fatti si tratta di roba estetica dal costo nemmeno così proibitivo. Bisogna considerare che il gioco non è stato creato da una compagnia multimilionaria, bensì da un team di soli 40 sviluppatori che hanno fatto i salti mortali per rilasciarlo. In definitiva Dragonsword: Awakening mi ha molto sorpreso in positivo: un gioco che non si prende troppo sul serio e che può regalare diverse ore di divertimento (la main quest si finisce in una ventina d'ore, ma tutto il contenuto secondario dovrebbe portarvene via un centinaio). Inoltre sta venendo aggiornato costantemente e sono in arrivo altri personaggi, mappe e quest. Consigliatissimo!