Dragonwilds Review - The game that destroyed my public holiday. An Architecture, Combat and Gameplay Review.

[Pheorin]

Runescape dragonwilds has made me stay up til 130 AM consistently for the past three days. It has completely destroyed my eater holiday, and I regret nothing.
I remember texting my friend when I woke up after the first day, saying "This takes me back... and I'm grinning like a complete idiot."
It is so incredibly addictive, fun and even more so with friends.

The sense of progression as you venture through regions was an amazing hook that left us wanting more, more and more.
It tapped into the dopamine circuitry in my caveman brain, and I wanted to explore more, power up more and craft new and exciting things.
My friends and I would divvy-up tasks to make the newest tools, armor, and weapons and craft them together in the house. We'd gather the materials, gear up, and take on the new areas together.
The gameplay loop was incredibly fun. However, it felt that each of the areas were quite small and you often felt that you didn't have much time to spend with your new shiny bronze armor, before you'd have to upgrade to the next tier.

This leads us to the next part in the review; combat. When geared correctly, fights are a breeze. However, fights where you are undergeared are very difficult, regardless of skill.
There is some room for skill expression, with souls-like combat combat mechanics, like backstep, dodge roll and perfect parry. The stamina mechanic is quite punishing, and it is easy for enemies to overwhelm you.
The only time stamina recharges is by walking, with shield down. Similarly, it is hard to find enough distance or break in attack patterns to heal, as there is often many enemies, and running away will costs all of your stamina.
As a player who enjoys mechanical challenges, I wonder if there is more room for skill expression, other than stat-checking.

Ranged was my favourite. Tracking enemies whilst accounting for gravity to land a headshot on a running deer or charging goblin was incredibly satisfying.
I wish it were possible to shoot arrows whilst using the spell windstep. That would be amazing for kiting, whilst maintaining the skill of shooting. Now imagine landing a headshot whilst wind-stepping through the air!
I hope Jagex explore options for skilful kiting for rangers; it is easy to feel overwhelmed and powerless against melee mobs. I could also not combine stealth with ranged - a classic fantasy trope. I wonder if there is plans to have sneak-attack damage in the future.

I found the most effective way to play was to play ranged to first snipe the mages, and ranged attackers, and then swap to shield and sword when the melee mobs inevitably reached me.
Equipping armor items takes a long time, so there is no room for runescape esque armor switching.
When facing melee enemies with a shield, a perfect parry will stagger enemies in a group, giving you time to counterattack.

Perhaps the above is because of the runescape combat triangle where ranged should be weak against melee, so take the above with a grain of salt.
I did not explore magic - perhaps in that lied the answer to my melee mob problem!


Base building was the goat.
As an architectural designer, the solid base-building mechanics were absolute bliss for me. With some creativity, beauiful creations are possible. Small touch detailing is the icing on top of the cake. An example is the treehouse watchtower we built near our house.

A sunken lodestone provides easy transportation to the tower without visual bulk.
I've sinking the oak half-window wall type into the floor here to creates a fireplace and more half walls above that extend it to a chimney. Add a campfire and books and it becomes so cozy <3

It makes me wonder what else is possible with the building system. I hear someone has already made a japanese castle!

When building, goblin raids seem a little too frequent, annoying and inconsequential. I remember being so annoyed when the goblins rolled around for the seventh time, that i threatened to "shank their whole family".
Similarly, Velgar's poison bombing was too frequent and annoying also.

Beacause of the raids and dragon bombings, and survival mechanics to constantly drink, eat or sleep, it was difficult to focus on a build.
You'd always get interrupted by any of those things. I wonder if there's an option to turn them off, limit dragon bombings to areas outside your house, or even turn off hunger/ thirst when inside your base.

So for those reasons, I look forward to creative mode.
I'm excited to test a build without being limited by resources, raids and survival mechanics.
If there is a way to save the creative mode layout and transfer it as a 'ghosted mode' build to your survival world, that would be fantastic.
Then, once you gather the all the necessary material you can build the house according to the ghosted blueprint. Effecient! I can see this being one potential endgame for dragonwilds.

All in all, we smashed out all the content in dragonwilds over the span of three intense days, and had a ridiculous amount of fun. We had about 25 of hours of gameplay.
I wonder if this justifies the 40 AUD pricetag - it feels like it should be 30 instead.

The game has an amazing gameplay loop, a solid building system, and fun combat.There are a touch of annoying elements can easily be tweaked.
We know jagex is capable of great storytelling, compelling puzzles and expansive universes, so I am excited to see what they can do with this solid foundation.

[Valdyr]

To add to this.

The magic system is under construction but still worth a look. Air spells are able to stun lock the enemy when used correctly, with skill you can stun lock and kite even groups of melee combatants though it does take practice to master.

The game desperately needs optimization, especially when loading in base assets as the game often hangs when loading back into the area with a large base built up. The netcode also needs an optimization pass with non-host players rubberbanding from time to time on solid connections. There are also sometimes issues with trees falling through the ground when chopped down next to cliffs and rarely a player will fall through the ground but their gravestone will be on top of the ground when they respawn instead of lost forever.

There is indeed only so much content in the game at this time, and a few bugs that need fixing on top of a dire need for optimization. But over all what is there is solid and very polished. The devs have promised large content updates every 3-4 months, so hopefully they follow through on that and give us some optimization and bug fixing in the meantime.

As for the comments from some players that the game is "alpha" or a "tech demo" I am convinced these people have no idea what those terms mean. I used to be a paid tester working tech demos and alphas, this is neither. I would say this is more of an open beta in it's EA release state and definitely worth getting and playing through while we wait for the first major content expansion. For what is in it $30 USD is a little steep, but if they follow through on their update schedule then it will be worth it.