100+ hour review - BUY

[Biadh]

After playing through two worlds, one solo and one with friends, for the past four days straight, I have to be honest with my experience to counter some of the trash threads posted about this game. I would hate for you to miss out on a great game.
No lore spoilers, some mild gameplay explanations on mechanics.

Yes, I will be comparing this game to other games in the industry, that is generally what people do when deciding when to buy games.

Let's start with some commonly asked questions, then go onto my opinions.

Q: How does it compare to Runescape 3 or OSRS?
A: It doesn't, it's a game in a different genre. Obviously you'll have overlap, but this game is not targeted at 30 year olds who play MMO's (I am one). Don't expect systems and progression to translate over. This game is more relatable to Enshrouded and Valheim than OSRS or Rs3.

Q: Is this game worth $30?
A: Yes. It is unfinished, and has had me playing for over 100 hours already. It has that gameplay loop that Minecraft effortlessly throws at you. You collect things, craft things, build things, explore.
I do have to say though, at this stage in Early Access, it's only worth it if you will end up spending a fair amount of time using the building system. I can assume that if I spent all of my time going through the games progression, I could do this within a day. The map is incredibly small, so you miss that "explore and search for next place" loop, the biome is relatively small and your next quest step is generally circled on the map.

Q: Does this game have issues?
A1: Yes, but I've been able to bypass those issues with a few simple mods. The item stack sizes in this game are ridiculously small, but half way through my play-through, I found a mod to increase the max stack by 4X and lower all item weight by 75%. This has made the game bearable. I also have a mod which halfs food and hunger, as the default game is untuned and has you spending half your time hunting and cooking food.
A2: The random encounters were too much, and too often. They have already released a patch update tuning these a bit, based on community feedback. They are already taking player driven developing from their mmo roots and applying them to this game. I don't expect them to be the best Developer, but they will listen to their players.

Combat--------------------------------------------------------
-The combat isn't overly complicated. It works like Valheim, but much more simple. You have a; attack, block and a special attack button.
-Each melee weapon has a varying attack speed and damage, with some weapons having a special attack on the middle click. The whip will slam the ground and use lightning to stun an opponent (rs players, there is no special attack bar).
-I used the dagger weapon type for most of the game as my melee weapon, but primarily used a staff with fire runes for the majority of combat, especially to aoe groups of enemies.
-In terms of difficulty, we have a mixed bag here, which I thoroughly enjoyed. The enemies themselves were much more difficult than Valheims in the sense that they had more varied attacks, if I was running around maging and started using my staff after an ambush, I would have to run to start fighting first (gain some distance)... but with melee, parrying is really forgiving and seems easy, too easy.
-Enemy variance feels great

Survival Gameplay---------------------------------------------
-Game feels like a Runescape edition of Valheim, except instead of a sprawling world, generated just for you, with oceans to explore, mountains to see, rivers to cross.. the world in Dragonwilds feels small. It's so small, that you can cross from one end of a biome to the other in mere minutes if you sprint... and there's only four biomes.
It feels like someone took a small portion of the Palworld map and said "eh, this will do, if they need more space they can just build up into the sky".
-Due to the lack of world generation, which keep games like Minecraft and Valheim afloat, the world feels quite shallow.
-I fear that the future of this game lies in one constructed and designed world with a lack of content needed for a game of this genre, rather than the open and freeing tool of world generation.
-In a game like Valheim, every world is a completely different playthrough. One world might have you and two friends get in a ship and traverse oceans, setup a relay outpost base by building a tree house, then you find ores, mine them and take them back home in your ship.
In Runescape Dragonwilds, there is no room for a new type of playthrough in a new world as it will just be the same. There will always be a windmill in the starting zone, there will always be an Abyssal Demon at the west side of the swamp biome. Once you've done it before, you have no reason to do it again.
A core success of Valheim, Minecraft and many other games that share the same gameplay loops with Dragonwilds, does not exist here.

Building-------------------------------------------------------
-Building feels like it's the best in the genre
-Only two tiers of building pieces though (I can see huge mod potential)
-Cannot build from storage (mod potential, maybe they'll change that, I use a mod now to reduce weight of all items).
-I have spent half my time playing this game, enjoying the building system. It feels exactly like Valheim, but without terrain voxels and a much more refined snapping system.
-You can unlock a spell that let's you essentially, go Halo Forge Mode to build, it works, but the mod itself has an insanely low FOV.

TLDR: This game is going to be huge, and even if Jagex miss the mark, it can still succeed as the mod potential is already massive right now.