Dragon Nest is Nexon's latest addition to its stable of free to play MMOs and one that has been highly publicized by the company. In our latest review, MMORPG.com's Lori May takes a look at Dragon Nest and puts it through its paces. Check out what Lori's got to say and then let us know of your experiences in the comments.

Dragon Nest is the latest MMO from Nexon, the company behind Vindictus, MapleStory and Combat Arms, and here at MMORPG we felt compelled to take a look at this brand new free-to-play (F2P) title. Especially in the wake of a fairly major update earlier in October, Dragon Nest is an MMO very much on the cusp of either critics’ recognition and fan support, or a wave of disappointed players who will never touch the title again. So, the question really is: Which one are you?

Read more of Lori May's Dragon Nest: Much Fun Beneath the Surface.

*Looks at up-skirt shot of seemingly teenage girl*

Erm.... what kind of "fun beneath the surface" are we talking about here?

Originally posted by gobla

*Looks at up-skirt shot of seemingly teenage girl*

Erm.... what kind of "fun beneath the surface" are we talking about here?

 

It's and elf,  they age slower so in human years, all is fair!

Originally posted by Purutzil

It's and elf,  they age slower so in human years, all is fair!

I'm betting she just turned 18 eh?

bin playing it for a week non-stop , great "little" action game, lvl 21 now and have not seen it all by a long shot, the game gives a false sense of accomplishment due to Hard mode dungeons not being really hard but if you take the master/abbeys mode then things get really challenging to survive.

monsters are different and all have their own behavior toward your fight style that gives you a edge once you learn to "exploit" them.

The game is also fairly nice whit its free shop rewards every few levels, and the extra storage room you realy need,those liking the game i woudl advice to just buy the 30 sloth expansion , it will make inventory management much more fun :P

sofar the game is not realy pay to win, Up till lvl 20 I dint use a singe free shop item. at 20 I just started to use them as they would expire if I dint claim them :P ( except the storage freebies , unlocked as soon i got them)

The game has its typical "crystal enhance slots"in weapons and armor as a money drain (fail rate is ok if you dont go to high +6 is save +12 is max and hard to do , lotsa gold that gona cost as freebie player)

teamwork is usually much more fun but most can be done solo. I have yet to go to the main city and find my farm and what else they have hidden there, definitely a game to try out.

two downsides to the game is its separations (IP block) between US and Europe, And its genderlock system but the verry anime cheese story makes up for that. (warrior/cleric=male  archer/mage=female)

US link

EU link

PS: I play the EU version so cant say how nexon works whit price$ and freebies and /of if gamemechanics are tweaked between continents

personaly I would rate the game a 7.5 or so.. specialy since its a action game and not your typical click  tab-targeting. comparing to asian style games alone ,that I almost all tried out at some point this would get a easy 9/10. but thats all personal preferences ofc

Thats not DN EU thats DN SEA you know philippines and such, thats why EU players get screwed in the arse all the time, becouse NA got IP block for EU so we have to play on SEA which has twice the latency if not more. Have you seen mobs teleporting? I did, and got my ass handed to me. Nexxons is failing again... friggin hard... 

stay clear of this as the support is really horrible or does not exist at all, lastly lag issues, game is very ping dependent.

I generally don't like cash shop games where using the cash shop gains you a benefit over a free player. I'm more of a subscription player so I don't have to worry about that. Plus, I'm not willing to fork out more than 15-20$ per month on an MMORPG, most of the cash shop games require hundreds of dollars to compete.

Originally posted by scaarab

Thats not DN EU thats DN SEA you know philippines and such, thats why EU players get screwed in the arse all the time, becouse NA got IP block for EU so we have to play on SEA which has twice the latency if not more. Have you seen mobs teleporting? I did, and got my ass handed to me. Nexxons is failing again... friggin hard... 

Im dutch and dint have a singe latency issue sofar. no warping mobs, seena  few warping players but thats 1/200 and had a total of two disconects for some reason, might be location,might be own client issue dont know.

as I said I only play on master+ levels and I run solo 99% of the time( just my thing) not had issue's guess it depents on your location.

youre right tho, the servers are SEA, dint even know that haha :P

I'm not a fan of Nexon and Dragon Nest has some issues, but this review is terrible. Weak PvP? PvP is one place where people generally agree DN is strong. It's won multiple awards for it's people which finally breaks from the tab, target, cast mold, it's action-concentrated combat, the ability to dodge, etc. Either this person didn't actually play the game or got an Acrobat to level 10, tried to PvP then qq'ed when they got their faces eaten.

Innovation is difficult to determine, but considering there's not a single game available in the english market that has this kind of gameplay, I'd say that has something going for it. Vindictus is more action-oriented, but the combat isn't as free-form and sticks toward realism; no bouncing off walls, pouncing on characters from the air, and very little variety in attacks. Dungeon Fighter comes closer but it's a 2d sidescroller, and Rusty Hearts improves on that only barely. 

Graphics aren't something you should comment on, if you want to be a video game reviewer, using personal biases. There's a bit of professionalism expected, and being offended by the content of the graphics is an entitled way of thinking. "I'm offended by this therefore it is bad/wrong." I don't particularly care for all the panty shots either, but the graphics themselves are amazing and that you could say otherwise is sort of ridiculous. The spell effects, the costume textures, the animations, are all extremely well done. Who gives a shit that you can see Irine's cameltoe? You want to complain about over-sexualisation of women, Blade & Soul and TERA are that way *points*

The game's sole problem is that it's published by Nexon. Nexon's inability to handle bugs, bots, gold sellers and forum mods that completely disappear for days on end (*cough* Alteris *cough*) are the issues it needs to fix. The game itself, as was created by Eyedentiy, is excellent. Their choice in publishers, not so much.

Originally posted by gaeanprayer

I'm not a fan of Nexon and Dragon Nest has some issues, but this review is terrible. Weak PvP? PvP is one place where people generally agree DN is strong. It's won multiple awards for it's people which finally breaks from the tab, target, cast mold, it's action-concentrated combat, the ability to dodge, etc. Either this person didn't actually play the game or got an Acrobat to level 10, tried to PvP then qq'ed when they got their faces eaten.

Innovation is difficult to determine, but considering there's not a single game available in the english market that has this kind of gameplay, I'd say that has something going for it. Vindictus is more action-oriented, but the combat isn't as free-form and sticks toward realism; no bouncing off walls, pouncing on characters from the air, and very little variety in attacks. Dungeon Fighter comes closer but it's a 2d sidescroller, and Rusty Hearts improves on that only barely. 

Graphics aren't something you should comment on, if you want to be a video game reviewer, using personal biases. There's a bit of professionalism expected, and being offended by the content of the graphics is an entitled way of thinking. "I'm offended by this therefore it is bad/wrong." I don't particularly care for all the panty shots either, but the graphics themselves are amazing and that you could say otherwise is sort of ridiculous. The spell effects, the costume textures, the animations, are all extremely well done. Who gives a shit that you can see Irine's cameltoe? You want to complain about over-sexualisation of women, Blade & Soul and TERA are that way *points*

 

The game's sole problem is that it's published by Nexon. Nexon's inability to handle bugs, bots, gold sellers and forum mods that completely disappear for days on end (*cough* Alteris *cough*) are the issues it needs to fix. The game itself, as was created by Eyedentiy, is excellent. Their choice in publishers, not so much.

 

I agree about the PvP.

I have no idea why the author reviewed the PvP as being poor when it's excellent and extremely fun.

It doesn't sound like she even experienced it seeing as how it's one of the more unique PvP setups out there.

The thing is you have to actually use skill and strategy to be good at PvP in DN.

Also, there is no way this game deserves the poor rating she gave it.

It's actually a fairly fun and unique mmo.





 

I think Lori is not the right person to write about this game because this game is more than mediocre.

The entertainment value of the game is way up there specially when you actually took the time to actually read the quest dialogue rather than Pack-n-Go all the time.

And gender-specific classes as a Con is ridiculous since the Premise of the game already explained why this is the case. Again, Lori should have taken the time to read.

And how "heavily instanced" is ever a Con? And limited Classes as Con?

Wow, what kind of game did you expect DN to be? O.o?

In as much as I would like to respectfully disagree with the review, I cannot respect a half-fast review just to meet deadline -- and this is what this review is, nothing but a filler.

I think Mediocre sums it up pretty well when you think about what site your on.  A site for MMO's, maybe you guys think this is great action oriented multiplayer game.  But its a far far cry from being anything but that and miles from anything comparable to a full blown MMO.  IM pretty sure that was taken into consideration on this review as it seems fairly obvious to me. 

This is an online console game with a cash shop.

EDIT: I think its funny as hell to see people freaking out over what would be considered an average console game just because its being marketed as an MMO.

Does this game have instanced pvp you can queue up for?

Originally posted by Thedrip

Does this game have instanced pvp you can queue up for?

Yes this game has pvp, but you don't necessarily queue up for pvp. There are many lobbies hosted by other players, but there are also some pvp lobbies hosted via nexon servers. My problem with pvp is when they decided balanced pvp wasn't the way to go, so instead of leaving gear out of the equation as far as stats are concerned they decided  to allow pay to win into their pvp enviorment. As far as PvE is concerned I felt like I was wasting so much time trying to farm, rather than simply buying gold (Which seemed to be as common as a certain naughty thing that people love to claim they never do).

I'm assuming they expected players to create characters with specific intentions, IE: I will make this Sword Master for pvp, or I will make this Priest for PvE. The reason I say this, is because at the time they released the cash shop they wanted to charge $20.00 per respec, now I don't know if it still costs this much, but I do know that charging $20.00 for any single item in a micro transaction game is a little insane.

The concept of a pure skill, action combat based pvp system is what drew me to this game, unfortunately they gave way to the moaners on the forums and allowed gear to give a 150% advantage over an ungeared player(At the time this was the highest stat difference recorded via a screen shot), which ultimately killed the idea of being able to level up purely from pvp, which before was totally possible.

Things you should expect if you decide play this game.

* Pay2Win/

* Nexon and getting Nexowned/

* The community quality that is to be expected from every Nexon game (At the time I was pondering typing, "every Free to Play game", but I feel as though rusty hearts has a decent community. Though that's just personal experience. )

* Botting and Gold Selling to be  a common practice.

* I have ADD AND THIS POST IS DONE!

Been playing Dragon Nest and it was a blast, however i do have a question.. Whats with dragon titles anyway??? Almost all games that was release are related to dragons.. Just like DUNGEONS AND DRAGON'S, DRAGONICA, DRAGON SAGA, DRAGON AGE, DRAGON BALL AND DRAGONA.. What's with dragons?? anyway as long as their good to play im playing just like Dragon ball and Dragona.

I would give it a 7 for the combat alone. Especially loads of fun as melee class. I also really like how you can use dodging and kiting as ranged class. I find it odd that this part of the game is just a note in the whole review. It should at least be mentioned also in the innovation section.

The bias towards the graphics is kind of exaggerated too imo. I agree with it, just not how heavy it weighs towards the score.

Originally posted by snapfusion

 

I think Mediocre sums it up pretty well when you think about what site your on.  A site for MMO's, maybe you guys think this is great action oriented multiplayer game.  But its a far far cry from being anything but that and miles from anything comparable to a full blown MMO.  IM pretty sure that was taken into consideration on this review as it seems fairly obvious to me. 

lol, is that why DDO is rated 8.0 and GW is rated 8.6, because they are "full blown MMO"?

Like I said, Lori is not the right person to review this game. 'nuff said. ;)

Just another garbage F2P game cloned from other engines with hardly an ounce of its own original development. Great example of why the MMO market has gone down hill since the early 2000's. These F2P game companies like Nexon have done nothing but hurt the genre.

Out of the hundreds (or thousands these days?) of F2P games out there, I can count on one hand the actual good ones. And 3 of those 5 most likely started as a P2P game with no intent of going F2P until they realized their game wasn't good enough to function as a P2P thus forcing them to fold.

Im a player from NA and im very unsatisfied with Nexon Company. Their customer support is almost non existent. For example they wont give the prizes of their events on time, almost 2 weeks the Roll Call Event is over and i havent got my 10 free bag spaces yet, almost all my friends got theirs and is been a week since i sent the ticket and nothing.

About dungeons party experience i dont feel any difference is kinda a lie. About those WINGS i dont see any difference on the speed, i can race someone who dont have them and it will be the same speed.

About the dungeon drop rates, they lowered. About the golden bunny appearance, they lower it.

About Free NX offers to gain free credit on game currency. When you fill those offers or surveys they will forward your personal info provided to other marketing companies that will spam your email, text your phone and call you etc everyday. And is almost impossible to make them to credit you, they wont credit you on the promissed advertised time you have to spam them and send them a screenshot proving that you completed the survey or offer. If you sent a ticket to customer support of NEXON they will auto close it.

About the Cash shop is extremelly expensive, yes the fashions are just rental like she said you can buy them permanent for a high price. I hate about the IP blocking issues since i would love to go to Cherry Credits or Euro since Nexon have no professionalism at all.

I lost my taste on this game since im always fearing their bad customer support and their fail promisses on events etc. No reliability , no credibility at all. I would love to have something good to say but this company totally fail me.

About the Game itself, is beautiful, sadly is lacking a lot of content yeah and is kinda boring when i have to pass same dungeon 10 times for diferent quest. The server i belong Gerrant is kinda empty, the chat sistem is spammed with gold sellers 24/7 which makes impossible to met people and gain friends.

--> The very first week of the game release, server was new and the gold sellers out from nowhere already had thousands of gold, cough cough? (every mob only drops a fail 50 copper or 20 silver as much) >.>

About Pay to Win - 100% yes. Buy cash shop jellies upgrade your gears a lot and you will have a huge great advantage over others on the ranked pvp games, youll be on rank for sure.

I dont know what else to say. But i wont spent a single penny on a game that the company is working so bad. And i wont quit cause they made me feel they want me to.

My rating to the game 6

My rating to Nexon 3