Dragomon Hunter Beta Impressions
The latest title released under the watchful eye of Aeria Games sees a Monster Hunter-esque style free-to-play MMO attempt to take the monster slaughtering crown. Does the Closed Beta of Dragomon Hunter offer an exciting free alternative or is it a poor attempt at rinsing a genre for everything it's worth? Dragomon Hunter boasts an impressive feature list with a huge range of tamable monsters, a colorful gaming environment, versatile classes and enough end-game content to satisfy even the most hardcore of gamers. There's a huge gap in the Western markets at the moment, with thousands clambering for a Monster Hunter style MMO, but does Dragomon Hunter deliver? It's worth noting that my experiences covering Dragomon Hunter are strictly Closed Beta only. There's still plenty of time for them to address some of the smaller problems, although it's the issues with the fundamentals that have me concerned. The entire appeal of the game was to experience something akin to the Monster Hunter style of hunting down larger than life monsters and hacking them up for gear. Although the premise of the game seems to offer exactly that, the problems soon appear. I'm talking about the combat. The enemies themselves, the Dragomon, behave similarly to Monster Hunter in the way that they launch huge attacks with very specific patterns that are displayed visually - challenging the player to avoid the attack. Sadly however it's the player combat that's lacking. Instead of a hack-and-slash approach using the mouse keys it's a typical macro-based combat system that feels slow and slugging. Avoiding the enemy attacks is done simply using an ability called Dodge, which is either double tapping a direction or hitting the macro button. This style of combat system is present in practically every one of Aeria Games' titles, quickly making it feel repetitive and predictable. Couple that with a limited number of abilities and the core mechanics of the game become stale very quickly. Thankfully however Dragomon Hunter manages to impress in other areas. If you can excuse the lack of depth and variety in the combat there's a myriad of activities and features to dive into. You're able to farm various Dragomon for a chance to loot an item that allows you to mount that Dragomon, although sadly the vast majority cannot be used in combat and the ones that can are only available in select missions. Killing Dragomon can also sometimes result in Dragocite loot, rare items that can be used to embody your gear with unique and powerful traits. The gear customization is one of the games most redeeming qualities, allowing players to customize traits, improve all stats and craft better options every step of the way. Although the stat customization is fantastic, there is no visual impact whatsoever. Individual pieces of armor do not change your characters appearance, only single items known as Outfits have that effect. This does drastically impact the satisfaction you feel after farming powerful Dragomon for crafting materials, only to look exactly the same. It's early days for Dragomon Hunter and I was only able to reach level 30 during my time in the Closed Beta, which is when you unlock a further advancement option with your chosen class - which effectively does little more than offer the chance to invest points into specific abilities to increase certain stats, but hopefully the developers have some big plans for Open Beta. Stay tuned for a full review some time soon.Leave a comment
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