DragonSword: Awakening‘s existence is pretty unique. It was developed as a full-on gacha game, with all the typical accoutrements and it even released in Korea as one last year. When the game’s publisher refused to pay the devs what they were owed, however, things changed. The devs split off and have now released the game worldwide as a buy-to-play title, making it a terrific choice for anyone who wants to play an open world action RPG with tons of characters and things to find without having to spend money on gacha pulls or energy.
So what does this mean exactly? The game has 19 characters, but instead of forcing you to grind for in-game currency and buy pulls, they’re simply given to you in a couple of ways. The more direct way is that the game just full-on gives you several characters solely for going through its story. For the majority of the cast, though, you’re given an item every ten story missions that you can use to immediately unlock any of the available characters. This works out nicely, and it’s honestly refreshing to play a game like this without worrying that your playthrough will be worsened by you refusing to gamble.
As per similar games, you have teams with a max of three members that you can swap between on the fly. Characters have default attack strings, two standard unique abilities, and two signal abilities that only become usable once an enemy is afflicted with a status ailment. Each character is able to inflict status ailments on enemies (such as bleed, stun, frost, shock, etc), and hitting an enemy with an ability enough times will naturally cause them to enter one of those states. However, the signal abilities of any team member will become available if the right ailment is applied.
DragonSword: Awakening isn’t the first game to do this, of course, but the big difference is that once you tag a team member in to use their signal skill, you can then immediately swap to another character and have the others remain in the field until their skill animation is finished. This also extends to using signal skills as the character you’re currently playing. As such, maximizing damage to enemies is built around having team members synergize so that you’re queuing up their signal skills frequently. It’s an incredibly compelling system that generates ridiculous amounts of spectacle, and I’m all for it.
For instance, one of the possible meta teams is comprised of Theresia, Roxy, and Castella. Enemies all have break gauges that leave them vulnerable upon depletion. You can use whatever normal attacks you want to break an enemy, at which point a Castella signal ability that inflicts a full stack of stun will be applied, which will then trigger signal attacks used by both Theresia and Roxy, which you can call down simultaneously. The combat is all about finding similar skill rotations that allow you to persistently do tons of damage. It’s terrific.
The game’s story currently takes place over eight chapters with ten missions each. As this was all intended to just be the first part of a gacha game, things do end on a cliffhanger, but it’s possible the devs will make expansions if the game sells well enough (which it seems to be), but this will understandably turn some folks off. Progression is based on levelling your characters up, which you’ll mostly do with skill books accrued while playing. All of a character’s skills can similarly be levelled up, plus there are awakenings that you can unlock that increase various parameters further.
Gameplay mostly takes place in the game’s open world, which has the typical assortment of chests to open, as well as environmental puzzles to solve, such as pushing pillars onto buttons or placing stones on platforms to light them all up. There are little minigames too, here and there, and smaller side quests to do. Interestingly, chests, puzzles, side quests, and minigames aren’t at all included on the game’s map and need to be found by exploring. This can make it difficult to 100% the various areas, but there’s still a sizeable amount to do here regardless.
In terms of repeatable content, there are dungeons scattered across the map that have multiple difficulties with better rewards. There are also powerful bosses out in the world that give unique rewards, hunts you can embark on against certain bosses, plus you’ll unlock raids too. Multiple major side quest chains exist as well, called bond quests, and these have you undergo missions from specific characters. Much like the main story quests, these are heavily based around going to icons on the map and having story sequences play out. They’re fine for what they are, but you won’t care for the game’s main and side quests if you’re put off by the icon chasing.
I have to mention the fact that this is an open world game running on Unreal Engine 5 that has an extremely manageable install size (under 20 gigabytes) and actually runs well. This is probably the only open world UE5 game I’ve ever seen that has such good performance, as I often get over 100 fps while out in the world at 1440p.
For the price, there’s plenty to see and do in DragonSword: Awakening. The game runs fantastically, looks great, has satisfying gameplay, and a lot to sink your teeth into. If you’ve ever wanted to get into a gacha game that wasn’t predatory and requires absolutely no gambling, it’s incredibly easy to recommend this one. The less-than-interesting quest structure and the fact that the game’s future is so uncertain do hold it back some, but I’m having a blast with it.
DragonSword: Awakening: For the price, there's plenty to see and do in DragonSword: Awakening. The game runs fantastically, looks great, has satisfying gameplay, and a lot to sink your teeth into. – Andrew Farrell
Consider checking out our previous review:
High Times PC review — Donut go gentle into that good night |
