Game Preview: Dragon Raja

I was about to do a preview for Blade and Soul after Aura Kingdom II but the patch took longer than expected (it keeps on repeating like wth) and saw this game. The game was published by Archosaur game together with Szn Interaction Ent initially released on July 18, 2019 while SEA version was released May 26, 2020. They boast a futuristic cyberpunk setting with an environment having a day night cycle as the weather changes in-game too along with the best graphics made with Unreal engine 4. Unreal Engine! So ok! I'm sold!
I had no problem patching the game on an average internet connection. Starting the game, I was impressed by the video in the login page the graphics was great! It has a gaming console vibe type of gaming. I chose s20 server then head over to the classes/jobs.

As what you've seen, they have 4 classes with gender options and a bonus of a female loli version on each classes/jobs. As I said in Aura Kingdom preview it would be sweet to have a loli option and now my wish is granted. XD Some of the classes can be developed into different types. Blade master can be a warrior or a tank type, Assassin can be developed into a mage (I guess for physical and magic damage type), and Soul dancer can be a mage (nuker) or an assist type (support).

Customization is massive. You can change the height, width, thickness, width, depth and sizes. Hair colors alone has 60 colors to choose from for your main hair color and 60 colors as well for the lower part of your hair to make that ombre look. There are 13 pre-made faces for female and 14 for male that you can choose from. If you're too lazy (like me) to fully customize everything you can just choose a pre-made, from there you can adjust the color or change the type of eyes, nose or lips according to your preference. With everything being customizable you only have 8 hair types to choose from for male and female. I was hoping to go for a long pigtail for a Miku look. Still this has more than what other average games can offer. You can watch a short video for the job/classes and character customization here.

I chose Soul dancer, you got it right another support character in the making. The game starts with the prologue of the story which also comes with the basic tutorial of the game. I love the in-game graphics which pars with its cinematic videos. It has a dreamy crisp graphics, very pleasing to the eye indeed. The environment is very well detailed as I roam around and was awed looking at this big whale from afar as it moves closer to the cape just to do that jump. What a show off. XD
It was a good start! It makes me want to play more even though I was not doing anything for the first hour of the game. There were a lot of scenes and I had a lot of question about what's happening

After that unfortunate event I was taken to Cassell College to do more story scenes and gets introduced to more people that I think I will be with for most part of the Story quests. Then after I get to roam around the new map with this cool motorbike and also checked the user's interface. You won't see dungeons or dailies here. What they have here are scheduled events much like as your Class subjects everyday when you go to school. A unique activity that I never saw in any Arpg or Mmorpg that I played is the Fast and Furious event that they have. Its a car racing game that has a crash nitro kart gameplay.

If Aura Kingdom has Eidolons here you have Allies. They assist you in battle by suddenly showing up and do damage to your enemy for a short period of time. You can summon random allies under recruit which are the characters in the main story of the game.

This is the world map. Most of the game location is in Japan as it has the most map, unless there are other parts of the world that can be unlocked from here as the game goes on. You can teleport to any of these location by tapping the name of the maps then tapping the location where you want to be teleported to within that map. You will see a warning notification on your screen for unsafe location for pk areas.

Here's a bit of the gameplay. This is the Day of liberty event. Its like a territory war in Lineage II but here any server can join in. You can join with or without a club/guild.

Aside from the usual mount and jump they also have a dash and flicker button. Flicker is very helpful on avoiding sudden attacks and running from pks specially in Day of liberty event. You can rotate the camera for a 360 view and a zoom in/out view to get a  in-depth feel of the surrounding. Panoramic view anyone?

Dragon Raja is an impressive game though in my opinion I don't see it as an Mmorpg. It leans toward more of an Arpg and the best there is at that. It's an advance version of Arpg that offers so much more. What's missing on here is the adventure feel. You don't get to travel the world of the game but you follow the story of the game while creating/developing an avatar of yourself. There's no level grinding or dungeon raid or going on a world level boss with all of the players. Here you just need to do the activity that they have everyday and complete the story mode. The class or roles are not distinctive enough. You can go through an activity/event without any need of a tank or a healer or a nuker. Everyone in the party just need to start doing damage then you can all go on auto and wait till the event is done. 

What keeps me from playing Dragon raja besides the impressive graphics? The story. I rarely get attach to game story of every mmorpg that I played. But here it made feel the good old days where I sit in front of my tv for couple of hours to play an Rpg game! I want to know how everything ends for each character specially the ones I'm mostly with throughout the game. Though I hope my character plays a better role in the story because I don't see my importance in the plot besides choosing my response to every event or maybe for now I guess. Maybe it goes better along the way. I also want to know what's up with Z and if I get to kick his butt. I'll keep playing until the story ends and see if there's something else they have to offer.

Thank you for reading!
Taehee/Miyu