The internet is at buzz with Nintendo’s newest addition to the Mobile library titled Dragalia Lost. Heck, I wouldn’t even have been aware of this game’s existence at all if it wasn’t for Twitter and YouTube. So I decided to check it out myself and see what the buzz is all about.
Dragalia Lost is an action role-playing game developed and published by Nintendo, in collaboration with Cygames, for Android and iOS. It was released on September 27, 2018. The game is a result between a partnership of Nintendo and Cygames to develop a new mobile game, the first game with another company after Nintendo initial partnership with DeNA in 2015, which continued for other games.
The story takes place in Alberia, the kingdom where dragons live. All royal members in Alberia have the Dragon Transformation ability, where they can wield a dragon’s power by forming a pact with a dragon to borrow their form in battle. One day, a strange occurrence begins to happen in this kingdom. The Holy Shard protected by the capital starts to lose its power. In order to save his people, the Seventh Prince, who has not made a pact with a dragon, sets off on his Dragon Selection Trial.
It is an action role-playing game with touchscreen controls, where characters attack enemies with simple inputs and magic attacks of different elements which can be weaker or stronger than other ones. Another method of attack is a special attack where the character transforms into a dragon and can greatly damage the enemy for a moment when they have sufficient energy that can be collected while playing or destroying statues of dragons. The characters also have their own classes, with attacking and healing types being the primary ones. While the game is fully playable as a single-player experience, it also supports up to four-player co-operative multiplayer.
I’ve played Dragalia Lost for about a day now and I can kinda see the hype behind it but make no mistake, it’s nothing groundbreaking. As someone who’s played a good number of gacha games in the past, there’s a few things I tend to keep an eye out. The first thing is gameplay, just how fun is it?
Well, to tell you the truth, it’s actually OK. The game has this touchscreen mechanics that’s easy to master but gets a bit tedious at times. It took me a while to get used to it, but even so, I’m still glad for the auto-play. Speaking of auto-play, it works fine but my only gripe (pet peeve so to speak) with it is that the character completely ignore items or chests and just be-line straight to the boss battle. Aside from that, I will say that even if you make an input, the game does not cancel out the auto-play until you yourself have done it. I thought that little feature was nice.
The other thing I look into when playing a gacha game is, how free-to-play friendly the game design is built. Listen, this literally makes or breaks a mobile game for me. Right now, the game seems fine. Two levels usual banks you enough Wyrmite for a single summon. However, I will say that the other activities in the game also provide Wyrmites, such as bonding with your dragons, build facilities in your castles, viewing adventurers and dragons personal stories and more. The amount you earn ain’t a lot but I think it’s spread out just enough that if you’re someone of strong-will, you probably might be able to stay away from purchasing in-game currency, maybe!
Visually, the game looks fine, great even! If you’re not into the whole chibi thing, then it might be a turn off for you but the game does offers both 3D chibis and 2D portrayed arts to admire. The reason why I mentioned this is because that’s the big selling point of this game, the units you’ll be summoning. That and dragons of course. Both adventurers and dragon all have backstories for you to care about, which makes summoning and leveling them that more enticing. There’s even a Dragalia Life comic strip that has even more lore, which shows that Nintendo is really planning on building a new universe that’s here to stay for the long run.
Of course I gotta mention the RPG aspect of the game. As mentioned with the whole building facilites, there’s actually a ton of things to do. From upgrading your adventurers abilities, swapping weapons, unbinding cards and bonding with dragons, I was surprised with how much you can actually do in the game. Sure, there’s an auto-optimize feature (which is something I use…A LOT) but I’m sure the die-hard number-crunchers will be kept busy for quite sometime. Also there’s a co-op multiplayer with limited time raids as well for you to try out.
Overall, I can definitely see why this game blew up the way it did. It has the gameplay, the waifus and a universe to dwell in, all wrapped up in Nintendo’s quality seal. Dragalia Lost feels like a complete package, offering a fun experience with a stylish presentation. It’s worth checking out.
The game is currently only available in Japan, Taiwan, Hong Kong, Macau, and the United States. No word on if the game will drop in Europe and the rest of the world.
