“Dragon Saga” (formerly known as “Dragonica Online”) is an MMORPG published by Gravity Interactive, the same company that brought you Ragnarok Online. It’s a side-scrolling style Action/Fantasy F2P RPG played almost entirely by your keyboard! Rated E10+

Story: “In a world where Dragons roam the land and sky, there exists a civilization with extraordinary magical powers. This world, the world of Dragon Saga, will take new adventurers into the discovery of it’s riches and traditions. Dragon Saga compliments the hyper quick game play with visually beautiful settings.” (www.playdragonsaga.com) Basically, it’s: Good Dragon keeps peace. Bad Dragon tries to rule the world. War breaks out. Four heroes (representing the four playable classes in the game) side with the Good Dragon to bring down the Bad Dragon and its followers to maintain peace. Hundreds of years pass, Bad Dragon is up to something. Find out what it is and stop it! Pretty generic but made interesting with the cartoony/anime looking characters and the occasional joke or two.

Character Classes: There are 4 playable character classes in Dragon Saga: Warrior, Magician, Archer and Thief. In addition to these basic jobs, upon reaching lvl 20, each class has the option of choosing to advance to one of two “specializations” with different equipment, stats and skills. Furthermore, each “specialization” has 3 advancements. For example, if you start the game off as an Archer, at lvl 20 you have the choice to advance into either a Hunter or a Marksman. If you choose Hunter, at lvl 40 you can advance into a Pathfinder and ultimately a Sentinel at lvl 60. The Marksman becomes a Specialist at lvl 40 and a Destroyer at lvl 60.

Graphics: The Dragon Saga world is a rich, colorful 3D environment. The characters are basic and can’t be customized very much but are still very visually pleasing and monsters range from small and cute to big and menacing. The entire game has a humorous element to it, though. There are even times when defeated monsters are launched towards the players screen, bashing against it and leaving cracks!

Misc: Since Gravity Interactive got its hands on Dragonica Online in late October of 2010, there have been a few…drawbacks and delays in the games development. The game has a few gaps and holes here and there such as in the Item Mall (IM), where players can spend real money for special in-game items. There are lots of items missing in the IM that Dragonica Online had like character costumes, pet items, etc. Some of the categories of items in the IM aren’t even available yet. Dragon Saga is still very substantial, in that it has been making a lot of progress with content releases with each update. The most recent update is the “Paris Strikes Back” patch, revealing multiple new dungeons and quests, the final (3rd) character class specialization, a level cap increase, the MyHome housing system, the Wedding system and Guild PvP.

Overall: Dragon Saga is a great, fun and funny game that will definitely keep you coming back for more. Veterans of Dragonica Online will notice lots of differences in the game but nothing that will keep them from experience the classic gameplay they’ve always enjoyed and new players will discover an easy to learn but difficult to master game filled with action, mystery and above all, humor!

Rating: Worthy of the download! Go here: http://www.playdragonsaga.com/ to download the game client. Happy hunting, folks =]

Video footage from YouTube.com: RaizenProductions