Dreamlords: The Reawakening Review: Cross Between Two Genres
By Kei Beneza (dividelife), OnRPG Journalist
There is more than one subcategory of Massively Multiplayer Online (MMO) games; one of these revolves around the RTS (Real Time Strategy) factor. In order to cater to other types of gamers, MMO developers must come up with more than one stereotypical type of MMO, hence Dreamlords.
Dreamlords is one of the first MMORTSes (Massively Multiplayer Online Real Time Strategy) Games ever made. When I say RTS, I mean those who share the same gameplay as Warcraft and Command and Conquer Red Alert. You’ll navigate through more than one character on the field, and if you’re thinking of Granado Espada, you’re most likely going to handle more than three units. Dreamlords combines a lot of elements from the traditional MMO and the goodness of RTS gameplay. It may seem like a weird gaming combination but it did work wonders for the title. Let’s dive in and see how it goes?
Starting up
You’ll start by choosing one of three races: Covenant, Nihilim, and Thûl. All three races are basically the renamed fantasy world races we’ve come to know and love (Human, undead (or at least cultists) and Orc). One thing that I find absurd about this game is its lack of tutorials. There are a few pointers, which you can browse through on the game site, but it’s not like anyone wants to read this stuff before immersing themselves in the game. One interesting thing about this game is that it has two separate clients, browser and the battle client. You set up your strategy and building/army locations through your browser and execute them through your RTS client. I’m actually confused at whether I should call this a browser game or not but it does serve as the bridge between the two. The browser tutorial will actually start to make sense once you realize that you’ll need to access the site more often than expected.
The Army
Real TIME strategy- they weren’t kidding
One thing that makes this more of a browser game than an MMO is the games unforgiving waiting time. Mandatory things such as gathering resources and building structures (let alone upgrading them) actually take time to progress. Most would see this feature as a nuisance since you have to plan ahead in order to join the war with a formidable army. It’s actually easy to make an army, the only problem here is what you’re going to do while waiting for these MANDATORY things to finish.
All out war
The game is technically a jump into the action PVP type, meaning you will join a persistent world in progress while at the same time helping your race win a certain battle. Once a round ends or a particular race overruns the others, you’ll have to go back to the browser client (drawing board) to plan ahead and gather troops.
The game seems pretty repetitive this way but if you’re into mass wanton murder and PVP, then Dreamlords is definitely the game for you. Combat has limitless possibilities, as you will enter an all out war along with your race in order to crush enemy forces. Much like a game of DoTA that seems outmost repetitive, you won’t know how diverse things can be until you experience the action first hand.
Mobs for questing or for grinding
QUESTS and why we do them
Yes sir! You heard right! The game does have quests that you can grind in order to earn money and experience for your army. You can buy units and upgrades in the browser client along with heroes (or whatever they call them) which will increase your army’s morale. The game is quite lenient when it comes to giving cash so you won’t really HAVE to grind your arse off, but if you want a hefty army of epic proportions, then by all means grind your ass off! LOL
Jan-ken-pon!
Winning or losing a battle greatly revolves around the strategic advantage of your units rather than how many soldiers you have. Since the game runs off a rock-paper-scissors basis, it would be best to make sure you have enough rocks, papers, and scissors to counter accordingly. Spamming a single unit leads you nowhere and only makes you into farming material. I’m not sure how strategic a rock-paper-scissors game would be but if it worked for Advanced Wars (Gameboy Adv, Nintendo DS game) then I’m rooting for this one.
Epic problems
Before downloading the game, I noticed a bunch of complaints regarding the browser interface. The game developers declared that they’re having problems when it comes to the browser interface which has to be refreshed accordingly in order for the interface to fully load up (or update). Funny, as this problem seems to date quite a while back and has not yet been fixed.
Graphics and sounds
The graphics are pretty good and more or less acceptable for today’s meta of gaming. I’d say it’s a cross of Warcraft 3 and Shogun (if you’ve heard of it). The graphics do lack a bit of detail but everything seems to be in order, as the troops do look better than some of the RTS games I’ve seen so far. The sounds on the other hand are crooked and empty. They do provide crunchy shield bashing sound effects but it sort of gets old after a while since it’s basically a “SWISH!” without a “SWASH!”. The game is presentable I’ll say that, but definitely a lot of room for improvement.
The verdict
Dreamlords: The Reawakening is definitely a must try especially due to its unique form of gameplay. A cross between two different genres? That alone is enough to dub this game special among its MMO kin. The game suffers from a lot of errors especially on the browser side of things, but they’ll probably fix it (soon LOL). When it comes to graphics, the game has everything going for it. Everything is nicely rendered and provides the necessary ambiance for an all out war between three factions. All I have to say is that the game can still be considered a half-baked cookie, imperfect but you know it’s bound to be good anyway.
The good:
– Different form of gameplay
– Diverse combat
– It’s a friggin cross between 2 games!
– Good visuals.
The bad:
– Still suffer from the browser sickness (and it’s not like they’re doing anything about it)
– Rock paper scissors? Really?
– Waiting time
– Sounds are sickening.
