I don't know how many of you guys are PC gamers, but so far I haven't seen anyone on the site bring up an upcoming PC mmorpg I've been drooling over for about a year now (which I'm surprised at; you'd thinksomeonehere would've heard about it). It's called Dragon Nest and from what I've seen of the game, it's looks like I've found a new mmo to sink my teeth into.

I discovered the game a while ago while I was browsing Youtube. The thing that attracted me about the game was the action packed combat system. In the video I saw, the players were bouncing enemies off of the environment and juggling them with long and close range attacks, which was impressive considering that most mmorpgs feature tedious click and wait combat mechanics. If I compared Dragon Nest to anything that's already out there I'd probably have to have to say it's like an online multi-player Kingdom Hearts with a medieval setting.



Gameplay mainly involves questing. You can do this solo or you can form a party to quest with. Either way, you're going to be trekking through beautiful locales, fighting waves of enemies, finding loot, and staring down huge bosses. As an added bonus you can reportedly earn the ability to transform into a dragon, but I personally have yet to see this in any previews.Like most rpgs there are town, field, and dungeon areas. Towns are where you party up, buy items, and talk to various NPCs. Field and dungeon areas are where you'll do most of your fighting. There's also a pvp mode and from what I've seen of it, it can get pretty intense.



The game plays from a third person over-the-shoulder perspective. The player moves with the wsad keys, moves the camera and aims with the mouse, jump with the spacebar, attacks by left-clicking and uses skills with the number keys. This setup appears to work well, since I've seen players pull off insane combos with every character class like it's nobody's business.

There are four character classes. The first is the warrior, a close combat specialist. He has a hack and slash fighting style with powerful melee specials perfectly suited for dealing heavy damage at close range. The second class is the archer, a long range fighter. She plays like a third person shooter, rattling off critical hits and rapid fire barrages at long range. She also has a few melee abilities for when enemies get too close. Below is a video highlighting these first two classes.



The third class is the mage, who uses spells as her main line of offense; launching fireballs, freezing enemies and even poisoning them. She seems to be a more strategy based character and her spells cover a wide area and can hit many enemies at once.The fourth class is the cleric, the healer of the group. He fights with a mace and can call up lightening to strike his enemies. He's seems suited to mid-range combat. Below is a video of the mage and the cleric in action.



There are a variety of enemies and bosses in the game and they range from small to huge.You'll face off against droves of goblins, orcs, skeletons, and harpies in the varies fields and dungeons in the game. At the end of the dungeons or in some special events you'll fight against bosses that include minotaurs, gargoyles, giant spiders, ogres and of course dragons.



As I'm sure you've noticed from the videos and images I've included, the graphics in the game are gorgeous. The characters all look great and are lovingly animated, the particle effects are pretty, and the environments have all sorts of nice details. Everything is nice and colorful there are some nice blur and dust effects in combat. Also, does the art style remind anyone else of Crystal Chronicles or is just me. Anyway, even though the graphics look so nice, Nexon promises the game will have modest system requirements(and that's good for me).

The game is free to play, so don't worry about any monthly fees or anything.It is nearing release in the east, but the north American release date has yet to be decided. From what I've read on the Internets, though, it may be coming out sometime in early 2010. I'm keeping my fingers crossed cause I can't wait to play this.