Dragon City is an iOS game from Spanish developer Social Point . It's
a port of the company's popular Facebook game, which we reviewed here ,
and is available now as a free download from the App Store with
additional in-app purchases. By
signing into the game with Facebook, players may pick up where they
left off and sync progress between the mobile and social network
versions of the game.
Dragon City, for the unfamiliar, is a game in which players construct habitats and then populate them with dragons. These dragons can then be bred together to create other types of dragon, or used to battle other players. The eventual aim of the game is to collect all of the available dragons in the game, of which there are well over 150.
Dragon City, for the unfamiliar, is a game in which players construct habitats and then populate them with dragons. These dragons can then be bred together to create other types of dragon, or used to battle other players. The eventual aim of the game is to collect all of the available dragons in the game, of which there are well over 150.
In
our previous review, we noted that Dragon City had a lot of potential,
but that its lack of narrative progression, drab quests and unbalanced
difficulty curve marred the experience to a significant degree. While
the Facebook version has evolved a little over time and the iOS version
incorporates some of these improvements (while seemingly stripping out
access to some other features such as the “Dragon Book” tracking which
breeds the player has collected so far), many of the most significant
issues are still present and correct — most notably the lack of story
progression and any sense of “theme” to the quest objectives. Given
the attractive, well-animated and cartoonish nature of the game's
visuals, this is a shame; the presentation would make it ripe for a bit
of characterization, but the game's text remains somewhat dry and
businesslike for the most part, with a few exceptions in the dragons'
flavor text.
The game has two main social mechanics — visiting and helping friends, and player vs player combat.Visiting
and helping friends is exactly the same as in other games of this type —
players have a small stock of energy with which they can click on their
friends' dragon habitats to “help” (though it's not clear exactlyhow they're “helping” in thematic terms) and may also send them gifts. PvP, meanwhile, unfolds through the game's “Combat World” mechanic. Previously,
this was limited to players of level 10 or higher only, but this
restriction has been removed, allowing all players to battle against one
another assuming they have some dragons on hand.
The
Combat World is split into “leagues” in which players must defeat
several opponents in order to progress, but may only participate in up
to three combats every six hours. This
is an aspect of the game worth engaging in, however, as rewards for
completing leagues include hard currency, which may be used to bypass
some of the game's hefty wait times for hatching new dragons. The actual combat component involves selecting a team of three dragons, then picking an opponent to battle against. Battles
unfold in a turn-based manner and do not require the opponent to be
online at the same time — the computer instead takes control of the
opposing dragon. Each dragon has one or more elemental affinities, and different affinities have different strengths and weaknesses. The
artificial intelligence routine is not very good at taking advantage of
these attributes and regularly spams attacks that have no effect
whatsoever on the player, making combat very easy if the player has the
right dragons in their team. Given
that there's no way of seeing what the opponent's battle team consists
of prior to the battle, however — aside from visiting their island and
making an educated guess — this is more a matter of luck than anything
else when competing at higher levels.There
is also no real “risk” factor involved in the combat — dragons cannot
be injured or permanently lost, so the only thing the player loses if
they fail in combat is some time.
The rest of the game is very similar to its original Facebook incarnation. Play
is still throttled through the game's soft currency system rather than
an energy mechanic, and item prices do not appear to have been adjusted
to make the game less “grindy” for free players. It's
a shame that Social Point doesn't seem to have addressed some of the
most glaring issues with the game, but given the game's extremely strong
position on Facebook (MAU rank of 12 in the 10,000,000+ tier and DAU
rank of 9 in the 1,000,000+ tier) there's probably very little incentive
for them to do so, as players are clearly still flocking to the game in
droves. As
such, it's worth a look to see what a successful dragon-breeding title
looks like — but as it stands it's still merely a “good” game rather
than a “great” one.
You can follow Dragon City's progress with AppData , our tracking service for mobile and social games and developers.
